Page 14 of Knight
Romeo Rivas is looking at me like I am the most dangerous thing in this building.
And God help me — I am not walking away.
The Math That Breaks Her
I should say no.
Every instinct I have built in two years of keeping three lives running on my own is screaming at me to turn around and walk out of this office and never come back. I should go home and run the calculator again and figure it out the way I always figure it out — alone, exhausted, one dollar at a time, held together with duct tape and fury.
But Tomás's shoe is split open. He stuffed a napkin in it so I would not worry.
Marisol borrows a calculator from a girl named Dakota every morning and swallows her pride like a pill and I can see it sticking in her throat.
The electric bill is nine days past due and the shutoff notice is in the kitchen drawer and every night I open that drawer for a fork and feel the paper underneath the takeout menus like a bruise I keep pressing.
A hundred and eighty dollars a session for a therapist who might help my ten-year-old brother stop thinking he is dying on bathroom floors.
My mother saidI love youon a Tuesday. She kissed Tomas on the forehead and braided Marisol’s hair. Told me she was proud of me. Then she vanished - between a Tuesday and a Wednesday. Left me holding everything.
I am not my mother. I do not leave. I do not vanish. I stay and I pay. I do whatever it takes. And ifwhatever it takesis standing in a back office at midnight, letting a man with green eyes and a dead father’s watch off to solve every problem in my life in exchange for my body — then I do the math.
The math wins. The math always wins.
"I have conditions," I say.
He straightens. Something sharpens behind his eyes — focus, interest, the recognition that I am not refusing.
"Name them."
"My siblings are off-limits. You do not meet them. You do not ask about them. They are mine."
"Done."
"You do not come to my apartment. Ever. This stays in your world, on your side of the city, in your spaces. You do not show up where I live."
"Done."
"If I say it's over, it's over. No negotiation. No argument. I walk and you let me walk and the money stops and that is the end of it."
A beat. His throat works on a swallow. "Done."
"And this changes nothing about who I am to you. I am not your girlfriend. I am not your woman. I do not owe you conversation, or comfort, or anything beyond what we agree to in this room right now."
He holds my gaze. The charm is gone. The performance is gone. Whatever is looking at me from behind those green eyes is raw and honest and it terrifies me more than any contract or arrangement ever could.
"No feelings," he says.
"No feelings," I say.
The word sits between us like a lit match on a gasoline floor.
"Deal," I say.
"Deal."
My voice is steady. My hands are fists inside my jacket pockets and my nails are cutting crescents into my palms and my pulse is slamming so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
But my voice is steady. That is the part that matters.
