My Don Mistook Survival for Greed Chapter 06

My Don Mistook Survival for Greed Chapter 06

Scarface left with his goons.

It was just me and Jason on the whole empty road.

The orange sunset-unreasonable, violent-smashed the sky into evening.

stared at the signed debt agreement in my hands. Disoriented.

Why Jason?

How could it be Jason?

A heavy knot twisted in my chest.

I bent over, trying to calm my ragged breathing and hammering heart.

But it only made it worse.

Something pulled at my heart.

Swaying.

A faint, guilty voice from Jason drifted to my ears.

“I just told my mom you had something come up, you’ll be a little late.”

I nodded.

Jason opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

After several false starts.

“About you… about your parents owing all that money, you never told Dante, right?”

How could I?

We were a couple back then. I wanted to stand on equal ground with him.

I couldn’t even admit my past to my friends.

Let alone the person I wanted to spend my life with.

I loved Dante.

So I only wanted him to see the good side of me.

Even about all the money, I just said I’d pay it back for sure.

I was already trying so hard.

If I’d just gotten two more years, I could have saved all of it.

Then step into the next chapter-clean, equal.

But Dante never gave me that time.

He believed I was a gold digger.

I didn’t answer.

Jason sighed.

“If you had told him, with how Dante is, he definitely would have helped you fix this.”

Jason wasn’t wrong.

If I had told him, Dante would have paid it off for me, no question.

But at the same time, I would have laid my whole past bare in front of him.

All that debt would have ruined the equal footing between us.

I’d seen that tragedy play out before.

It was my neighbor when I was a kid.

She married a Mafia Capo.

When the Capo loved her, he paid off all her family’s debt for her. But in the end the Capo fell for another girl, cheated on her. When they divorced, things got miserable.

The Capo mocked her. “You want money, so lower your head. You can’t want money and want to be loved both-there’s no such good deal in this world.”

Yeah.

Living with your hand out-it was a hard way to live.

Looking up was exhausting, but I had to keep moving up!

As for Jason finding out all this.

I just figured, if I couldn’t stop some things from happening, I had to accept that they existed.

I carefully tucked the debt agreement into the inner pocket of my bag.

Stood up.

“Jason, all that’s in the past. Bringing it up isn’t worth it. And this hundred grand, I will absolutely pay you back.”

I got into my beat-up old Ford and drove toward the Marino household.

I still had work to do.

I still had a life to live.

I tutored Julia for AP Calculus right on schedule.

When I was leaving, Julia called me back.

She pulled a tiramisu out of the fridge for me.

“Miss Renee! Have cake. I went to a special place and bought it. It is so good.”

I took a bite.

Well.

So sweet.