 by Xavier Neal.jpg)
Total pages in book: 37
Estimated words: 35494 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35494 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Little did this princess know, the arrangement she agreed to was going to get a bit more twisted than the original fairy tale…
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Playlist Selects
Here are five songs from “Twisted Debt” playlist!
Feel free to follow the playlist on Spotify to find more songs I felt related to the book.
1. energy – Tyla Jane (Pop)
2. Between the Sheets – The Isley Brothers (Soul/Funk)
3. Fatal – J. Holiday (R&B)
4. The (Shipped) Gold Standard – Fall Out Boy (Rock)
5. this is what falling in love feels like – JVKE (Pop)
More songs: https://spoti.fi/3Qb4iCN
Chapter One
Elias
“You owe me a debt, Mr. Pierson.” I smooth the wrinkle out of my red tie with my right hand. “And I’m in need of a new toy.” Finally redirecting my gaze to the cowering individual on the opposite side of my desk, I remind him of the major details. “It’s only three months. She’ll be wined, dined, and want for nothing.” An arrogant smirk slithers onto my face. “Take the deal.”
Gareth Pierson, a lower-level employee who came to me in desperation of money, pleads with his large eyes as well as his gruff tone, “Please, Mr. Whittington. There has to be another way. Something else. Anything else.”
“The three-hundred thousand dollars you swore you’d return to me.”
“But-”
“The same three-hundred thousand dollars you used to help cover your wife’s medical bills.”
“But-”
“That would also be the same three-hundred thousand dollars you skimmed ten thousand from to pay off loan sharks from a gambling debt, correct?”
“How did you-”
“I don’t have time for this, Mr. Pierson. I have a call with my Paris team that I do not plan on being late for.” My head tips to the unsigned stack of papers. “Have your daughter sign it and report to my penthouse tomorrow afternoon at four o’clock.” The office phone in the left-hand corner of my desk begins to buzz, indicating my secretary is requesting my attention. “Address is located on the last page at the bottom.”
Gareth presses his lips firmly together, nods his compliance while grabbing the contract, and begrudgingly begins to exit.
If you ask me, he’s pouting for nothing.
I’m not asking for his fucking kidney.
Just his daughter.
Chapter Two
Zel
Dad: Wear your best dress.
I didn’t put too much stock into the text when he’d sent it earlier this afternoon. I just went back to scrubbing the toilets at my current cleaning assignment. Pissy ass toilets where the homeowners’ twin seven-year-olds liked to play a sick game where they “rain fire” on an “enemy fortress”. You got it. Said enemy fortress is the toilet bowl, the back wall, and the damn floor.
However, now that I’m using the hand of a suit-clad driver to climb out of the backseat of an all-black SUV, the text pops into my mind again.
More urgently than it had before.
Why exactly did I need my best dress instead of just a nice one?
“Dad, we can’t afford all of this,” I murmur as my father saunters around from the opposite side in his best tuxedo – something I’ve only seen him wear twice in all my life.
“Enough, princess.”
My eyes flicker up the all-glass, dominating skyscraper of a building that looks more like a place for living rather than a place for eating. “First, there was the Luxury Uber-”
“Ma’am, this isn’t-” the driver’s sentence stops short when my father clears his throat and steps directly in front of me so that we’re face to face.
“And now, this ritzy place for dinner? What’s going on? Are you trying to break bad news to me? Is it Mom’s condition? Did Tomas go back to jail again?”
“Zel,” his ivory-colored fingers tuck a few tresses behind my ear. “Let me ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“How many young ladies your age put themselves through college, while working a full-time job, huh?”
The custodial assignments that I have aren’t necessarily a full-time job, although in the summer months, I can pile on extra work.
And I do.
College is so fucking expensive.
“Um…,” my honey-colored finger absentmindedly twists around a chestnut strand of hair, “probably more than you’re thinking.”
“Oh. yeah? Do they do it on top of visiting their mothers at the full-service care facility every day?”
He has a point, but it’s not the point.
I’m one second away from saying “you can’t afford this” yet find myself unable to finish the sentence since I’m still not entirely sure what this is. We’re nowhere near the bottom of the bucket like Sammy’s Shrimp Shack, yet we’re way above our occasional splurging at Red Lobster.
Dad bends his arm for me to take, light brown eyes we share the same shade of, shimmering with a hint of secrecy.
I loop my arm though his at the same time I ask, “There’s a restaurant inside?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of? What do you mean sort of?”
“I made a bet…”
My head drops, and I shuffle back a few paces away from the glass door we were headed towards. “No…” The black high heels that I gifted myself for my high school graduation scrape unforgivingly across the pavement. “No. No. No, Dad!” I snap my stare back up to his and whine, “You promised mom no more horseraces or cock fights or Texas Hold ‘Em tournaments-”