Chapter 4

"Ma'am, what are you talking about?"

"What am I talking about? You still have the nerve to ask?"

Rosemary's mother's voice was so shrill it felt like it would split my eardrum.

"You forced Rosemary to pay you back. She didn't have the money, so she had to go to the loan sharks!"

"Now they've come knocking, saying they'll take her life if she doesn't pay!"

"Celia, if anything happens to Rosemary, I won't let you rest even when I'm dead!"

Loan sharks?

I froze.

Why would Rosemary go to loan sharks?

Those hundred-odd thousand weren't nothing to her, but they were nowhere near enough to drive her to something like that.

"Ma'am, calm down first. Tell me exactly what happened."

"What's there to explain! You ungrateful snake! My Rosemary treated you like her own sister, and this is how you repay her?"

"Let me tell you, you wire me five hundred thousand right now! Or I'll come make a scene at your company! I'll let everyone see what a viper you are!"

With that, she hung up.

I gripped my phone, hands and feet gone cold.

Brent noticed something was off.

"What happened?"

I shook my head and forced out a smile.

"Nothing. Just something personal."

I didn't want to drag all this filth out in front of him.

He looked at me and didn't press. He only said, "If you need help, just say the word."

I nodded.

Back in the private room, I'd lost all appetite.

I said quick goodbyes to everyone and took a cab home.

The whole ride, I kept turning over what Rosemary's mother had said.

I didn't believe Rosemary would go to loan sharks.

She was so timid, so protective of her own image. There was no way she'd touch something like that.

This looked more like a trap.

A trap to back me into a corner.

Home, I opened my laptop and started digging through Rosemary's social media.

All of her accounts were set to private. I couldn't see a thing.

So I checked the feeds of our mutual friends instead.

Finally, in a party photo one friend had posted the day before, I spotted Rosemary.

She was in a pretty dress, makeup done to perfection, laughing brightly with her friends.

The background was an upscale nightclub.

She didn't look anything like someone being hunted down over loans.

I zoomed in on the photo and saw a new watch on her wrist.

Chanel, this year's newest model. Over fifty thousand.

My heart sank, bit by bit.

I understood now.

She didn't have the money to pay me back, or rather, she wasn't willing to use her own money to pay me back.

So she went to the loan sharks, cleared her debt to me, then turned right around and went shopping.

Now the loan sharks had come knocking, and she pulled the same old trick, sending her mother to cry and scream at me, trying to make me the sucker who paid.

Some scheme.

I let out a cold laugh and shut the laptop.

Early the next morning, the moment I reached the foot of my company building, I walked into a full-blown scene.

Rosemary's mother was sitting right at our front doors, crying and slapping her thighs.

"Where's the justice! My daughter was driven to the loan sharks by her heartless best friend, and now she's half dead!"

"Come see, everyone! It's Celia from this company, the one who drove her own best friend to her deathbed!"

Laid out in front of her was a photo of Rosemary in a hospital bed, pale, looking like she was at death's door.

A crowd had already gathered to watch, pointing and whispering at me.

I took a deep breath and walked over.

"Ma'am, let's find somewhere to talk. Don't do this out here in front of everyone."

The second she saw me, Rosemary's mother lunged at me like she'd gone mad.

"You slut! Give me back my daughter!"

Her nails raked hard across my arm, tearing several bloody lines into it in an instant.

Security rushed over and pulled her off.

I bit back the pain and looked at her.

"Ma'am, how much did Rosemary borrow? What's the interest? Show me the loan agreement."

She faltered for a moment, then thrashed even harder.

"What loan agreement! You did this to her either way! You have to take responsibility!"

"Without a loan agreement, how am I supposed to pay it back for you?"

I pulled out my phone and opened the nightclub photo.

"Besides, my friend saw Rosemary at a nightclub just yesterday. That watch on her wrist costs over fifty thousand."

"Someone the loan sharks have driven to the edge still has the mood to buy a fifty-thousand-dollar watch?"

Rosemary's mother's face changed in an instant.

She snatched my phone, stared at the photo, lips trembling, unable to get out a single word.

The people around her had gotten a clear look at the photo too, and the murmuring grew louder.

"So this whole thing was an act?"

"This family's really something. Won't pay their debts and still want to shake someone down."

"Right. A best friend like that, you're better off without her."

Rosemary's mother's face went red, then white, and she hurled my phone hard onto the ground.

"You're lying! That's photoshopped! You'd do anything to get out of paying!"

She was about to keep at it when a black car pulled up to the curb.

Brent got out.

He walked straight to my side, took off his suit jacket, and draped it over my scratched arm.

Then he turned to Rosemary's mother, his eyes cold as ice.

"Ma'am, what you've just done already amounts to defamation and physical assault."

"My lawyer will be in touch."

With that, he took my hand and led me away through the tangled stares of the crowd.