" money from me. I am here to discuss what comes next."

I glanced at my dad lying unconscious and then back at this man. "He is unable to speak with you. He's not awake."

"I am not here to have a conversation with him," Dean said. "I am here to converse with you."

"About what. I don't have anything to do with his loan."

"You have everything to do with it." He took one step further into the room and stopped. "Your father owes forty-six thousand dollars. Three extensions. Four months without a single payment. That stops today."

"He's in a hospital bed."

"I can see that."

"So whatever this is it can wait."

"It can't." His voice didn't rise. Didn't need to. "The debt transfers to you. Your father cannot carry it anymore and someone has to. That someone is you."

"I'm a teacher. I don't have that kind of money."

"I know about your income."

That was something else entirely. The fact that he already knew. That he walked in here with information about me before I even learned his name. Something went cold inside me right then.

"Then you know I can't pay you," I said.

"Not with money," he said. "No." He held my gaze and let what he wasn't saying hang between us long enough that I started understanding it before he put it into words. "Your father made an arrangement when he took the loan. He understood what the collateral was if he couldn't pay."

"What collateral?"

"You," Dean said. "You are the price Jessica. You always were. He knew that when he signed."

Everything in me went still.

"You're telling me my father used me as collateral."

"I'm telling you the debt is yours now and you will honour it."

"Should I choose to withdraw?"

He gazed at my father resting there. Then back to me. He stayed quiet and there was no need for him to reply since the answer was already present with us.

"Twenty-four hours," he said. He placed a card on the table beside the bed. "After that, I stop asking."

He left. The door closed. I stayed by my dad's bed motionless. The card was sitting right there on the table. My father's hand was still warm from where I had been holding it.

He had signed my name on something without telling me. He had put me up as collateral and never said a word and I had been sitting here all night talking to him like he was the victim.

Maybe he was.

But so was I.

I grabbed the card from the table. No business name. No heading. Merely a figure. As if his name by itself should have sufficed.

I walked downstairs to the hospital canteen and phoned my mom. It rang twice before she answered, and I could tell from her tone that she hadn't rested either.

"Jessica." Where are you located? "I have been trying to reach your father since last night"

"Mom, he's in the hospital." I noticed her breath pause. He fell down. He's stable, yet he has remained unconscious since arrival.

"Oh Lord." Which medical facility? "I'm on my way"

"Mom, pay attention to what I'm saying." I maintained a soft tone. "Tonight, a man arrived here." He mentioned that Dad had borrowed money from him. A substantial amount of money. He mentioned that Dad utilized me as collateral, and now the debt belongs to me."

Quiet on the opposite side.

"Mother."

"Rip it apart," she said. "Tear up whatever he handed you at this moment." "If there is no proof, there is nothing he can act upon."

I glanced at the card I was holding.

I was aware of how silly that seemed. A man arrived at a hospital before dawn, aware of my name and precisely what I made. A man such as Dean Lance did not function with a single version of anything.

Ripping this card wouldn't remove a single item.

It only meant I couldn't contact him.

And a part of me realized that this was precisely the type of error he was anticipating me to commit. I don't want double what I'm inside already.

"See I don't care who Dean is or whatever kind of person he is but I am not giving in to anything both of you had and signed with my name!" Jessica snapped her voice sharp and unrelenting.

"Jessica calm down," her dad pleaded his voice trembling. "I can't figure out how to make it clear to you. I believed I could compensate for everything but I failed"

"Shut your mouth you foolish old man!" Jessica interrupted him her frustration reaching a peak. "You have been spending money without me knowing. You used me as collateral to take a loan from a very bloody person and you know about it. You never told me about it and now I have the price to pay!"

A nurse showed up at the door, glanced at them, and then vanished. Her father was attempting to rise from the bed, grimacing, his hand reaching for the tube in his arm.

"Allow me to clarify," he said.

"Clarify what. A man entered this room before dawn and informed me that I am the price. Those were his precise words. And you were already aware of that."

He was unable to gaze at her. Each time she pressed he glanced at the bedsheet, the window, the machines. Anywhere but her face.

"How long have you known about this arrangement?"

The room was silent.

"Answer me."

"Jessica"

"How long!"

He closed his eyes. When he opened them the last of whatever he had been holding collapsed.

"Eight months," he said quietly.

Everything stopped.

"Eight months," she repeated.

"I tried to find another way. I thought if I could get the money together before it came to this then you would never have to know. You would never have to be involved."

"You have known for eight months that a man had my name on a piece of paper and you looked me in the face every single day and said nothing."

"I was trying to protect you."

"You were trying to protect yourself!"

She grabbed the plastic cup from the table beside his bed and threw it across the room. It hit the wall and clattered to the floor.

"There is more," he said.

She went still.

"What do you mean there is more?"

He looked at his hands. "The arrangement with Dean. It was not just about the debt."

"Then what was it about?"

He didn't respond quickly enough so she snatched the TV remote from the side table and hurled it at the foot of the bed. It cracked against the frame and her dad flinched hard.

"What was it about!"

"Marriage." The word came out of him like it had been buried. "Dean agreed to cancel the entire debt. Every cent. In exchange for your hand in marriage. I signed the agreement six months ago."

The room went quiet.

The door opened. Her mom stepped in.

"Jessica what on earth" She stopped when she saw the broken remote on the floor. Looked at Raymond. Looked back at Jessica. "What is going on?"

Jessica couldn't speak. Her father had not been cornered. He had not made a desperate decision the night the collectors came. He had sat across from Dean Lance six months ago and signed her name on a marriage contract and then come home and cooked and called her and asked about her students like everything was fine.

Six months.

"Raymond." Her mom's voice dropped low. "What did you do?"

Her dad opened his mouth.

"Don't," Jessica said. Flat. Hollow. "Don't say anything else."

She picked up her bag.

"Jessica wait" can you just listen to me her mom started toward her.

"I need to leave."

She hurried down the corridor, through the doors, and into the morning, continuing to walk because stopping meant she would completely break down and she wasn't ready for that yet.

Dean Lance had her name on a marriage contract.

Her father had put it there.

And she had twenty-four hours to decide what to do about it.

She exited the room and didn't glance back. Neither at her mother calling her name, nor at her father lying there, nor at any of it.

She just kept moving down the corridor and through the hospital doors and outside.

That was when she saw the car.

Black. Parked right outside. Engine running. She did not recognise it but her legs slowed down on their own before her brain caught up.

The window rolled down.

Dean.

"You think it's by shouting at the poor old crook lying on the bed who isn't even sure of survival," he said. "Wake up and face reality. You are the collateral."

Jessica stopped walking.

"Wait a minute." She stared at him. "How do you mean you heard me shouting at my dad inside the room?"

Dean looked at her. Nothing on his face moved.

"Deal with it," he said. "That is why I am Dean Lance."

He drove off.

Jessica stood there on the pavement and did not move. People were walking past her. The morning was carrying on as if nothing had happened. Like everything had not just collapsed around her in two days. Her father had signed her name on a marriage contract six months ago and said nothing. And the man whose name was on that contract had been standing outside that room the whole time. Listening. Waiting. Letting her fall apart and then getting back in his car like it was nothing.

He had not shouted or even threatened her because there was obviously no need to do that when he could get anything he wanted.

He had just waited.

Deal with it. That is why I am Dean Lance.

She remained on that pavement, her hands trembling, and for the first time, grasped precisely what type of man she was confronting.

Twenty-four hours

Jessica got home and sat on her bed without taking off her shoes. She did not eat. Did not sleep. Did not call anyone. She just sat there staring at nothing for a long time thinking about her father's face when he said six months and thinking about Dean's face when he said you are the collateral and going back and forth between the two until her head hurt.

She picked up her phone and typed Dean Lance into the search bar.

She wished she hadn't.

Article after article. His name was attached to things that made her stomach turn. A man was found dead in connection with a business dispute linked to Lance Corporation. Two men were hospitalised after an altercation outside a Lance property. A court case that was dropped before it even started, witnesses suddenly unavailable, evidence suddenly missing. His face in photographs at events, always composed, always that same expression, like nothing in the world could touch him because nothing ever had.

She put her phone face down on the bed.

This was the man her father had handed her to.

She lay back and stared at the ceiling and thought about running. About packing a bag and disappearing somewhere Dean Lance had never heard of. But then she thought about her dad in that hospital bed with the tube in his arm and his chest rising and falling and she knew she wasn't going anywhere.

She must have fallen asleep because when her phone buzzed she jolted awake and the room was darker than it had been.

She looked at the screen.

Unknown number. SMS.

It's me, Dean. I'm at your door, quickly come and open it. I wouldn't like to be kept outside and I don't visit people's houses because of my personality. But I did visit your father's house again today because I need an answer. And you know what that means. If my answer is no, you wouldn't like - I'm sure you wouldn't like - the condition you would want to meet your dad in if you ever give me no as an answer. I don't like.

Jessica read it once. Read it again.

Then she got up and went to the door.

Dean was standing there in the corridor exactly the way he had been standing in that hospital room. Like he had all the time in the world. Like showing up at a woman's apartment was something he did without thinking twice about it.

"You got my message," he said.

"You went to my father's house," Jessica said. "He is in a hospital bed."

"I am aware of that. I went to collect something he had been keeping for me." He looked at her steadily. "Are you going to let me in?"

She stepped back from the door.

He came in and looked around her apartment the way he looked at everything, like he was assessing it, filing it away. He sat down on her couch without being invited and looked at her standing by the door with her arms crossed.

"Your answer," he said.

"I don't have one yet."

"You have had since this morning."

"You gave me twenty-four hours."

"And you have used most of them sitting in here searching my name online." He said it without blinking. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Jessica stared at him. "You were watching me."

He didn't confirm or deny it. Just kept looking at her with that same expression that gave nothing away.

"My answer is no," Jessica said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "I am not marrying you. I don't care what my father signed. He had no right to sign anything with my name and whatever agreement the two of you made has nothing to do with me."

Dean looked at her for a long moment.

Then he stood up.

"Alright," he said.

Just that. Alright. Like she had told him something mildly interesting.

He buttoned his jacket and moved toward the door and Jessica almost felt relieved, almost believed it was that simple, almost let herself think that no was actually an option.

Then he stopped with his hand on the door.

"Your father is being discharged tomorrow," he said without turning around. "The hospital has been very helpful. Very accommodating. That accommodation ends tonight."

Jessica went cold. "What does that mean?"

"It means the doctors looking after him are no longer available." He opened the door. "It means the medication keeping him stable is no longer being administered." He finally turned and looked at her one last time. "It means you're no longer just becoming very expensive for Raymond Calloway."

He walked out and closed the door behind him.

Jessica stood in the middle of her apartment and could not breathe.

No was not an answer.

It had never been.

After Dean left, she grabbed her bag from the bed and started throwing things in. Clothes, her charger, her purse, anything her hands landed on. She didn't have a plan or a destination in mind but she knew she just wanted to leave. She just knew she could not stay in that apartment one more minute waiting for Dean Lance to decide what happened to her next.

She was out the door in five minutes.

She ended up at a small hotel twenty minutes across town. Somewhere that wasn't even popular and at the outskirts of the town so nobody would recognize her. She paid cash at the front desk and went straight to the room and locked the door and sat on the edge of the bed and for the first time in three days, she could breathe.

Like she's having a moment without panic that something will happen again

There was no Dean or hospital or even her father's face when he said six months. Just her and the walls with the bright light and silence and her own heartbeat finally coming down to normal.

She let herself have that for one night.

What she didn't know was that while she was sitting in that hotel room finding her first moment of peace, Dean was standing over her father's hospital bed.

And he was not there to check on him.