Page 7 of Creatures in the Night

“Last year?” I blurted, cutting my father off. “You’ve been dealing with this since last year?”

“The past couple of years,” my dad clarified. “It happened a couple of years ago.”

I ran my hands through my hair, ruining my ponytail. “Jesus Christ,” I muttered under my breath. “This can’t be happening.”

“There’s more,” Mom quietly added.

“What?” I asked, even though everything in me told me not to.

“When the bank determined that we were a liability, and that the shop could not turn over that kind of cash quickly enough to pay off the debt, we…” My dad flattened his hands on the tabletop, smoothing out the already smoothed surface. “We…we sought help from the…the O’Briens.”

My eyes closed as my entire world came crashing down around me. Instead of coming to me for help or advice, my parents had gone to the O’Briens for the money, and only someone that was suicidal would ever do business with the Irish Mob, which was exactly what the O’Briens were.

When I opened my eyes, I asked, “How much do you owe them now?”

“Two million,” my dad answered. “But…it’ll go up another two-hundred thousand next month.”

My parents were in a quicksand of dollar signs, and we didn’t know enough people that could spare the extra cash to get us that kind of money. While a lecture was on the tip of my tongue, a lecture was pointless at this stage of the game. If we didn’t come up with a way to pay back the O’Briens, my parents could very well end up dead.”

“Okay, we’ll sell the shop-”

“The O’Brien doesn’t want the shop,” my dad announced, interrupting me. “He…he wants something else.”

“What?” My parents exchanged that look again, and I could feel myself almost throwing up everywhere with the unknown. “Just tell me,” I bit out.

“He’s agreed to wipe out the debt in exchange for…for you,” my dad finished.

I could literally feel my heart stop in my chest. “Me?”

My mother started nodding frantically. “If you agree to marry Noah Murphy, then Declan will erase the debt as we’d be family after that.”

I started shaking my head in disbelief. “Why…why me?”

“He wouldn’t say,” Dad admitted. “He just said that he’d wipe out the debt if you agreed to marry Noah.”

My hands started to shake as I really started to process what my parents had just said. The entire thing sounded like an impossible plot to a horrible movie, but my parents looked upset enough that I knew the truth for what it was. My parents had already agreed to this insanity, and all they needed was for me to also agree. While I had no idea why Declan O’Brien would choose me, or why Noah Murphy would agree to such a thing, it didn’t matter. If I didn’t agree to marry a perfect stranger, then the O’Briens would make my parents pay in another way, and my stomach clenched with that thought.

“What…what did…what did you tell The O’Brien?” I finally asked.

“We told him that…that the decision was yours,” Dad answered.

“And what happens if I say no?” I asked, though I didn’t need to.

My mom choked out a sob as my dad placed his arm around her shoulders. “We’ll lose everything,” my father said candidly. “And if…if we still owe, then we’ll be expected to do whatever we need to in order to clear the balance.”

As unfair as it was, I knew that I couldn’t let my parents lose everything for it all to just be in vain anyway. Yeah, they never should have gone to the O’Briens to bail them out, but since I didn’t own a time machine, that was a moot point right now. They’d done the unthinkable, and Rumpelstiltskin was coming back around to collect their firstborn like he always did.

The worrisome part was not knowing why Declan O’Brien had chosen me, or why Noah Murphy had agreed to marrying me. Of course, I was just assuming that Declan had chosen me and not Noah. Noah could have easily been the one to pick me, though using Declan to make the demand since everyone knew that Declan was the head of the Irish Mob. Honestly, I had no idea, but did it even matter at this point?

A crazy plan to start stripping and hooking crossed my mind, but then it fled just as quickly. I had no idea what prostitutes charged these days, but I couldn’t imagine what I’d have to do in order to amass that kind of money. If nothing else, I’d only have to let one man screw me to clear out that kind of debt. Granted, that I knew of.

Knowing that I had no choice, I said, “Fine. Let The O’Brien know that I said yes.”

As my parents visibly relaxed, I was immediately filled with a resentment that wasn’t healthy for any of us. So, without another word, I stood up, then left their house, wondering if I was going to be able to ever look at them the same again.

Chapter 5

Noah~

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