Page 49 of After Effect

I hadn’t seen Mark much since I started with ALIVE. I’d finally gotten my own place, and I was working so much, I rarely had time to visit. He must have come up as my emergency contact.

I didn’t know if I should be happy or terrified that he was here now after all I’d seen. I had no idea how anyone fit into this picture, and I was starting to worry if Mark Corbin wasn’t the “kind stranger who took me in” that I thought he was.

Despite having a lot of questions for him right now, I wasn’t ready to actually face him with them yet. So instead, I deflected. “I… I’m sorry about the car. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t see-” I fixed my gaze on my lap as he stepped closer.

“Save it, Finch. I don’t care about the car. I’ll buy you another one. That’s not what this is about.”

“Then is it-“

“It’s about Christian.” My adoptive father’s voice was heavy. “What kind of deals have you made with Christian Baek?”

“Deals?”

“You heard me.” Mark paced across the room and took a seat by my side. The heart monitor gave away my quickening beat. His eyes watched the beeps for a bit longer than an extended second, then he turned to me. “I’ll drive you home, and we’ll talk more there.”

Mark Corbin checked me out of the hospital. My every muscle protested as I climbed into his Mercedes SUV, battered and bruised from the impact. I tried to keep my mind off the time. Lilly was set to go on in three hours. I needed to be there. But without my own transportation, I had no way of getting there. I had a feeling Mark wouldn’t be letting me run off anywhere for a minute anyway.

I knew he had some connection to Baek, obviously. Baek himself had implied as much. Just hearing the way he had said Corbin that first time- the way Andrea had said it, the way that Psychotic Mr. Rogers had said it- everyone knew his name. But his tone felt much too grave to just be casual disappointment in the debt I’d racked up.

I watched his profile as he sat in silence beside me. He pulled out of the parking structure and turned toward his downtown high rise. I couldn’t tell if he hadn’t started speaking to me because he was concentrating on the road, or if the awkward silence was some form of punishment.

Once I got to the point that I couldn’t bear it any longer, I inhaled deeply through my nose, then opened my mouth to speak.

“How much do you owe him?” Mark interrupted me before I could even begin.

I bit my lower lip for a moment, contemplating my answer carefully. “About a quarter million, I guess. I’ve paid most of it off with…”

“Let me guess: ‘favors’?” He winced. “And what exactly is your leverage on this quarter million dollars?”

“Leverage?”

“Do you think money is free, Finch?” His tone was flat and emotionless, but the words held more than enough meaning on their own. It was such an obvious question that I found myself completely dumbstruck. What… was my leverage? Why hadn’t that ever occurred to me? All along, all I had to offer was…

I offered…

“… Me. I… I leveraged myself.”

Mark stared straight ahead. Unflinching. Silent. I felt sick to my stomach and I didn’t even know why.

“So what if I leveraged myself? People do that all the time when they buy houses or cars. When you start a business. How is this any different than that?”

He remained quiet for a few more seconds before he spoke. His voice didn’t reveal any emotion when he did. “What happens when you can’t pay back that loan?”

“I… I don’t know. You… go bankrupt or something? They take away your house or your business or whatever, and it’s harder to get loans in the future? Are we having the birds and the bees talk, just with economics? What’s the big deal?”

“That’s what a bank might do. But you didn’t offer yourself to a bank.”

“It’s work. And I’ll have it paid back as quickly as I borrowed it. Lilly is-”

“You’re lucky to be alive right now. Bart Karas must be rolling over in his grave right now.”

My eyes narrowed. He’s never once used my birth father’s name against me in the eight years since he adopted me.

“You got me this job in the first place. What did you think was going to happen? This is the music industry, and I want to succeed. I came in knowing I would have to take some risks. Did you think it would be free?”

“Of course not.”

“Why don’t you tell me how you and Baek know each other so I can at least kind of understand where this is coming from.” I had danced around the question long enough.

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