Bound to the devil's heart

"When you needed this money you were the best version of yourself but right now we are blowing up your phones with calls yet you won't comply. Dean already sent us to tell you that if you can't pay within the seventy-two hours then your daughter has to pay."

I was at the door about to go in when I heard that.

My key was already in my hand. I had come straight from work, still in the same blazer I had been wearing since seven that morning, tired in that specific way that comes from spending six hours trying to make teenagers care about something they have already decided not to care about. I was thinking about food. I was wondering if my dad had cooked. I wasn't thinking about anything that actually mattered because I didn't know yet that anything mattered at all.

And then those words hit me through the door and I stopped breathing for a second.

I stood there in the corridor with my key in my hand and my heart doing something I could not name and I genuinely did not know what to do. Go in. Don't go in. My feet would not move in either direction. My brain got stuck on one thing and wouldn't move past it.

Your daughter has to pay.

"She has nothing to do with this." That was my dad. I could hear in his voice that he was scared even though he was trying not to be. "Whatever is between Mr. Holt and me is between us. My daughter stays out of this."

"She entered into it the moment you stopped picking up the phone." The other voice was not raised. That was the thing that made it worse. Completely level. Like this was a normal conversation. Like what he was saying was just information being passed along, nothing personal, nothing emotional, just facts. "Mr. Holt gave you two extensions, Mr. Calloway. Two. Most people don't get one. You were treated well because you came recommended and that recommendation meant something. But forty-six thousand dollars is forty-six thousand dollars and goodwill does not cancel debt."

"I know that. I know. Just tell him two more weeks. I have something coming through, a contract, the money will be there"

"Dean's message was very clear. Seventy-two hours. Whatever form that payment takes is up to you to arrange. But it will be paid one way or another."

I heard my dad make a sound then. I don't have a word for it. Then the footsteps started coming toward the door. I just remained at a corner where nobody will see me so I'll be able to understand what's really happening.

I moved back fast and pressed myself against the corridor wall, I lay with my back flat and I seized my breath. The door opened and two men came out. They walked past me without even looking my way and turned toward the stairwell. I waited until I couldn't hear them anymore then let myself in.

My dad was sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. Something on the stove had been burning for a while, the smell was everywhere. He was still in his work clothes. He looked bad. Just bad. He looked up when he heard me and the way his face changed when he saw it was me standing there, I'll never forget that.

"Jessie." His voice was rough. "How long were you out there?"

"Long enough." I left my bag on the floor and didn't sit down. "Who is Dean, Dad. What does he want with me?"

He got up and went to the stove. Turned it off. Moved the pot. Kept his back to me.

"I'm handling it," he said.

"You're not handling it. Those men just walked out of your apartment and said my name." I moved around so he couldn't keep his back to me. "They said your daughter pays instead. What does that mean? How does a person pay a debt that isn't theirs? Answer me."

He wouldn't look at me directly. His eyes kept going somewhere just past my shoulder.

"Go home tonight," he said. "I just need to think. Give me tonight and I will explain everything."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Jessica"

"Tell me who Dean is."

He sat back down and pressed both hands flat on the table in front of him. He told me pieces of it after that. The loan he had taken three years ago when the business had gone bad and the bank had said no and someone had told him about another way. The interest had kept adding itself on faster than he could keep up with. The calls he had started avoiding because he didn't know what to say and saying nothing felt easier even though he knew it wasn't. How it had gotten to forty-six thousand and he still believed he could fix it if he just had a little more time.

He did not tell me who Dean was. Every time I pushed toward that part he went quiet and looked at the table.

I took the bus home just after midnight. Sat in my apartment with my coat still on and didn't move for a while. Just kept thinking about that name.

Dean.

Who was he? What did he want?

Around 3 a.m., my phone rang. Number I didn't know. A woman's voice on the other end, shaking so bad I could barely make out what she was saying. She lived across the corridor from my dad according to what she described. She heard a loud crash coming from his apartment, went to check on him, and found him on the floor. Called an ambulance. He was at St. Matthew's now and she didn't sound hopeful when she said it.

I was already grabbing my keys before she finished talking.

" 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