My company was a Fortune 500 firm. Getting Arnold—a graduate of some bottom-tier vocational college—an expedited position there was already an extraordinary arrangement.
But because I was always busy with work, because I wasn't as smooth-tongued as Arnold, in their eyes I was somehow lesser than him in every way.
And now they wanted to strong-arm me into fulfilling this absurd demand.
"Leslie."
Isabel frowned at me.
"Arnold has been devastated ever since my sister passed. All he wants now is a place of his own. Would it kill you to help him? Or do you really want to be the kind of man who breaks his word in front of his own daughter?"
I almost laughed.
"I break my word?"
"I make a hundred thousand dollars a month. Fifty thousand goes to you. Thirty thousand goes to your parents."
"Every household expense, every piece of clothing, every tuition payment for our daughter—that's all me."
"When we got married, I promised you'd never suffer. And I kept that promise."
"But these three rounds of red envelopes have already cost me close to two million dollars."
"I don't have the money to buy Arnold a house!"