"Long time no see, sweetheart." The leader rolled a toothpick between his teeth. "Rent's due on the debt."
The blood drained from my face. "I paid everything off. Every cent."
"Paid off?" The man scoffed, grinding his heel into Sebastian's spine. "The debt is cleared when I say it's cleared. Don't want to pay? Fine. Let's see how much your precious uncle can take."
"Savvy... run!" Sebastian gasped. "Don't worry about me! Let them kill me... I'm just a cripple anyway!"
The script never changed.
Over the last five years, I'd heard these exact words a thousand times.
I closed my eyes, exhaustion seeping into my bones.
They'd "collected" countless times, yet Sebastian never walked away with so much as a bruise. Meanwhile, I'd suffered broken ribs, a permanent limp, and financial ruin to protect the man who was deceiving me to my core.
The metallic tang of blood rose in my throat.
"What do you want?" I rasped.
The man looked me up and down, his gaze dripping with contempt. "Crawl through our legs. For every guy you crawl under, bark three times like a dog. Do that, and we'll call it entertainment instead of debt."