The Debt Collector at the Gate
Chapter 03 - The Debt Collector at the Gate
The blue sitting room had once belonged to Damian’s grandmother.
No one used it anymore.
It faced the sea and held too much sunlight for the kind of conversations Damian usually had. Pale blue silk wallpaper. Porcelain lamps. A sofa with carved wooden legs. Family photographs arranged on a narrow table beneath a gilt mirror.
His mother had hated that room after his father died.
Too many ghosts, she said.
That afternoon, one of them seemed to sit in every chair.
Warren Pike stood near the fireplace with a leather folder beneath his arm. He was small and smooth and beautifully dressed, the sort of man who had discovered early that cruelty did not require a large body if the paperwork was sharp enough.
When Tessa entered, Pike smiled.
“There she is.”
Damian watched her flinch and pretend she had not.
Paul stood by the door. Two more men waited in the hallway.
Pike glanced at them, then at Damian.
“I didn’t realize Miss Miller had such impressive friends.”
“She doesn’t,” Tessa said before Damian could answer.
Her voice shook slightly.
Pike’s smile widened. “Then she has impressive employers.”
Damian took the folder from his hand without asking.
Pike blinked. “That’s private financial documentation.”
“Not anymore.”
Inside were loan agreements, late fees, penalties, and a transfer document that made Damian’s skin go cold.
Tessa’s mother had signed a second mortgage without understanding it.
Or more likely, under pressure.
“You can’t take her house,” Tessa said. “I made the last payment.”
“You made a payment,” Pike corrected. “Not the full payment. Interest continues, sweetheart. Numbers are stubborn that way.”
Damian looked up.
“Call her sweetheart again.”
Pike’s mouth closed.
Tessa turned sharply. “Don’t.”
Damian’s eyes stayed on Pike. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t threaten him because he annoyed you.”
“He’s not annoying me.”
“No, he’s baiting you.”
That gave Damian pause.
Tessa knew men like Pike. Not because she had power over them, but because she had been forced to survive them.
Pike adjusted his cuff. “I came only to inform Miss Miller that the lien has been sold.”
“To whom?” Damian asked.
Pike smiled again.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
Damian looked at Paul.
Paul stepped closer.
Pike swallowed.
“You could break my jaw,” he said, trying for bravado, “but that wouldn’t change the paperwork.”
“No,” Damian said. “But it might improve my afternoon.”
Tessa moved between them.
The smallness of the gesture was absurd. Damian could have moved her aside with one hand. Pike probably thought the same.
Neither of them did.
“Please,” she said, looking at Damian now. “My mother doesn’t know how bad it is. She thinks the shop can reopen if we hold on long enough. If this gets violent, it will follow me home. It always does.”
Damian heard the word always and stored it away.
A woman did not say always unless experience had earned it.
He closed the folder.
“Who bought the lien?”
Pike hesitated.
Then his eyes slipped toward the family photographs by the mirror.
It was small.
Enough.
Damian turned his head.
The largest photograph showed his parents on the terrace twenty-five years earlier. Beatrice, dark-haired and laughing. His father, handsome and dead-eyed. Beside them stood another man, younger, one hand on Damian’s shoulder.
Gianni Rinaldi.
His father’s cousin.
The name Beatrice had whispered over broken porcelain.
Damian felt something old and unpleasant wake inside him.
“Get him out,” he told Paul.
Pike stiffened. “The paperwork—”
“Leave it.”
“I can’t—”
Paul touched his elbow.
Pike left the room walking quickly.
Tessa remained near the center of the rug, arms folded tight over her stomach.
“Rinaldi,” she said. “Your mother said that name.”
“Yes.”
“Who is he?”
“Someone who should know better than to put his hands near my house.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“No.”
She gave him a tired look. “You do that a lot.”
“What?”
“Say something that sounds like an answer if a person doesn’t listen closely.”
Damian should have been irritated.
Instead, he almost smiled.
Almost.
“Gianni Rinaldi was my father’s cousin. He handled money for the family before I took control.”
“And now?”
“Now he breathes because my mother once asked me to let him.”
Tessa looked toward the window.
The sea beyond the glass was iron gray.
“My mother’s house is not part of your family war.”
“It became part of it when he bought the lien.”
“Why would he?”
Damian had been asking himself the same question.
He opened the folder again. Beneath the loan documents lay a photocopy of the original medical debt from St. Agnes Children’s Oncology Center.
Tessa’s face went still when she saw the letterhead.
“My sister was treated there.”
“I know.”
“No. You read it. That’s not the same as knowing.”
He deserved that.
Tessa touched the paper with two fingers.
“Mia used to call the infusion room her ugly ballroom. She said if she had to sit under fluorescent lights for six hours, she was going to pretend she was waiting for a prince.”
Her mouth trembled once.
“She was funny when she was scared.”
Damian looked away first.
He did not want to imagine the dead girl because imagining had consequences. Numbers on a page could be handled. A funny twenty-two-year-old pretending a hospital room was a ballroom could not.
“There’s something else,” Paul said from the doorway.
Damian turned.
Paul held a small plastic evidence bag.
“What is it?”
“This was taped under Pike’s car seat. My men found it before he left the gate.”
Inside the bag was a black listening device.
Not the cheap kind.
Military grade.
Tessa stepped back. “He was recording us?”
Paul shook his head.
“No. Someone was recording him.”
Damian took the bag.
The device had no serial number.
But it had a scratch near the switch, shaped like a crescent.
He had seen that mark before.
On equipment used by his father’s old crew.
His dead father’s loyalists were supposed to be gone.
Apparently, they had been waiting.
Tessa looked from Paul to Damian.
“This is about your family, isn’t it?”
Damian’s phone rang before he could answer.
Unknown number.
He answered without speaking.
For three seconds there was only static.
Then a man’s voice, low and amused.
“Your mother always did like strays, Damian.”
Damian’s hand tightened around the phone.
The voice continued.
“Send the maid home before she learns why her sister really died.”
The line went dead.
Tessa stared at Damian.
May you like
“What does that mean?”
For once, Damian had no lie ready.
