Page 11 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

Three

Lizzie

The next morningI’m standing in the coolly elegant Vossameer lobby waiting for the elevator alongside a group of well-dressed professionals, and I’m pretty sure they’re all trying really hard not to stare at me in my deranged Holly Hobbie outfit. A few lose the battle and do the “room scan” but you know they’re really looking at me.

I’d put a belt on it this morning at the last minute to make it look less weird, and I left the Crocs at home. Still.

I text Mia.

Me: Having second thoughts. Did we go too far?

Mia: noooooooo! Just work it.

Me: :/

Mia: Hold your head high, like you think it’s hot. Pull it off.

Me: It’s a freak dress, not a flubbed line!

Mia: <3

Mia is big on not letting little things throw you. But this dress is not a little thing. It’s a tent.

I suck in a breath. I last through today and it’s one more week.

I get off on the fifth floor and head down the hall and on to the communications area. Betsy’s on the phone. She smiles, and I smile back, heartened.

I head back past Sasha’s workspace, braced for the disapproving brows of madness, but she simply glances up, nods, and goes back to work, which I take as approval.

I text Mia as soon as I reach my desk.

She approves of the dress! LOL

Mia texts me back a smiley face, then a cavemen image, and I threaten to put soap on her toothbrush when she least expects it.

But really the dress was the right move. Nothing will stop me from getting my bonus and paying those loan sharks.

I always thought that loan sharks who come to your door and threaten you existed only in movies, but no, they are real, a fact I learned in the month after Mason disappeared, when an actual loan shark got into our building and came to our door to collect the first payment.

I couldn’t have been more surprised. Up until the loan shark appearance, the most sketchy characters in my life in the largely gentrified neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen were certain Starbucks baristas and maybe the occasional creepy Uber driver.

The loan shark had a huge moon face and he showed me a paper that Mason had signed, and my name was on there, too, though clearly it was forged. I told him so, told him I didn’t sign it, but he didn’t care. I told him that I cared, and that’s when he showed me the gun.

Mia had come to the door by then, and we both just stared at it. Neither of us had ever seen an actual gun up close that wasn’t attached to a police officer’s belt. He also had a pinky ring, which made everything slightly surreal.

“Are you literally threatening us with a gun?” Mia asked.

“What the hell does it look like?” He aimed it at my head, and I nearly fainted. “You’ll bring Lenny six thousand dollars to Carson’s on Third Ave in Murray Hill or this shit gets serious.”

“Please,” I said, shaking deeply. “First installment, six thousand. Carson’s. Got it.”

With that, he left. I was still trembling an hour later.

I pulled together two thousand—it was all I had. My parents back home lent me two thousand, and I know that was hard for them—our family pizzeria really struggles post-holidays.

Like a champ, Mia scraped together two thousand dollars, her entire savings.

She’s been amazing. She even knew the exact perfect amount of time to wait to point out that the loan shark’s name was Lenny. “Lenny? Seriously?” she’d said over wine that night. “Can that be more of a cliché?”

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