Christmas Captive - Isabella Starling Page 0,46

shadows.

I returned home a shaky, nervous mess. Margaret glared at me from her position in front of the TV.

"Where were you?" she'd barked at me. "I've been waiting."

"I got held up at the grocery store," I muttered, unloading the groceries on the dining table.

"Did you get it all?"

"Everything you wanted." I stored away chocolate bars and candy, steaks, expensive booze. None of it was for me. Though I cooked and prepared the food for Margaret, I existed on a diet of cheap TV dinners and ready-made meals. "I'll be in my room."

My room was a cabinet with a small bed and a chest of drawers under the stairs. I buried my hands in my coat and made a beeline for it, but Margaret stopped me with her walking stick held up in the air.

"Where are you going in that coat?" she demanded. "Take it off and hang it by the door, lazy girl."

"I..." I swallowed thickly. "I was just going to clean it."

"Looks fine to me," she barked. "And you need to get started on my ironing, anyway. Take it off."

Hesitantly, I pulled the coat off me and went to hang it by the front door. I discreetly pulled out the money and attempted to put it in my pocket, but Margaret appeared behind me, nearly scaring me to death.

"What's that?" she demanded, pulling the stack of bills out of my hands. Her eyes sparkled when she saw the money. "That's a lot of money, Amicia. Where'd a lazy girl like you get this much? Have you been whoring yourself out?"

"No," I said firmly. "I... Well, I borrowed it. I wanted to start taking dancing lessons, like I told you about."

"Dancing lessons?" she repeated, shaking her head in dismissal. "What a stupid idea. You don't need dancing lessons."

"Please, Margaret." I was reduced to begging already. "It's all I've ever wanted. I'll return the rest. I just need a couple hundred..."

"Nonsense." She smacked my hand away when I reached for the cash. "I'm keeping this. Let it serve as a lesson for you, for trying to hide this from me."

"But I have to return it!" I called out desperately. "With interest."

"I'm sure you had a plan to return it," Margaret waved her hand dismissively.

Yes, I thought to myself bitterly. With the money I'd make once I finally got a dancing role.

I tried to argue with her that whole night, but she'd had enough of me an hour into the conversation, beating me with her walking stick until I had to drag myself to the little room beneath the stairs. I was black and blue the next day, but that wasn't even the worst of it. Worst of all, I had to return the money Margaret had stolen from me. I wanted to cry. I wanted to beg someone for help, but where the hell was I supposed to go? There was nobody willing to help me.

The money disappeared within weeks. No dance lessons, and nothing to show for it. I knew the collector would be coming, and I was terrified.

Sure enough, two months later, the man came to collect.

He was nice enough at first, but the moment he realized I didn't have the cash, his attitude took a turn for the worse. He told me my interest rate was now forty percent, and that he'd be back in four months.

This repeated itself until I was up to a hundred and twenty percent interest years later. I had no way of paying him, no way of getting out of the mess. I'd avoided our last few meetings, hiding from him, because I didn't have any money to give him. By then, I'd picked up a job at a seedy bar waitressing. I hated it, but I painstakingly put every pound Margaret begrudgingly allowed me to keep aside. Still, I didn't have much. Certainly not enough to cover my growing debt.

I was plagued with worry, constantly thinking about the money I owed. I was making my way home from a long shift at the bar, barely able to think about everything else I still had to do when I came home to a door that had been left open.

The apartment was dark. I couldn't hear the usual blare of the TV, and the fact that the door was open was strange. Margaret never went anywhere. I knew instantly something was wrong.

"Margaret?" I called out, carefully opening the door.

No answer.

I turned on the hallway light and gasped when I saw the mess I'd walked