Chapter 4

Shea~

T hough I loved my parents, they knew that the day before my three-day stretch was a very important day for me. It was the one day a week that I took for myself, no chores, no bills, no errands, no anything. With working twelve-hour shifts, there was very rarely time to do anything more than just go home, eat, shower, then go to bed. My parents knew this, so they usually respected that I used this day to prepare myself for the chaos that would ensue during the next three days, but they had still insisted that I come over this afternoon, which a part of me understood since the shop was only closed on Sundays.

Still…

Having grown up in this house, I knocked once before letting myself in, trusting that my parents were too old to be getting it on in the living room. They were in their sixties, and while I was very aware that people in their sixties still had sex, I just couldn't imagine it happening anywhere outside their bedroom as was respectable.

"Mom? Dad?" I called out as I walked in, not seeing either of them in the living room.

Since my parents' house was a modest one, there were only a few places that they could be. The kitchen was my next guess because the temperatures had been dropping lately, so I couldn't see them out in the back. Winters in Maryland were no joke, and brisk was a relative term in the northeast.

"Shea," Mom called back. "In here, honey."

I walked into the kitchen to see my mom and dad sitting at the table, and whoever didn't believe in vibes was wrong. Anxiousness was rolling off my parents in waves, and my stomach immediately dipped with what this could be. I should have read between the lines when they had insisted on me coming over, but I'd been too wrapped up in my own life that I hadn't even bothered to consider that something serious might be going on.

I sat down, not interested in pussyfooting around. "What is it?" I asked. "What's going on?"

Confirming my suspicions, my parents shared a look before my father said, "We've gotten ourselves in a bit of a…bind," he answered.

"What kind of bind?" I asked, my hands clasping together on the table.

"A financial one," he confessed.

Okay, that wasn't so bad. Between my job, my parents' shop, our combined good credit, there was no reason that we couldn't secure a loan to help get them back on their feet. While I had a few distant aunts and uncles on my dad's side, we wouldn't bother them until and unless we had to. My mother was an only child, and even though my grandparents were still alive and well, they were living off social security, so they weren't an option.

I shook my head, knowing that I was getting ahead of myself. "Okay," I said. "That's okay…it happens to lots of people." I looked between my parents. "How much are we talking about?"

"Almost two-million dollars," my dad answered evenly, making my heart drop to my knees.

"Wha…what?" I looked over at my mother, and she looked like she was about to burst into tears at any moment. "Two…two- million dollars?"

My dad nodded. "I…I thought I…"

"Oh, no," I said ungraciously. "You don't get to tell me that you're in debt for that kind of money and not tell me why, Dad."

"I got scammed, alright?" he finally admitted. "I got approached by a long-time church acquaintance, and he sold me on an investment scheme that turned out to be a scam."

I quickly started doing all the math in my head, and even if you took the shop and everything that we all owned, it still wouldn't come out to that amount of money free and clear. While my parents owned their shop, they didn't own the building. It was leased, and there were still six more years left on the lease that I knew of.

I let out a shaky breath. "Okay, we…we can make an appointment with the bank and-"

"It's too late for that," Mom sobbed quietly.

"What?"

"We already went to the bank last year-"

"Last year?" I blurted, cutting my father off. "You've been dealing with this since last year?"

"The past couple of years," my dad clarified. "It happened a couple of years ago."

I ran my hands through my hair, ruining my ponytail. "Jesus Christ," I muttered under my breath. "This can't be happening."

"There's more," Mom quietly added.

"What?" I asked, even though everything in me told me not to.

"When the bank determined that we were a liability, and that the shop could not turn over that kind of cash quickly enough to pay off the debt, we…" My dad flattened his hands on the tabletop, smoothing out the already smoothed surface. "We…we sought help from the…the O'Briens."

My eyes closed as my entire world came crashing down around me. Instead of coming to me for help or advice, my parents had gone to the O'Briens for the money, and only someone that was suicidal would ever do business with the Irish Mob, which was exactly what the O'Briens were.

When I opened my eyes, I asked, "How much do you owe them now?"

"Two million," my dad answered. "But…it'll go up another two-hundred thousand next month."

My parents were in a quicksand of dollar signs, and we didn't know enough people that could spare the extra cash to get us that kind of money. While a lecture was on the tip of my tongue, a lecture was pointless at this stage of the game. If we didn't come up with a way to pay back the O'Briens, my parents could very well end up dead."

"Okay, we'll sell the shop-"

"The O'Brien doesn't want the shop," my dad announced, interrupting me. "He…he wants something else."

"What?" My parents exchanged that look again, and I could feel myself almost throwing up everywhere with the unknown. "Just tell me," I bit out.

"He's agreed to wipe out the debt in exchange for…for you," my dad finished.

I could literally feel my heart stop in my chest. "Me?"

My mother started nodding frantically. "If you agree to marry Noah Murphy, then Declan will erase the debt as we'd be family after that."

I started shaking my head in disbelief. "Why…why me?"

"He wouldn't say," Dad admitted. "He just said that he'd wipe out the debt if you agreed to marry Noah."

My hands started to shake as I really started to process what my parents had just said. The entire thing sounded like an impossible plot to a horrible movie, but my parents looked upset enough that I knew the truth for what it was. My parents had already agreed to this insanity, and all they needed was for me to also agree. While I had no idea why Declan O'Brien would choose me, or why Noah Murphy would agree to such a thing, it didn't matter. If I didn't agree to marry a perfect stranger, then the O'Briens would make my parents pay in another way, and my stomach clenched with that thought.

"What…what did…what did you tell The O'Brien?" I finally asked.

"We told him that…that the decision was yours," Dad answered.

"And what happens if I say no?" I asked, though I didn't need to.

My mom choked out a sob as my dad placed his arm around her shoulders. "We'll lose everything," my father said candidly. "And if…if we still owe, then we'll be expected to do whatever we need to in order to clear the balance."

As unfair as it was, I knew that I couldn't let my parents lose everything for it all to just be in vain anyway. Yeah, they never should have gone to the O'Briens to bail them out, but since I didn't own a time machine, that was a moot point right now. They'd done the unthinkable, and Rumpelstiltskin was coming back around to collect their firstborn like he always did.

The worrisome part was not knowing why Declan O'Brien had chosen me, or why Noah Murphy had agreed to marrying me. Of course, I was just assuming that Declan had chosen me and not Noah. Noah could have easily been the one to pick me, though using Declan to make the demand since everyone knew that Declan was the head of the Irish Mob. Honestly, I had no idea, but did it even matter at this point?

A crazy plan to start stripping and hooking crossed my mind, but then it fled just as quickly. I had no idea what prostitutes charged these days, but I couldn't imagine what I'd have to do in order to amass that kind of money. If nothing else, I'd only have to let one man screw me to clear out that kind of debt. Granted, that I knew of.

Knowing that I had no choice, I said, "Fine. Let The O'Brien know that I said yes."

As my parents visibly relaxed, I was immediately filled with a resentment that wasn't healthy for any of us. So, without another word, I stood up, then left their house, wondering if I was going to be able to ever look at them the same again.