Escape Planners [on hold]

Chapter-3

Aura Finley

Sasha being true to her words had transferred the said amount to my account once she had reached the safe place. I kept glancing at my phone at the figures in my account; it wasn't much. Even though I had a job, yet, saving while living in an expensive city like San Francisco is a difficult task. After paying all of my bills, and saving a portion of it to pay my debt, I was usually left with just a little. Even with it, I never forgot to save $10 every week to donate to a foundation that supported children traumatized by abuse, neglect, and violence. The amount may not seem like much, but as we know every penny counts if it's given for a good cause, I was satisfied with myself for being a part of it.

My debt. I sighed thinking about that.

I had to pay back the debt I took to complete study in college. It wouldn't have been a problem for me to pay back my thirty-five thousand dollars debt if I had taken it from a legal source.

My foolishness took me to a hungry shark, a scammer who landed money without doing any hefty and tiresome paperwork. His specialty was to keep the track of his debtors; he would kill to get his money back. I should have taken a loan from a legal source, a bank perhaps, but a few of my classmates glorified the idea of going to him since it'd be easy to get the loan at a low-interest rate. And me being naive and under peer pressure, went with them.

The main issue was that my original debt was thirty thousand dollars, including interest, but that wicked scammer added the extra interest of five thousand dollars for nothing. And I only had six months left to pay the entire amount. I couldn't even complain about him since I had no proof of taking a loan from him.

I had already paid fifteen thousand dollars by working my ass off, and by cutting my needs, still, I had a lot to pay.

Sometimes— no every time, I cursed myself for being foolish enough to get gripped in such a situation for a degree that didn't excite me. A college degree that provided me with a boring nine-to-five job which I didn't enjoy at all. Just what had I done to my life?

Now, I stood in front of the wicked scammer, Ben, who looked at me with his nasty gaze while showing his filthy yellow teeth. My gaze flicked from him to his guards standing behind him, glaring at me as if I had taken debt from them and not his boss.

"I thought I'd have to send my boys to bring you to me," Ben spoke and I swear I held the urge to punch his face when I sensed the hidden meaning behind his sentence. Geezer.

Clearly showing that son of a bitch how disgusting twerp he was, I handed him an envelope. "Two thousand dollars. I'll pay more next time."

He quickly snatched the envelope out of hand and tearing off it he took out the cash to count it. Once satisfied with having the amount I had said, he tossed my hard-earned money on his desk as if it was just a bunch of plain papers. Couldn't he have shown a bit of courtesy towards money?

He leaned forward on the desk by supporting himself on his forearms, his neck almost getting invisible as his shoulders raised slightly, his broad-forehead, round face protruding out. I held my laughter in my throat just not to crack up at this dirty, slimy, squishy frog.

"Just how many more next times do you want me to give you? State it clearly so that I don't have to keep my men after you. You know, you can be a bit handy."

No later when these words left his mouth, my eyes flicked to his men—only if these filthy, poor excuse for humans are allowed to be called men, standing at his back eyeing me as if I were on sale in a cheap market. What they didn't know was that I wasn't an easy prey to catch.

I switched my gaze back to the now smirking scammer. "You know I always pay on time. May it be a little, but I pay. You don't have to keep your men after me." I let out firmly, giving him an impression that I wasn't terrified of his awful ways.