Wiped Clean

1. The deal

If Caia had a choice, she would leave Dan behind and never look back. His presence in her life had been nothing but chaotic from the very moment she had called him asking for his help. She should have known better, but he was a quick fix to an insurmountable problem. One that had overwhelmed her until she had remembered the deadbeat from high school who would most certainly have the funds she needed. Getting tied up in his world was a risk, but it was a risk she had been willing to take.

It hadn't taken much to convince him to loan her the money she needed for her little sister's surgery. But now, thirty thousand down, she knew her life wasn't her own anymore. Knew that now, after six months of being entangled with him, he owned her. It was a necessary sacrifice. It had been her only option. What she hadn't planned on was going so deep she no longer recognised herself.

Six months seemed like a lifetime ago. He had been there with her the moment she received the call that Gemma's heart had stopped beating during surgery. The surgery he had paid for. She would have waited months in the public system. Too long. But open heart surgery wasn't without risks, as the doctors had warned them.

For twenty minutes they had worked on her. They got her back. Most of her, at least. Her body, but not her brain.

Her mother didn't question where the money had come from. She must have known it was too big a sum for Caia to have borrowed from a bank so quickly, and far too much to have been from her savings, but she turned a blind eye and took the money anyway.

Dan had been there to pay for the surgery, and had been there during those weeks Gemma was in the intensive care unit. And he had been there, in her bed, the night she received the call that Gemma would never wake up. That her brain had sustained too much damage.

She would never forget the sight of her six year old sister laying there in that bed, looking so small, so vulnerable. So broken. Caia hadn't cried. Not when her mother was breaking down right in front of her. Not when her stepfather had left her there to grieve on her own. It was too much for him, he had said, to watch his own child die. To be the one who gave the consent for them to cease treatment. So he left them there.

At least he had taken care of Theo, the youngest of Caia's half sisters. Theo, who at three years of age was barely old enough to understand what was happening, and certainly not old enough to understand the permanence of death.

It had broken Caia when Theo had asked when Gemma would come back. It had taken two weeks for her to break, but when she had, it had been immense.

And Dan, for all his failings, was there for her. If only she had seen through him at the time. When he had been all too eager to offer up something to help her sleep, then something to help her feel numb. What was another couple of hundred dollars on top of an already unpayable sum? She should have realised his motives.

It had been so, so easy to become addicted to the benzodiazepines he sold her. Easier still to branch out into heavier pills; opioids to numb her, amphetamines to pick her up again. She should have realised then and there what his priority was. He didn't care what wounds the drugs healed, as long as she was paying for them.

For two months she had funnelled most of her income into his bank account to fund her new habit. Then everything changed. Her life fell apart, and she had to resort to other ways to fund her addiction. He had told her many times that he had wanted to be with her. So when he offered her drugs in exchange for sex, she took it.

But even now, with Dan standing in her living room, Caia didn't regret it. Because if she hadn't paid for the surgery, if she hadn't given Gemma that chance, she would have died anyway, and Caia would be left wondering what if. But she loathed him for it. Hated him for letting her spiral in the way she had. Resented him for everything she had lost.

"You want me to do what?" she asked him.

"Look, it won't be for long. Two weeks, tops."

The only times she saw him was when he wanted something. Or when she needed drugs. Usually both occurred at the same time. He'd give her what she needed, and she'd give him what he wanted in exchange. The old Caia would have balked at the thought of regularly having sex with a man she barely liked. She hardly even liked men, tolerating them at best for the convenient physical comfort they could offer. He had been there in a moment of need, and she had clung to him as the only living, breathing person in proximity.

Now he had the audacity to show up at her door, asking this of her.

"What the hell did you get messed up in, Dan?"

"Look, Cai. You're not the only one with debts to settle, okay?" He hadn't stopped pacing the living room floor from the moment he'd arrived. "I thought it would be an easy win. I'm good at poker... I thought I'd at least break even."

"How much do you owe?"

"Fifty."

"Fifty thousand dollars?" Caia shrieked. "How the hell did you lose fifty grand in one night?"

"It doesn't matter." He ran a nervous hand through his hair. His fidgeting had her on edge. "She's expecting me at 2pm, and if I show up empty handed..."

"Who is she?"

"Annika Freeman. She runs Luxe, a club on—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know the one. But who is she, Dan? What kind of mess have you gotten caught up in?"

"She's dangerous, Cai. Her people are dangerous. She doesn't just run a club. It's a front for a whole bunch of other shit."

"She's your supplier, isn't she?"

"Yeah, but I never deal with her, usually just the ones below her. And If I don't give her something, she'll make me disappear. She's done it before, Cai."

For a single moment, Caia wondered if that would be best. If Dan disappeared, so too would her debt. "You seriously think I'll agree to help you with this?"

"You have to." He stopped moving, stopped fidgeting, and looked her in the eye. "Because everything I've given you can be taken away. You already lost Gemma, it would be a shame for something to happen to Theo as well."

Caia shook her head in disbelief. "You're a bastard."

"Go pack a bag," he said, gesturing toward the bedroom. "Grab whatever you need for a month."

"A month? You told me two weeks."

"Just in case."

"You're a piece of shit." She closed the gap between them. "You wouldn't seriously hurt a kid, would you?"

"I know where they live. Theo, your mum, your step-dad. I know—"

"Okay," Caia said. Her chest tightened at the thought of anyone harming her sister. "I'll do it."

She rushed around her apartment, packing anything she thought she might need for the next few weeks. Bile rose from her gut to the back of her throat. A couple of weeks, she reminded herself. It would be a couple of weeks, and then she could go back to her miserable life. Her family would be safe. She could do it. She could survive. It wasn't as though there would be anyone to miss her anyway. She had lost everything, even her family. She had turned up at their house high one too many times, and when her mother found out she was stealing money from her, that had been it. It didn't matter how much money she had given them for Gemma's surgery. None of that mattered now that she was dead.

So she packed her things, and went with Dan, knowing her life wasn't even her own anymore, and not caring one bit.