He Bought My Father's Debt, So Now He Owns Me novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Ledger

"It was in your bag," Cal said. "On the closet floor, under a coat. My assistant checked it on my word, last night, while you slept."

"You had my things searched," I said.

"I had your books checked. You keep a ledger that isn't the dock's."

I stood on the porch in his shirt with the morning cold on my bare legs.

"Give it to me."

"Forty-one names," he said. "Forty-one addresses, with monthly figures. Four hundred. Six hundred. Nine hundred in one place. Thirteen years of them, drawn from a line the dock books call the shipping account."

His voice was level, but only just.

"What is it?" he said.

"It's mine," I said.

"It's your father's money," he said.

"It's the dock's money, and I ran the dock's books, and I decided where it went." I held out my hand. "Give it to me, Mr. Reese."

He didn't.

He opened it as you'd open a file, and read me the first page.

"A widow in Pascagoula, five hundred a month. Her brother, deckhand, nineteen to thirty-one on the Miss Beverly, dead of a lung infection no doctor would sign for. A man in Biloxi, four hundred a month. Eleven years on the boats. Left hand gone at the wrist."

He looked up.

"These are his men."

"They're not his men," I said.

"These are the people he used," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"And you pay them."

I gave him the only answer I had.

"Yes."

It came out of me raw and fast.

"I found out what the houses were when I was fourteen," I said. "I found the bunkhouse book in the office safe, with the names written in it like livestock. I went to my father, and he said it was how the industry worked. I said it was not how I would work."

I swallowed.

"I couldn't stop him. I could take a hundred dollars a month out of the shipping line and mail it to a widow in Pascagoula with no return address. So I did. When I turned nineteen and he gave me the books, I took more."

"You expect me to believe that," he said.

"I expect nothing from you," I said. "I'm telling you what it is."

"A Guidry," said Cal Reese, very softly, "who has spent thirteen years atoning for her father. A girl who sends money to the men he worked into the ground, so she can sleep."

"It's not to sleep," I said.

"What is it for, then?"

"It's because it's theirs!"

I was shouting now, and I didn't care that the water carried it across the cove.

"It was theirs and my father took it, and I was the one with the key to the box. I'm two payments behind because the dock is dying. I've been taking from my own mother's account to cover the gap. I haven't slept a whole night since I was fifteen. Don't tell me what it's for."

He closed the ledger.

He stood with it in both hands, breathing.

"You could have gone to a sheriff," he said.

"With what? A bunkhouse book my daddy would have burned by dinner? He's had a county commissioner at his Christmas party every year for thirty years."

I stopped, because he had gone very still.

"Which commissioner?" he said.

"Why?" I said.

"Which one, Jo?"

I stared at him.

"All of them," I said. "It's Mobile County. Come on."

← Chapter 5 · All chapters · Chapter 7 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend