# Chapter 2

Safe to say, Phoenix shunned any invites to people's homes. Back in the day when she was a highschooler and even a freshman all through grad in college, she didn't go to anyone's home. Houses were intimate, she believed.

So to be standing here, in an eerie environment near a cold looking man with a scar that ran through his cheekbone to his neck definitely didn't feel like her.

“You've been expecting me…” she repeated after him. Her eyes did all the work, observing the brooding man and wanting to see if he had a dagger underneath his blackness, wanting to see if he would harm her in any way so she could run away immediately.

“Noah said you'd be here soon enough…” his tongue ticked against his teeth. “if I managed to break a bone or two.”

She remembered Noah's aching ribs instantly, she breathed in, allowing it to wash over the overwhelming feeling of anxiety and worry gushing over her.

“You want me to marry your son.” Phoenix slightly widened her eyes, shocked at her sudden bluntness.

It was stupid; she thought, this is how stupid girls get killed in those real crime series, by saying something blunt yet stupid.

“Precisely Phoenix..” she watched as he undoes the button of his sleeves. His eyes never leaving her. “Marry my son, and no one gets hurt.”

“And if I could pay you back?” She bit the corner of her lip, her palms rubbed a little too fast against one another. The man in front of her tilted his head to the side and let out a chuckle.

His outburst of amusement slightly echoed through the room. “You have a month.”

Phoenix strained her ear subconsciously, needless to say, she could not comprehend what he had said. “But…” her lips closed shut when met with the darkening gaze of the man a few steps away from her.

And as Phoenix left the gates of her demise and got into her car, deep down she already knew it was impossible to pay off her brother's debt in a month. So she would have to mentally prepare herself for the worst that could happen.

***

“What do you think they do in there?”

Phoenix sighed. Her eyes rolled back in a way that her brown iris was sucked back. For a while, she'd been sitting in the waiting room, sighing at her friend; Charlie Ninn.

Her black hair was pulled in a high ponytail and single braided so as she whipped her head from side to side, observing the halls of Santa Barbara's Local Hospital like she'd never seen it before, Phoenix silently begged for the braided weapon not to hit her face.

“They provide emotional support, pain management techniques and guidance during this intense and transformative process of childbirth.” Phoenix answered her friend.

On a normal day, Phoenix loved Charlie. They had met senior year in high school with Phoenix moving in from New York and Charlie had given her the cold shoulder.

Upright and seemingly perfect, Charlie was no match for Phoenix academically and after the forced proximity of tutoring, they walked into the hallways of Santa Barbara High hand in hand.

Charlie looked at Phoenix with a low animalistic scoff. “I know that of course, I'm just asking if Aubrey is cheering everyone she sees before meeting us.”

“You know Aubrey.” Phoenix groaned.

Phoenix and Charlie's head snapped right at the high pitched overly excited voice.

“What about Aubrey?”

She stood there with her tossed lab coat in her arms. Dressed casually in her knitted vintage dress and black boots, it highlighted her ginger hair and her ginger freckles.

Aubrey; the chatter ginger.

“Hold on a sec, let me sign out.” She said quickly, rushing to hang her coat and scrabble something on the huge book before turning to her friends. “Let's go.”

Phoenix needed this.

The cool Santa Barbara breeze with iced mojito under the scorching sun of the outside diner of Reef Royalè.

And her two best friends; Charlie Ninn and Aubrey Adams.

“Nix..” Aubrey swirled her strawberry shake with the straw. “you wound me.” Phoenix, already knowing what it was about, hummed agonizingly under her breath, feeling the need to defend herself.

“It's the exams and…”

“It doesn't count.” Aubrey countered. “Even though we were in college, we had time for each other…”

“Charlie..” Phoenix nudged at her black haired friend who watched Aubrey in utter amusement. “Help me out here.”

Aubrey still went on. “Charlie, I understand but you Phoenix..”

“Hey..” Charlie whined, a smirk on her lips as she dropped her black coffee on the table. “Keep me out of this okay..” she turned to Phoenix. “We're attacking Nix, not me.”

Phoenix threw her head back in laughter. It just never seemed to be dull with Charlie and Aubrey. They made her worries vanish and time seemed to stop with them.

“So..” Charlie grabbed her black coffee, dragging the straw to her mouth. Her lips closed around it and she closed her eyes as she sipped the coffee.

Her voice turned grounding as she dropped the coffee on the table. “What have you two shawshanks been up to?”

“Um..” Started Aubrey. “Mike and I have taken our relationship to the next level and work's gotten much easier.”

“What do you mean next level?” Charlie sat upright in her chair.

“We're living together.” Said Aubrey. Getting shocked looks from her friends, she quickly added. “No sex. I promise you guys. Seriously, no sex for reals, have you seen what people go through to birth a child?”

Phoenix would love to see that. Aubrey was a midwife in the local hospital and she'd been working for five years. Time to time, she does ask her to record a video but Aubrey”always forgets”.

Phoenix tore away from her thoughts to find her friends staring at her, wanting to hear what she had to say.

“Nothing much.” Phoenix's heart raced when she thought about the Salvadors and the brooding choice she had to make. If she tells her friends or not, it all bothers her.

She took a silent breath in and then out. “The forensics exams are in a week and it feels like my life has been turned upside-down.”

Charlie grinned. “It's Noah, isn't it?”

Phoenix huffed, shaking her head. No matter how much she wanted to express herself, she had to keep silent for their well-being. Noah said the Salvadors were dangerous, dangerous enough to wipe out the existence of a living being from the earth.

So Phoenix grinned back, fakely. “Whatever Charlie. What's up with you? Out of town again?”

“Naur…” dragged Charlie in her attempt of an Australian accent. “More like taking a break from the gigs and stuff…”

Aubrey and Phoenix watched their friend Charlie as she was not one to speak about her bothersome all too well.

Charlie heaved in, her shoulders slightly dragging upwards. “I mean..” her shoulders relaxed as she let out her breath. “It would be nice to actually make some progress.”

“What progress?” Aubrey asked. Her hands took to underneath her chin, supporting her head. “I thought you had gigs.”

“Yeah..” Phoenix softened her voice, a look of worry began to work up her face, wanting to hear from her friend. “I mean…isn't that why you've been in and out of town for three years?”

“Honestly,” sighed Charlie. “Let's talk about something else huh?” Her head crooked to the side. “I am not going…”

Abruptly, the -sorry- Phoenix said under her breath cut Charlie off. Her friends watched as she stood from the chair, handling her phone with care as she pulled it to her ear.

They watched as her once softened facial expression turned to one of panic. And in an attempt to figure out what happened, Phoenix gave a fake smile here and there while her feet shuffled her out of their presence.

***

Phoenix slammed the door of her car a bit too harshly. Her hastening feet drawing awfully close to these black gates she did not think she would see anytime soon.

Under the furious pouring of the rain and the bone wrenching sound of the thunder, Phoenix shook the gate with every emotion rushing through her.

Anger, rage, frustration.

The gates opened and Phoenix wasted no time as she ran towards the dark manor. And as soon as she found her way to the entrance, he was there already, waiting for her.

“Welcome Miss Saur. It is a most refreshing day.” He said, grinning warmly in his thick Italian accent.

She stood in front of him, completely drenched and feeling utterly vulnerable. “I understand Noah's judgment that you passed upon him. Even then, you went too far as you almost killed him. But..” She stepped closer to him, her eyes darkening. “Why go after my mother and father?”

Edd Salvador; the patriarch of the Salvadors never had his authority and actions questioned. Not in the thirty three years that he had served as the head of the Salvadors.

Edd Salvador maintained his posture, anger rising through him. “Careful” He says to Phoenix with a darkening gaze. “I can be very persuasive with my friends around the world.”

He watched her in the rain. Her once fiery gaze turned soft, weak. He didn't care, all he wanted was all he was going to get. “You really think I wouldn't find out where your parents live?”

“I'll be your son's wife!” She yelled, mostly for herself so she would be convinced she actually said it. “So please…leave everyone around me alone. If I am to marry your son, surely we can come to some sort of agreement.” She was planning, of course, that her friends and her family would not suffer. That Edd would leave them alone, that after Noah heals, he wouldn't work for them anymore.

Edd smiled. His dark demeanor intensified as he kept on smiling. It wasn't a normal smile, Phoenix thought. It was a smile for killers, the one she'd seen thousands of times in real crime series.

Phoenix wished she knew what he was thinking about. She wished everything was a dream and that she would wake up the next day drenched in her own sweat in her bed. She wouldn't even mind if the sweat was in her book and tore the book, she really wouldn't mind. But she was about to give up on her happily ever after because of her brother's carelessness. And to someone she had never seen before.

Who knows what his son would be like. If Edd was this way, wouldn't that mean his son would be spoiled, entitled, unkind and one of those guys she'd sworn she would never even give a chance to. And now, she was about to be married to one.

And at that moment, she was completely drenched under the rain. But the next day, she sat in her room with gray walls that filled her consciousness with sorrow, unpacking her bags and filling the room with all memories of home.

If at all she didn't feel comfortable here, she could leave. But then everyone around her would be really suffering. Deep down, a part of her blamed Noah. She forgave him of course but…even he couldn't outdo the sacrifice she just made.