Sell her restoration brushes. Cancel her internet. Work every Sunday closing shift. Live on rice and noodles.
Eight hundred dollars. That was the number his cold, controlled voice had given her on the phone.
Eight hundred dollars was nearly a month of her rent.
“I take full responsibility,” she had told him. “I will pay every dollar.”
He hadn’t sounded angry. Somehow, that frightened her more.
Now, in the café, she slid the yellow envelope across the table toward him.
“Fifty dollars every two weeks,” she said, her voice cracking. “For eight months. I won’t miss a single payment. I promise.”
Nikolai picked up the envelope. He didn’t open it.
He just held it between his fingers, studying her face.
“Eight hundred dollars,” he said slowly. “That’s what you think you owe me.”
Lena frowned. “That’s what you said it would cost.”
“And you’re willing to work eight months to pay a stranger for a scratch you could have driven away from?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “It was my fault. That doesn’t change.”
He leaned back, his eyes never leaving hers.
“Most people would have negotiated. Or blamed the parking space. Or told me to file an insurance claim.”
“I wrote the note,” she said softly. “I meant it.”
The café felt too quiet. Too still.
Then Nikolai looked down at the envelope in his hand and said the one thing she never expected to hear.
“What if I told you the repair only cost two hundred dollars?”
Lena froze.
Her breath caught.
“What?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer. He just watched her, waiting to see what she would do now that she knew he had lied to her.
Why would a man powerful enough to reshape laws test a broke student over a scratch that meant nothing to him?
And what did he really want from her?
👇
His thumb pressed into the edge of the yellow envelope until the paper buckled.
Lena’s hands had dropped to her lap, clenched so tight her knuckles had gone white.
“You lied to me,” she said. Her voice was not loud. It was smaller than that, cracked down the middle. “On the phone. You said eight hundred.”
“I did,” Nikolai said.
