The morning rush had just begun but like every other day, the cafe was empty. There was no soul to order even during such a busy hour.
Was this truly the end?
I was wiping down the counter, my mind already drifting toward the mounting bills, and how I might have to change my phone number once again when the bell chimed.
I wiped the anxiety off my face, smiling as I said the usual "Welcome," but the word died in my throat as soon as I saw the 'customers'. Four men walked in, and the air in the room suddenly dropped. They weren't customers; they were gangsters in black suits, and their presence turned my small, bright café into a cage I needed to escape from.
I didn't wait to hear why they were there because I already knew.
I immediately turned and bolted for the back exit, but I was too slow.
My right shoulder ached with a dull, heavy heat that slowed my movement. I was eight steps from the back door when a hand clamped onto my collar and jerked me backward. I hit the floor hard, the air driven out of my lungs in a pathetic wheeze. Before I could even roll over, a fist buried itself in my ribs, and then a knee was in my back, pinning me to the tile.
I pressed my face into the floor, smelling the spilled espresso grounds and the copper tang of my own blood. My shoulder screamed, a white-hot spike of agony that made my vision swim.
'Why am I still fighting?' The thought was a bitter poison in my mind. 'I've broken my back for two years to keep this place alive, and it's still not enough. I'm drowning in a debt to a man who promised me safety and gave me ashes instead.'
I closed my eyes as the room went dead silent.
The heavy, rhythmic click of polished shoes approached. I didn't need to see him. I knew that walk even if I wished I didn't.
A pair of black leather shoes stopped inches from my eyes, polished and untouched by the mess of my life.
"I should've known," I choked out, my voice scraping against the floor as I groaned.
"I knew you'd fall," Emel, the man with the polished shoes said. His voice was calm, almost bored, as if my destruction was just another item on his itinerary. "I just didn't expect it this soon."
I jerked against the hands holding me down, a blind rage surging through me that momentarily numbed the pain in my arm. I wanted to tear those tailored trousers to shreds. I wanted to see him bleed on the floor I'd spent every night scrubbing.
"I'll kill you—" I snarled, but a fist slammed the back of my head into the tile. Stars exploded in my eyes, and my head rang with a high-pitched whine.
"Careful," Emel warned lightly as he watched his men rough me up. "You're in no position to threaten anyone. You're in debt, you have no suppliers left, no protection, and barely any customers. This place is no different from a graveyard."
Listening to his words made my blood boil but… he was right. But that was the part that infuriated me more… the fact that he was right.
Whose fault was it that this place was no different from a graveyard?
I clicked my tongue, the taste of my blood feeling like copper.
"No matter what you say, I can't give it up. My uncle died for this place!" I screamed, my voice cracking with a grief I couldn't hide.
"And it looks like you plan on doing the same," he claimed with a cold tone, and I hissed.
I looked up at him through one blurred eye. He was such a hypocrite.
Emel was looking down at me with that same cold, analytical gaze he'd used two years ago. I hated him. I hated the way he stood there, unbothered, while my world was ending again. But more than that, I hated that I still needed him.
'Is this really what I am?' I thought, my heart hammering a frantic, shameful rhythm against the tile. 'Am I really going to crawl back to the person who broke me?'
I closed my eyes for a second, seeing the fire from two years ago—the way the rafters collapsed on me while he stood by and watched. He had promised to save it. He had taken everything I had to give, and then he let it burn anyway.
I shouldn't have anything to do with him anymore... I shouldn't need him, and yet here I am once again, at his feet, needing him.
If I don't get his help, it's over.
I took a shaky breath and forced my head up, glaring at him with every ounce of spite I had left.
He looked back, with those same cold eyes, not even minding that I was glaring into his soul.
What was I to him?
The question made me click my tongue and then I entered the same route I did two years ago, the memory flashing into my mind.
*"I'll do anything," I had said, looking up to him as the only one who could help me.
"You have to be responsible for your words." He said.
It wasn't as if I had never planned to be responsible. I threw away my pride, my dignity, all of it, begging this man for his help, but what happened after that?*
I bit into my bottom lip, the taste of copper filling my tongue.
"I'll do anything," I said, looking at his expressionless face.
Was it giving up my body? My dignity? My pride? I already lost all of it two years ago, so what did I have to lose? As long as I kept the cafe, I would even jump into a burning building… it wouldn't be the first time.
The room went still. The men holding me stopped shifting and Emel's eyes sharpened, the boredom flickering into something dark and predatory.
But I wasn't going to make the same dumb mistake again.
"On contract," I added, my voice shaking but loud. "A real one. Signed and sealed. I keep the cafe if I meet your terms. No backdoor lies. No 'accidents.' And no repeats of what happened before. Just let me keep the cafe. Please"
I watched him, my chest heaving, and my body trembling. I knew I was signing my soul away to a monster. I knew he was probably hiding a knife behind this deal, waiting to twist it into my lungs and I knew that even sealed contracts could not be trusted in the underworld… But I couldn't let go of the only thing I had left.
Emel studied me for a long, agonizing moment. The amusement that had flickered in his eyes died the moment he realized I had become 'clever'.
The silence that followed was so thick I could hear the hum of the refrigerator in the back.
"You never learn," he said finally, his voice losing its ease. "But you did wisen up." he squatted, one knee on the floor and his eyes fixed on my pathetic form. "Three months. You miss one order, one condition, or try to act smart... and the shop is mine. Along with everything else."
I didn't look away. I couldn't afford to.
It felt like there was a lump on my throat, but I didn't stay quiet for long.
"Draft it," I said.
Whether it was signing my soul to the devil or signing it to this monster, there was no difference.
I have nothing left to lose in this world anyway.