Part 1 “Take her instead of me,” the cowardly father begged, trading his plus-sized daughter to settle a $3.4 million mafia debt.
“Take her instead of me,” the cowardly father begged, trading his plus-sized daughter to settle a $3.4 million mafia debt.
The corrupt billionaire was completely convinced he could use Sadie as a human shield. He was blissfully oblivious that Roman Costa, the terrifying mafia kingpin, had orchestrated this entire trap to claim her. He had no idea this monster was about to ruthlessly destroy his empire.
I always knew I was the stain on the Miller family portrait.
My father, Thomas Miller, built his entire existence on appearances. He was a prominent real estate developer in Connecticut, a man who rubbed elbows with attorney Charles Kensington and Senator Gregory Langden. He demanded perfection from everything around him: his pristine manicured lawns, his imported Italian sports cars, his rail-thin, socially climbing wife, Cynthia, and his golden-boy son, my brother Gregory.
And then there was me. Sadie.
I was fat. That was the word my mother used in hushed, embarrassed whispers at country club dinners, and the word my father shouted when he was three scotches deep.
While my brother was paraded around as the heir to the Miller empire, I was the heavy, quiet daughter kept out of the holiday cards. I spent my life shrinking my personality to compensate for the space my body took up, hiding in oversized sweaters, burying myself in accounting books and business law, trying to make myself useful since I could never be beautiful by their rigid, unforgiving standards.
But usefulness means nothing when a man’s empire is built on rot.
The collapse of my father’s company was sudden, but the signs had been there. I had seen the discrepancies in the ledgers. I knew about the failed development project in downtown Boston, a venture that had quietly hemorrhaged millions. What I didn’t know was who my father had borrowed from to keep his sinking ship afloat. I didn’t know that when the banks turned him away, he went to the wolves.
It was a torrential Tuesday night in November when the wolves came to collect.
The storm lashed against the windows of our Greenwich estate. I was in the library trying to balance the disastrous quarterly reports when the heavy oak front doors flew open. There was no polite knocking. Heavy boots echoed against the marble foyer.
I crept out into the hallway just in time to see three men in tailored dark suits walking into my father’s study.
Leading them was a man whose reputation was a ghost story whispered among the corrupt elite of the East Coast.
Roman Costa.
He was dangerously striking, radiating a cold, suffocating authority that seemed to drop the temperature in the room. He didn’t yell. He didn’t have to. The quiet menace in his dark eyes was enough to make my father—a man who usually commanded every room he entered—shrink into a pathetic, trembling shell behind his expensive mahogany desk.
I froze in the doorway, my heart hammering against my ribs, unable to look away as Roman pulled a folded document from his breast pocket and tossed it onto the desk.
“Three point four million, Thomas,” Roman said. His voice was a low rumble, smooth but laced with lethal intent. “The grace period expired at midnight. I am not a bank. I do not offer extensions.”
My father’s face drained of color. He stammered, hands shaking as he gripped the edge of his desk.
“Roman, please. The Langden deal is going to close next month. I just need thirty days. I can give you the cars, the boat—”
“I don’t want your toys,” Roman interrupted, stepping closer. The two associates behind him shifted, hands resting casually inside their jackets. “You leveraged your life for my money, Thomas. I am here to collect.”
Panic, raw and unfiltered, twisted my father’s features. He looked around the room frantically, like a cornered rat looking for a grate to slip through.
Then his frantic eyes landed on me, standing paralyzed in the doorway.
I saw the exact moment his paternal instinct—whatever little existed—evaporated, replaced entirely by cowardice.
“Take her,” my father blurted out, pointing a trembling finger at me.
