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I take a careful breath, mentally grasping for the right words. “How much did he owe you?”
“The initial amount he borrowed was half a million dollars. You can’t get that kind of loan from a traditional bank when you’re a felon with no credit history, so naturally, he came to me. I’m a fair man, so I gave him a fair rate to make his dreams come true,” Savva explains.
My stomach sinks. “I don’t have that kind of money,” I say, feeling tears just behind my eyes.
Please, Oakley, don’t cry now. Don’t let this horrible man win.
“I’m not asking for the lump sum, but I will be happy to take it if you sell the bar. Angus still owed about $200,000 out of the half million when he died, so that’s about…” He narrows his eyes and counts the numbers in his head. “A hundred more weeks of payments, or about two years to pay down the principal. I expect an extra year of payments to go to interest, so three years in total.”
“Three years,” I repeat after him, genuinely considering what that would mean for my future. I was in school longer than that, and then I would just own the bar and could do anything I wanted.
Of course, I thought I already did own it. Why should I just take Savva’s word that he’ll leave me alone after I’m done making the payments? How do I know there were supposed to be any payments in the first place?
“I don’t expect you to make a decision today, but you will need to come up with an answer by next Friday. Payments are made weekly,” Savva says, finally backing away from my chair and crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Think it over.”
“How much are the payments?” I ask. I can barely concentrate on getting my words out without jumbling them into a nonsensical mess, much less do the math required to figure out what his numbers come out to.
“Two-thousand dollars a week, paid on Friday. Pasha, the one I came with, collects from a few places around town. I, however, usually handled Angus, so I will be in charge of collecting from you. Don’t give money to anyone else, especially not the Triple Six Angels.”
“Who are they?” I ask, but I hardly want to hear the answer.
He wrinkles his nose. “Pests.”
I straighten up in my chair. “Well, don’t expect me to come up with the money so quickly. I just started running this place, and I’m still getting the hang of it.”
He smirks, shifting his weight and leaning against the desk. “I can tell, but that doesn’t change what you’ll owe me. If you don’t pay, bad things start happening.”
“Like what?”
“Like I burn this fucking place to the ground with you inside of it,” he says, jumping back into an aggressive stance.
I put my hands up defensively. “Alright, I was just asking. I don’t think there’s any sense in making a big deal out of this. If Angus owed money on the bar, I suppose it’s my responsibility to pay it,” I reply, trying to satiate him before he starts getting wild again.
It works, and I notice his pupils shrink a bit. “Don’t try anything funny, like going to the police, either. They don’t operate around here, and they won’t come to help you if you need it. The Triple Six Angels are the closest things to cops out here in the sense that they’ll pull you over and rob you blind the first chance they get.”
“It sounds like you’re trying to scare me,” I reply incredulously.
He shakes his head. “Just a warning. I’d hate to see what kind of trouble an innocent girl like you could get into in a depraved town like this. I suggest you buy yourself a gun, at the very least. A shotgun would probably equal the playing field nicely.”
I’m tempted to ask how he thinks he’d be able to collect money from me if I had a shotgun pointed at his gut, but I decide to keep my mouth shut. It’s better to say less with Savva. I’ve already discovered that he enjoys twisting my words and overreacting to whatever he thinks I’ve said.
“I will keep that in mind,” I say.
“Right,” he replies, rubbing the stubble on his cleft chin as he turns to the door. “Then I will let you get back to business at the bar all by yourself. You really should have someone else out there, unless you’re determined to distract your customers from the slow service by flashing those pretty little panties every time you bend over. Don’t think I don’t know how you make your money here.”
“I’m not that easy,” I reply quickly, unwilling to let him get the last word in before he leaves.
He laughs, crow’s feet appearing in the corners of his eyes. “We’ll see about that.”
We’ll see about that?The only thing that motherfucker will be seeing is the barrel of a shotgun if he tries anything with me.
I wait several long minutes before I get out of the chair and head back to the bar. My legs are wobbly, but eventually, I’m able to return to work.
As I start taking orders again, nobody looks me in the eyes, and nobody mentions Savva. An overwhelming feeling of loneliness enters me, and for the first time since landing in Nevada, I want to go home.
7
Savva
