“Marry me and bear me a son,” Bryan said.
Angeline stared at him, certain she had misheard.
A man who looked considerably older than her had just proposed marriage as casually as if he were offering her another temporary job. The anger she had been holding back surged to the surface. At last, she understood why he had stopped her from leaving.
He had not been worried about her health. He had been waiting for an opportunity to make an indecent proposal.
“You’re insane,” Angeline muttered.
She turned and stormed toward the door.
“No matter how much you need, I’ll pay you,” Bryan called after her. “When the contract ends, I’ll give you a house, a car, or even a store.”
Angeline stopped for half a second.
The offers were tempting—more tempting than she wanted to admit. But accepting them would make her feel as though she had sold herself. She refused to let a desperate situation strip her of her dignity.
Without looking back, she continued walking and slammed the door behind her.
Bryan remained where he was.
“Hah…” He rubbed his face. “What did I just say?”
It was as though he had only now realized how outrageous his proposal sounded. Yet there was no regret in his expression. His face soon returned to its usual cold composure, and he went upstairs to rest.
Outside, Angeline walked toward the nearest public-transport stop, her anger slowly giving way to frustration and sadness.
She could not believe she had met a man who looked so respectable yet had made such a strange and inappropriate offer. Even though she desperately needed money, she was not willing to sell herself to survive.
Tears gathered in her eyes as she cursed her terrible luck. Why did every problem in her life have to arrive at once?
Before she could wipe her tears away, her phone rang.
“Hello, is this Angeline?” a man asked.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“We’re calling from the police station. Are you Michael Bastian’s sister?”
“The police?” Angeline’s voice tightened. “Yes, I’m Michael’s sister. What happened to my brother?”
The officer explained what had happened.
Angeline’s face drained of color. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she ended the call and hurriedly waved down a passing taxi.
“Please take me to the police station,” she said, struggling to keep her voice steady.
Her head had begun to ache, and the weight pressing against her chest felt almost unbearable.
The problems never stopped coming.
Michael, her only sibling, was still in the eleventh grade. Yet he was now being held at a police station after allegedly becoming involved in a drug-related case. Angeline could not believe it. She had never imagined that her brother could be connected to anything like this.
When she arrived, an officer told her that Michael had tested positive for illegal drugs and would be detained. Angeline immediately asked to see him.
“Sis Angeline!” Michael rushed toward the bars, tears in his eyes. “Please help me! Get me out of here. I didn’t know what they gave me was illegal. They set me up! I don’t want to go to jail!”
Angeline gripped the bars and fought back her tears.
She knew Michael was telling the truth. He had been working after school, collecting recyclables to help earn money. How could he have ended up here?
“Officer, I know my brother was there, but he was framed,” she pleaded. “You heard him. He didn’t know what he was given contained drugs. Please, let him go.”
“I’m sorry,” the officer replied without sympathy. “We have to follow procedure. Your brother was caught with drug dealers and users.”
“Isn’t there anything I can do?”
Before the officer could answer, a sharply dressed man entered the station. He walked straight to one of the plainclothes officers and spoke to him in a low voice. Then he handed over a briefcase.
The officer opened it.
His expression changed immediately.
Minutes later, the man who had been arrested alongside Michael was released without charge. Angeline and Michael watched in disbelief.
“Alex, let me out too!” Michael shouted. “You never told me those were illegal drugs!”
He reached for Alex’s arm, but Alex shoved him away and kicked him before walking out of the station.
Angeline turned on the officer who had accepted the briefcase.
“How can you release the man who framed my brother while keeping my brother here?”
The officer gave her a cold look.
“If you want your brother released without charges, bring us fifty million.” He paused, then smirked. “Actually, it’s been more than three hours, and it’s a new day now. Make that one hundred million. If another day passes, add fifty million more. You can keep doing the math until the prosecutor takes him to court.”
He turned and walked away.
Angeline tried to stop him, but he shoved her aside. She stumbled and looked desperately toward the other officers. None of them moved. They behaved as though she and her brother were invisible.
Behind the bars, Michael sobbed and begged to be released.
Angeline stood helplessly in the middle of the station, feeling as though the last thread holding her life together had finally snapped.
The next morning, she began searching for every job she could find. She worked throughout the day and handed over every cent she earned, but the money was nowhere near enough to secure Michael’s release.
Three days passed.
By then, Angeline had managed to save only five million. She sat beside the road, eating a piece of bread and drinking mineral water while her phone displayed another list of unanswered job offers.
“If this is all I can earn in one day, when will I ever collect enough?” she whispered. “How many hundreds of millions will they demand tomorrow? What am I supposed to do?”
A familiar-looking car passed in front of her.
Angeline lifted her head. It resembled Bryan’s car. For a moment, she wondered whether he might be inside. The vehicle stopped outside an expensive restaurant, and a man stepped out.
It was not Bryan.
Angeline felt an unexpected flicker of disappointment, then immediately shook it away. She would not allow herself to be tempted by his offer.
“I need to work harder,” she told herself. “I can do this.”
She picked up her phone and began searching again.
Then it rang.
The call came from the hospital where her mother was being treated.
Angeline answered in surprise. The moment she heard the nurse’s urgent voice, she hailed another taxi and rushed to the hospital.
She found her mother’s doctor outside the ward.
“Doctor, what happened to my mother?” Angeline asked, her face pale and her breathing uneven.
The doctor’s expression was grave.
“Your mother suddenly vomited blood. We ran several tests, and her condition is extremely unstable. Her kidneys are failing. She needs surgery as soon as possible.”
Angeline stared at him, unable to process the words.
She was already struggling to find enough money to free her younger brother. Now her mother needed an expensive, emergency operation as well.
How many more disasters could one person endure?
Her thoughts scattered. She wanted to scream, to blame someone, to demand an explanation for why her family had been forced into this nightmare. But she knew none of it would change anything.
That evening, Angeline stood on an overpass above a nearly empty road. Large vehicles rushed beneath her, their headlights cutting through the darkness.
She rested both hands on the railing and stared down at the traffic more than ten meters below.
The burden of her life had never grown lighter. Every time she managed to solve one problem, another appeared before she could catch her breath. Her brother was in custody. Her mother needed surgery. The money she had saved would not be enough for either of them.
For the first time, she could no longer see a way forward.
Her eyes were empty as she looked over the edge.
Would death end everything?
Could she finally be at peace if she died?