Chapter 346: She’s Got the Money

The door gave way.

Aaron scrambled up half-drunk and panicked, already turning toward the back of the Airbnb like there was somewhere left to run. He never made it a full step.

A boot caught him hard in the side and slammed him back to the floor. The impact knocked the air out of him. Before he could roll away, another kick landed, then another, forcing him flat against the cheap carpet.

"Bastard," one of them spat. "You think you can play us?"

A fist cracked across his face.

"Where the fuck is our money?"

Aaron tried to answer and only got another punch for it. The room filled with the ugly rhythm of it ~ boots, knuckles, the wet sound of a man being worked over by people who had already decided he deserved it. There were seven of them. One debtor. No balance in the room at all.

"Don’t you hear me?" another voice barked. "Where the fuck is our money?"

Aaron was on the floor crying out, arms half-raised, body curling in on itself as the hits kept coming. Pain stacked on pain until even the alcohol could not blur it.

Then the leader raised a hand.

The beating slowed.

He bent down, picked up an open beer bottle from the floor, took a short drink, and then tipped the rest over Aaron’s head. Warm liquid ran down Aaron’s face, into his collar, over the fresh blood already spreading there.

"Sit him up."

They dragged him off the floor like dead weight, hauled him from the bedroom into the sitting room, and forced him onto a chair. His head lolled once before someone yanked him upright by the hair. By then his face was a mess. Blood ran from his mouth and nose. His left eye was already swelling shut. Beer and sweat soaked his shirt.

The boss sat across from him.

Close. Unhurried. Looking at him the way a man looks at a problem he is tired of carrying.

"How much do you have?"

Aaron only breathed hard, eyes unfocused.

The boss’s expression did not change. He turned the pistol in his hand and cracked the side of it across Aaron’s face hard enough to snap his head sideways.

"I said how much do you fucking have?"

Aaron broke.

"I don’t have anything!" The words tore out of him high and panicked. "I don’t have anything! I don’t have anything!"

The room went quieter.

That was not the answer they wanted.

The boss leaned back slightly, studying him. A partial payment might have bought time. Sixty. Seventy. Even a serious fraction of the hundred thousand could have kept Aaron breathing long enough to scramble for the rest. But "nothing" was different. "Nothing" meant the man in the chair was no longer useful on his own.

Aaron saw the shift too late.

The way the boss leaned back. The way the room went colder. The way "nothing" had just rewritten his value in front of seven men who did not come here to negotiate.

He scrambled.

"Rechelle," he said quickly, blood thick in his mouth. "She’s got the money. All of it. My money. Locked up with her. And the man protecting her ~ he’s in it too. Both of them. You get to them, you’re not collecting a debt anymore. You’re rich."

The boss didn’t interrupt.

He just watched Aaron talk, eyes steady, letting the panic spill out until the shape of the offer became clear.

Then he spoke, slow and flat.

"You said she’s with your money."

"Yes."

"How much?"

Aaron didn’t even try to dress it up. Shame had already left the room with his last excuse.

"Millions."

The word hit harder than the pistol slap.

For a second, nobody moved. One of the men near the broken door shifted his weight. Another glanced at the boss, then back at Aaron, like he needed confirmation he had heard it right. The cheap Airbnb air suddenly felt tighter, charged with a different kind of hunger.

Seven men looked at one another in the short silence that followed.

Not pity.

Not disbelief.

Interest.

Back at Rechelle’s mansion, breakfast was already over.

Lucas leaned back against the headboard, still in nothing but his boxers, completely unbothered by it. Rechelle kept stealing short glances and then looking away like the sight itself was a problem. After a moment she cleared her throat and stood up.

"Come with me," she said. "You can’t keep walking around like that. I’ll find you something from... his things."

The pause before "his" was small, but not empty.

Lucas followed her down the hallway. When she opened the door to the spare room, the first thing that hit him was how lived-in it still felt. The bed was made too carefully. A few shirts still hung in the closet. A watch sat on the dresser like someone might come back for it at any moment. The air had that stale, abandoned-male-room quality ~ old cologne mixed with dust and the quiet proof of a man who had once claimed the space and then lost it.

Rechelle stood in the doorway for a second longer than necessary.

"I threw him out with nothing," she said, voice flat in a way that tried to sound casual and failed a little. "No bag. No dignity. Not even a single pin. Just out. Then I filed a restraining order so he couldn’t come near me again."

There was no triumph in the way she said it. Mostly leftover bitterness, and a thin edge of satisfaction she didn’t fully hide.

Lucas stepped inside and started looking through the clothes. Most of it was too formal, too tight, or simply not his style. After a moment he pulled out a pair of trousers that looked close enough and held them up.

"These might work."

He changed without ceremony. When he turned back, the fit was clean enough to make the original owner look worse by comparison. Rechelle’s eyes moved over him once before she caught herself and looked away, ears warming.

"They suit you better," she muttered.

Lucas almost smiled at that, then his expression shifted into something more practical.

"Do you have a picture of him?"

Rechelle blinked. "My ex?"

"Yes."

She hesitated, reading the change in his tone. This was no longer about borrowed clothes or morning awkwardness. Lucas was already moving ahead of the conversation, already thinking in terms of action before the next problem arrived at her door.

"...Why?"

"Because I’m not waiting for him to make the next move," Lucas said simply. "If he’s still breathing trouble into your life, I want to see his face before I handle it."