My Father Traded Me for Two Million Dollars

I got kidnapped by a man my father had crossed. The asking price was two million dollars. My father wouldn't part with two hundred bucks.

He handed me over to be the man's wife instead. "Your daddy doesn't pay up, and I'll put you in the ground. You believe me?" He swore he'd throw me in the ocean.

My teeth were chattering. "I believe you." A year later, my father finally called. The man hollered into the phone, "Keep your money. Come get her.

I didn't sign on to raise your kid for you!" Then he hung up, cigarette clamped in his teeth, scowling, and went right back to scrubbing out my delicates.

Chapter 1 In the rundown rental house, the man kept the brim of his black cap pulled low.

He had some muscle on him, and an eagle tattooed on his forearm. "You remember what you're supposed to say?" "Mmhm." Me — one wrong word from dead.

The call went through. "I've got your daughter. Sable Sheffield is sitting right—" "Dad—" Click. The second he heard my name, my father hung up.

The man called back. "There's no money. You can keep her," my father said. He called a third time, and my father's phone was switched off.

The whole room was looking at me. "Boss, what do we do now?" They were all waiting on him. It was only later that I learned his name was Kane Ivey.

Kane Ivey looked me over, crushed out his cigarette, and said in a flat, dry voice, "Throw her in the ocean." What happened instead was that I got thrown into the aboveground pool out in the yard.

We were in the middle of nowhere, up in the mountains. Where was anybody going to find an ocean?

Half an hour later I climbed out, dripping, walked back to where I'd been sitting, sat down, and waited to hear what they were going to do with me. They were playing cards.

Kane Ivey glanced at me, tossed a card out lazily, and didn't say a word. The others noticed me and started in. "Boss, she's a city girl.

She's soaked through — she gonna catch cold?" "Right, city girl.

Cuts a finger and it's a trip to the ER." I sat there on pins and needles, afraid to breathe too loud. "Since you're so concerned, how about I give her to you for a wife?" "Boss—" "I'm starting to think you boys didn't come out here to collect a debt.

You came out here to pick up girls." He gave the group a sour look. Nobody said anything after that.

He turned back to me. "What are you standing around for?" "Oh." I got up, flustered, and moved over to the stool beside me. "Go take a shower.

You get sick out here, there's no hospital." He stood, lit a cigarette, and headed for the door, grumbling the whole way. "High maintenance. Down the hall, first left.

And don't you put on any of my clothes." I answered with a wobble in my voice. "Okay." He was so mean. I cried the whole time I was in the shower.

Not because my father wasn't coming for me. Because I had somehow taught myself to swim in half an hour.

You have to understand, my rich father once hired me a private swim coach for eight thousand dollars, and I never learned a thing. My name is Sable Sheffield.

My father is a rich man who has been married a dozen times or more. There are twenty kids in the family, and I'm the slow one.

He never could bring himself to believe he'd fathered a child this dim and this scrawny. Then one day he was holding my paternity test, and he started to laugh. "I knew it.

There's no way a Fletcher Sheffield produces a kid this stupid!" Except somewhere in the middle of that laugh he worked out what else the test meant, and he went quiet, like he'd felt a pair of horns coming in.

After that, I was frozen out. No more allowance. No more room of my own, either. I moved down to the basement.

Up before everybody, cooking, mopping, doing laundry, waiting on the whole household.

I asked my grandmother, "Why doesn't Dad like me?" She glared at me. "Go ask your mother." I shook my head. Grandma's mind was going again. My mother had been dead for ten years.

Chapter 2 After that I watched every word and did every chore without complaining, terrified of setting my father off. I figured that was going to be my whole life.

Then I got kidnapped. Just like that, the quiet was over. When I got out of the shower I had nothing to put on, so I went through the closet and found a Tshirt.

I hunted around and there wasn't a single pair of pants that would stay up on me, and I could hear somebody out there calling for me, so I didn't dare take any longer.

I sucked it up and went out. The second I stepped into the front room, the whole crew stopped horsing around and stared at me. At my legs. Kane Ivey was staring too.

Then he frowned and shot up out of his chair. "What are you looking at?

Never seen a woman before?" he yelled at the room. "Boss, we weren't looking." "Out." They threw down their cards and cleared out, grumbling. "You.

Get in there." His face was black. "I— okay." I didn't argue. I turned and ran for the bedroom, and when I heard his boots behind me I got scared and shut the door.

The door slammed open under his foot. "Dressed like that?" He looked me over again. "Young as you are, and already up to no good." "I'm sorry.

I— I don't have any clothes." I got it out shaking, and when he didn't move I froze where I stood. "You got nothing up top, don't go flashing leg." He leaned in the doorframe, watching me. "You have any idea that every man out there is a wolf, and they'd chew you up and not leave the bones?" "No…" "Then let me tell you.

Every one of them's been a bachelor a long time. Six months since they touched a woman. Some of them ten, fifteen years." I'll admit it. He scared me.

A tear got as far as the corner of my eye before I wiped it away. "What are you crying for?

Now you're scared." I bit my lip and held it in. "Unbelievable." He clamped the cigarette in his teeth, went to the closet, dug through it, and came out with a pair of gym shorts, which he threw at my head. "Put the shorts on.

And if you cry again, I'll feed you to the dogs.

You believe me?" "I believe you." I started putting them on at top speed. "In the bathroom!" He stared at me, then let out a breath. "I'm a man, and I'm a bad one.

Do you have any idea what you're doing?" "Okay!" I grabbed the shorts and ran. He was so mean. Meaner than my father. I didn't dare push back.

By the time I came out in the shorts, the house was empty. Going out the door, I saw him coming in with a paper bag in his hand. He'd only bought one.

I sat down next to him and watched him open up a brisket plate with rice and beans, and started swallowing.

He looked up. "You want some?" "Mmhm." I nodded honestly. "No." He tossed the plastic fork down and said it like it cost him nothing. I shut up.

He wasn't giving me any, and I couldn't exactly take it, since I'd lose that fight. "You know how much your daddy owes me?" "Two million dollars." I'd heard him say it. "She even knows the number.

There's hope for her yet." He laughed at me, angry. "And you still want to eat the dinner I paid for.

What, you want to put another fourteen bucks on the tab?" I hadn't eaten in a day, and there were three words in my head. Barbecued. Beef.

Brisket. "Could I?" I looked at him and begged. "In your… dreams." He dragged the last word out long. "Don't think you can ask me sweet and I'll go soft.

Kane Ivey doesn't work like that." "Okay." I swallowed and sat there quietly, not making a sound.

Chapter 3 He flipped the lid off the container, poked around in it with the plastic fork, and swore. "This is terrible." Then he took his cigarettes and lighter off the table and went out to the back porch.

I sat and watched him smoke out there with his head tipped back, and before long he was on his third one. My stomach started growling and he still wasn't coming back.

I looked at that container of brisket, then put a hand on my stomach, and finally, while he wasn't looking, I picked out a piece with my fingers and stuffed it in my mouth.

He turned around right at that second and my heart stopped. I didn't dare move my jaw.

But he only glanced over, then pulled out his phone and made a call, and partway through he even turned his back to me. I finally breathed again.

Hunger beat out fear, and I kept sneaking pieces into my mouth.

It wasn't until he hung up and started toward me that I realized the container had nothing left in it but rice and beans.

I'd eaten all the brisket. "Where's the beef?" He squinted at me. "I don't know." "You don't know?" He stared me down, and then his hand came up— I thought he was going to hit me, and I was too scared to move.

Instead his fingertips stopped at the corner of my mouth, picked off a grain of rice, and held it up in front of me. I was done for. "You've eaten.

So let's talk about what happens to the money your father owes me." He leaned back and looked at me, comfortable. "You make him pay it." "He ran." He was watching me. "Then… I pay it?" "You?

How?

You really think somebody like you, nothing up front, nothing in back, is worth two million dollars?" "You—" I was humiliated, and furious, and too scared to show it. "Finish eating and get out.

Quit bothering me." He stood up like he was out of patience and left, slamming the door. Of course I was going to leave. He'd told me to go. I'd have to be an idiot to stay.

I put my head down, finished that container, and ran for it.

Half an hour later I came dragging back to the house. "Now this is interesting." Kane Ivey looked at me. "What are you doing back here?" "It's raining." I was shaking with cold. "And it's really dark out." "You're scared of ghosts.

But not me?" he said. "Mmhm." I nodded. Compared to a ghost, he wasn't all that frightening.

He sat there a second, then pulled his Tshirt off onehanded. "How about now?" I looked at the clean lines of him, all that muscle, down and down, all the way to the eightpack— "How old are you, kid?" He was smiling at me. "Eighteen." I was holding my breath. "Eighteen.

You should be calling me Uncle." He sighed, took my hand, and put it flat on his stomach. "You like this?" I had never in my life been anywhere near a scene like that.

My whole head went hot, and something started running out of my nose. I tipped my face up fast. "Uncle.

I think I'm— I think I've got a nosebleed." "You are unbelievable." He grabbed a handful of tissues and clamped them over my nose, not gently.

Half an hour of scrambling later, he put his shirt back on, and I sat there with wads of tissue up my nose, questioning everything about my life. "You're on the couch tonight.

In the morning you're gone." "Oh." "Oh what? Not happy with that? I felt sorry for you and I'm putting you up for one night, and now you want my bedroom too?" "I'm not unhappy.

I just— I've never slept in a living room. It scares me." I hugged the pillow and looked up at him, pitiful. "Scared of what?

There's no such thing as ghosts." I didn't say anything else.

Chapter 4 "You want the bedroom, you sleep in it with me." He threw that at me, turned, and went into his room without an ounce of pity for anybody.

I figured I'd be awake all night. Instead I woke up on the couch and it was already noon. I opened my eyes just as the bedroom door swung open.

Kane Ivey came out with his hair going every direction, stopped for one second when he saw me, and then went right back to treating me like air.

He went to the kitchen and I followed him in. "What." "I don't know the way out, and I don't have money for a cab," I told him straight.

He gave me a look and said, in that loose, careless way of his, "Then stay here the rest of your life." I didn't answer. I just kept following him.

He got sick of it. "Get it through your head. Your father owes me money. I'm not paying your bus fare." "I know." I kept following him. He couldn't take it anymore.

He yanked a few bills out of his wallet and threw them at me. "Take it and go. You're exhausting." I picked the money up. "I can't walk to the bus stop. It's too far." "And?

You don't actually think I'm going to drive you, do you? What am I, a charity?" "I think you're not a bad person," I said, and I meant it. "Did you read yourself stupid? Not bad?

I didn't kill you, so that makes me a good man?

Are you dumb?" He laughed at me, out of pure anger, and gave up on the conversation. "Get out of my sight before I change my mind." That was his final offer.

So I took the money and went. Less than an hour later I was back.

Because when I got to the bus stop, I looked over at the phone in the hand of the man next to me and saw a clip from the local news, saying my father had skipped the country owing an enormous amount of money, that every asset in his name had been frozen by the court, and that his company had gone into receivership.

I stood there for half an hour and I could not make that piece of news go into my head