Chapter 7

The money arrived at 10:04 a.m. on Thursday.

Naomi was at the small kitchen table in her apartment, drinking coffee, looking out the window at a delivery truck parked in front of the building across the street. Nothing about the moment felt different—same coffee, same chair, same morning light. And then her phone buzzed, and her bank app opened, and there it was.

A transfer notification, with a total that made her stop breathing.

Thirty-two hundred dollars for the work.

Seven hundred fifty in statutory penalties.

Four hundred twenty in interest.

Four hundred ten in court costs, recovered.

Four thousand six hundred eighty dollars, in her account, all at once.

Naomi held the phone for a long moment. Then she set it down, picked up her coffee, and took a slow drink.

The tea was cold. She didn't care.

For the first time in six months, she was not behind on a single bill.

She sat at the table for a while, letting the feeling settle. The apartment was small, but it was hers. The van was parked outside, and it was hers. The food business, the clients, the invoices she'd written and sent and followed up on—all of it was hers.

And the silence in the kitchen, which had once felt like loneliness, now felt like a choice.

Her phone buzzed again. A text from a number she hadn't heard from in three weeks.

CELESTE: Can we talk?