Chapter 1

First day in the new place.

The mom from upstairs shoved a contract at me and demanded that all three of us buy her meal boxes, three meals a day.

"It isn't easy for a single mom to start her own business. You're a mom too. We should help each other out. You should support my business."

"And my boxes are safe and clean. My son and I eat them ourselves. I'd never gamble with anyone's health."

I let my eyes drift to the prices.

The cheapest vegetarian box was eighty-eight dollars. Two meats and a vegetable ran a hundred and eighty-eight.

So I turned her down, gently.

I explained that our whole family either ate at the company cafeteria or over at my parents' place.

It was the plain truth. But she took it as me refusing the easy way and asking for the hard way.

To make me cave, she had her intellectually disabled son, all two hundred-plus pounds of him, pound out noise upstairs like a madman.

And in the end she used those meal boxes as a betrothal gift.

She came banging drums and gongs to my door, demanding I hand over a house and a car as a dowry and marry my daughter off to her disabled son.

The other neighbors all told me to just pay up and make the trouble go away.

To stop hurting myself and disturbing the peace of the whole building.

I looked at the dark circles under my husband's eyes, at my daughter too scared to leave the apartment because that boy kept harassing her.

And I laughed, cold and low.

You want me to buy your meal boxes?

Fine. Let's see if you dare take the money once I hand it over.

One:

I'd barely finished tidying up when the doorbell rang.

I checked the smart doorbell camera and saw it was Thelma James, the single mother from upstairs, so I hurried to open the door.

She didn't wait to be invited. She walked straight into my apartment, took a look around, and settled onto my couch like she owned the place.

Then she waved me over to sit down, like I was the guest, and tossed a few sheets of A4 paper at me.

"You just moved in, so you probably don't know."

"Everybody who moves into this building has to order my meal boxes based on the number of people in the household, three meals a day. The first month is mandatory, but after that you can order as needed."

"But my boxes are all green and natural, tasty and safe, so pretty much every household here orders at least two meals a day."

"You're three people, so that's nine boxes a day. Take a look and tell me which price point you want."

I'd never met a neighbor who forced a sale like this, and honestly I was at a loss for words.

But the whole reason I'd moved here was that I hadn't gotten along with the neighbors at my last place. A close neighbor beats a distant relative, or so the saying goes, and I didn't want to be the odd one out the second I moved in.

I couldn't eat the boxes myself, but I figured I could buy them and give them to the sanitation workers or the cleaning ladies in the complex.

Then I actually looked at the prices, and my jaw dropped.

Caring Pure Vegetarian, eighty-eight dollars a box.

Balanced Nutrition, one meat one vegetable, a hundred and thirty-eight a box.

Royal Indulgence, two meats one vegetable with a soup of the day, a hundred and eighty-eight a box.

At those prices, even if I picked the cheapest, that was seventy-nine hundred a month, not counting the ten-dollar delivery fee per meal. A quick calculation, and it came out to more than half my monthly salary.

So I shook my head fast.

"Thank you for the offer, but I won't be ordering the boxes."

Then I felt like that came out too blunt, so I added a bit more.

"My husband and I both have pretty demanding jobs, and we usually eat all three meals at our workplace cafeterias."

"My kid eats at the school cafeteria, and for dinner my parents pick her up and she eats at their place. So there's really no need."

I'd said it kindly, and it was the truth.

But Thelma's face changed in an instant.

She slapped the couch hard, several times, then jabbed a finger in my face and started yelling.

"What is this?"

"You think you're something because you've got a career? You look down on a single mom raising a kid on her own?"

"How can you be so cruel? You're a mom too, you know how expensive it is to raise a kid. What gives you the right to keep me from making a living?"

"Let me tell you, you have to buy these boxes. And even if you don't buy them, you're still going to give me the money, or else..."

I was furious.

Forcing a sale on me and saying it with a straight face, like she had every right. Someone who didn't know better would think she ran the local mob.

So I didn't let Thelma finish.

I stood up, grabbed her, and hauled her out the door, half dragging her the whole way.

She was practically apoplectic. She wouldn't leave, just pounded on my door for all she was worth.

"Open up."

"Open this door and order your boxes right now. I already bought the ingredients for your family's meals tomorrow. That cost me a few dollars. You can't just say you won't buy. What am I supposed to do with all that food?"

"You have to make up for my losses."

She looked like a lunatic to me, and clearly had no intention of leaving, so I waited until she'd yelled herself tired and spoke up.

"If you don't leave, I'm calling building management, and then I'm calling the police."

Thelma knew I was watching her through the screen, so she stared into my smart doorbell camera for a long moment, then gave my door one last kick.

"Athena Wise, is it?"

"I've got you marked now. You just wait. The day will come when you're begging to come to me, begging to buy my meal boxes."