Chapter One
“You cannot do this!” Octavia Finch planted herself in front of the doorway and folded her arms. “I will not allow it.”
“Allow it?” Mr. Cosgrove snorted. “Tell me, Miss Finch, what it is that you plan on doing to stop me?”
“I… anything that I must,” Octavia said with what she hoped to be enough resolve to put this conversation to bed. “I will sleep here if that is what it takes. I will set up a bedroll right here on the floor so that customers are forced to step over me. Tell me, how do you think that will be for business?”
“That’s a very interesting strategy,” Mr. Cosgrove said. “In order to keep me from firing you, you plan on disrupting my business even more than you have done. Perhaps if you set fire to my store, then I will have no choice but to change my mind.”
“At least it will attract attention,” she said with a hopeful grin. “You are always saying how desperate you are for new business.”
“I will not be changing my mind, Miss Finch,” Mr. Cosgrove sighed. The look on his face was one of despair, so that she almost believed that he was upset. “This has been a long time coming, and I would appreciate it if you did not make it any harder than it already is.”
“I do not understand it!” Octavia cried. “Please, Mr. Cosgrove, give me another chance. Nobody knows this store better than I. Nobody has made more sales – sales that were only possible because I am your best employee. You know that I am.”
“You are also my most troublesome one,” he said. “Yes, your aptitude for sales is rather… impressive. As is your knowledge of even the most obscure books.”
“Then how can you –”
“This is not about your work history,” he spoke over her. “This is about the negative effect you have had on my store since I hired you. Just last week, my front windows were smashed. The cost…” He sighed and shook his head.
“I had nothing to do with that!”
“And last month? Those thugs who spent a week straight prowling outside my store, scaring away my customers? They would still be there, were it not for the fact that I sent for the authorities to hurry them away. It has been one thing after the other, and while it pains me to do it, Miss Finch, I am left with no choice.” He looked at her plainly. “I need to let you go.”
As Mr. Cosgrove listed off his grievances, Octavia tried her best to formulate excuses and arguments for why they should not matter. Her sales record. Her love of books. How much she had come to enjoy this job, even if she had only been employed in it for two months. But as each counterpoint came to mind, they faded just as quickly.
He is right… as loath as I am to admit it. I am a bad bet, even if none of this is my fault. Even if by firing me, he is condemning me, not to mention my brother…
Not that he will care. Why should he? As always, I am on my own, a simple fact of life that I am all too used to by now.
“Fine.” Octavia dropped her hands and fixed Mr. Cosgrove with a glare. “If that is how it will be, I am glad that you are letting me go. I do not wish to work in a place that takes me for granted. As you have done.”
“Miss Finch, please…”
“I will take my last paycheck,” she held out her hand, “and I will be on my way, never to be seen by you again.” She scoffed. “Truly, I am glad you are firing me. This store has been failing for some time, long before you hired me, and I will not stay somewhere that I am not valued.”
He raised an eyebrow at her extended hand. “You do not truly think I will be paying you for this week, do you?”
“Of course I do!”
“The window, Miss. Finch. The cost…” He shook his head. “It is coming directly out of what I owe you. Honestly, you are lucky that I am willing to call it even, for your paycheck hardly covers the repairs.”
“You cannot do that!”
“I am doing it.”
“It’s theft! You are stealing from me!”
He shrugged. “If you truly believe that, please, send for the proper authorities and have me arrested. But I think we both know that is not an option…”
Octavia could not believe what she heard. Fury rose inside of her; anger the likes of which she had rarely known. She widened her eyes at Mr. Cosgrove, she bared her teeth, and she stood on her tiptoes as if to leer over him and intimidate the man into paying her.
I might as well pick a fight with a brick wall, for all the good it will do. He is a cheat, he is a scam artist… and he is also right.
It needed to be said that the men who broke the window of Mr. Cosgrove’s store were not associated with Octavia. At least not in the traditional sense. They were debt collectors, and the debt that they sought belonged to Octavia’s deceased father.
In a more just world, with his passing, the debt might be cleared, as she’d had nothing to do with it. However, as Octavia had learned several times in her life, the world was not just, and all one could do was whatever they could to survive.