"Get on your knees right now. Lick that clean. Then sign the papers. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be merciful enough to let her live one more night."
The office was deathly silent.
Robin Lambert and the others wore expressions of barely concealed anguish, but with the bodyguards standing watch, none of them dared make a move. All they could do was bury their heads a little lower.
I lay sprawled on the floor, trembling from head to toe.
My dignity had been ground into the dirt, trampled underfoot along with the grime.
But I couldn't let Grandma die. She was the only family I had left in this world.
Through the haze of despair, my eyes burning red, I fixed my gaze on Bertram, who stood off to the side without so much as a flicker of emotion.
"Mr. Delgado." My voice shook so badly it barely sounded like my own. "You can fire me. You can dock my pay."
"But when you went bankrupt and wanted to jump off that ledge, I was the one who pulled you back."
"You knelt before the shrine and swore a sacred oath that you'd care for my grandmother like she was your own. You can't do this!"
At the words "sacred oath," Bertram's eye twitched.