My Husband Bought Me To Settle A Debt — He Didn’t Expect Me To Fire His Entire Staff
Part 3
Megan was about to demand the only conditions that could save her from ruin: a purely transactional marriage built on radical honesty and mutual benefit.
He walked to the hearth, picked up an iron poker, and viciously stabbed at the dying embers.
Sparks flew upward, a brief, angry flurry of orange against the black soot.
He threw a fresh log onto the grate.
“Come here,” he commanded, not looking at her.
“Stand by the fire.
You’re shaking.”
Megan hesitated.
He could hear the slight rustle of her damp dress.
Slowly, she walked toward the hearth.
She didn’t stand beside him.
She kept a careful distance, holding her hands out to the nascent flames.
The firelight caught the fine tremors in her fingers.
She was freezing.
“You think this is a business acquisition,” Greg said to the fire.
“You are correct.
It is.”
He turned to look at her.
The heat of the fire was beginning to coax the smell of wet wool out of her clothes more intensely.
It smelled like hard work.
It smelled like poverty.
“I will outline the terms,” Greg said, his voice returning to its flat, authoritative cadence.
“I require an heir.
I require a woman who can manage a household staff of 60 without collapsing into hysterics.
I require someone who will sit at the opposite end of a very long dining table and entertain political bores.
In exchange, she will receive the title, an allowance that will make her immune to want, and the absolute freedom to leave me alone in my study.
Those are the parameters.
Nothing more.”
Megan rubbed her hands together.
She did not look up.
She watched the flames licking at the dry bark of the new log.
“The 30 women before you,” Greg continued, stepping closer.
Told me they would cherish me.
They told me they would love me.
They told me my estate was a paradise.
He let out a harsh, bitter sound that was half scoff, half cough.
Tell me, Miss Croft, what do you have to offer this business transaction?
Megan finally turned her head.
The firelight warmed the harsh angles of her face, but her eyes remained cool and analytical.
The truth, she said simply.
Greg crossed his arms.
Go on.
Your estate is not a paradise, Megan said, her voice steady.
It is hemorrhaging money.
I read the tenant reports left carelessly on the side table in your drawing room.
Your agent in Northumberland is skimming profits from the wool yields.
You have a staff of 60, yet it took me 7 hours to get a cup of tepid tea.
Your household is deeply inefficient.
You’re looking for a wife to fix the domestic rot you have ignored because you prefer to hide in this study feeling sorry for yourself.
Greg felt the breath leave his lungs.
It wasn’t a gasp.
It was as if she had punched him squarely in the diaphragm.
No one spoke to him like this.
His peers flattered him.
His servants feared him, and his creditors deferred to him.
His fists clenched involuntarily.
Anger, hot and bright, surged up his throat.
You dare!
I have nothing to lose, your grace.
Megan interrupted, her tone not rising in pitch, but cutting through his fury with sheer density.
You asked what I offer.
I offer competence.
I offer reality.
I spent the last 10 years running my father’s meager estate before he died and the debts consumed it.
I know how to stretch a pound.
I know when a steward is lying, and I know how to manage servants who have grown lazy under an absentee master.
She stepped away from the fire turning fully toward him.
She wasn’t shivering anymore.
I will not love you.
She said the words falling like stones on the wooden floor.
I do not even particularly like you.
You strike me as arrogant, miserable, and entirely too fond of your own misery.
But, I will not lie to you.
I will manage your house.
I will tolerate your bed long enough to give you an heir, because that is the price of a warm fire and a roof that does not leak.
And I will gladly leave you alone in your study, because I have no desire to keep the company of a man who looks at people as if they are numbers on a ledger.
Greg observed her silently.
The silence returned thicker this time, suffocating.
He could hear his own heartbeat in his ears.
It was a frantic, irregular rhythm.
He looked at her wet hair, her scuffed boots, the proud defensive set of her shoulders.
She was completely stripped of artifice.
She was offering him a brutal, unvarnished contract.
He walked slowly back to his desk.
He looked at the ledger Brian had left behind. 30 names, 30 elegant cursive names all crossed out.
He reached for the silver pen.
It felt cold against his fingers.
My agent in Northumberland Greg said, his voice surprisingly quiet, devoid of the earlier gravel.
How do you know he is skimming?
Megan refused to blink.
The yield per sheep reported in your documents is 15% lower than the regional average for this season, despite no recorded disease or adverse weather in that specific valley.
Either your sheep are miraculously shedding their fleece in the night or your agent is selling the surplus to independent mills.
Greg looked down at the parchment.
He knew the yields were low.
He had planned to look into it next month.
He had been putting it off.
He had been putting everything off since his father died.
He looked back up at Megan Croft.
She was standing in the middle of his study, an unwanted, impoverished spinster who had just vivisected his life, his estate and his character in under 5 minutes.
For the first time in 3 years, Greg felt the heavy, suffocating fog in his brain lift.
It was replaced by a sharp, stinging clarity.
It hurt like blood rushing back into a frozen limb.
“15%,” he murmured.
“At least,” she replied.
Greg picked up the pen.
He didn’t cross her name out.
He wrote in small, neat script beside the name Megan Croft hired.
He looked up at her.
The anger was gone.
In its place was a grim, cynical respect.
“Sit down, Megan,” he said, using her Christian name for the first time.
It felt strange on his tongue, real.
“We have to discuss your settlement, and then you are going to tell me exactly how you intend to fire my steward.”
The marriage settlement was signed 3 days later in the library of Dan’s London townhouse.
The room smelled of spilled port, cheap cigar smoke, and the unmistakable sour tang of desperate relief.
Greg sat at a rickety side table, his posture rigid.
He watched Dan’s trembling, liver-spotted hand drag a quill across the thick vellum.
The scratch of the nib was exceptionally loud.
Croft was sweating.
Dark half-moons stained the armpits of his green silk waistcoat.
He was a man who had just narrowly escaped the debtors’ prison, and he couldn’t stop shooting nervous, ingratiating smiles at Greg.
Greg ignored him.
He looked at Megan.
She stood by the window staring out at the soot-stained street.
She wore a dress of slate gray bombazine.
It was new, paid for by the initial deposit Greg had sent, but it was entirely devoid of lace ribbons or any attempt at softening her severe silhouette.
She looked less like a bride and more like a governess preparing to discipline a particularly unruly child.
“There,” Croft gasped, throwing the quill down and blotting the ink with a heavy hand.
“Done.
A joyous union, your grace.
Truly.”
Greg stood.
He didn’t offer his hand to the older man.
He walked over to the table, picked up his own silver pen, and signed his name with a fast, sharp scrawl.
Greg Harrington, Duke of Aylesford.
The ink was black and permanent.
He felt nothing, no triumph, no dread, just the dull mechanical click of a lock falling into place.
The wedding itself was a grim 20-minute affair in a freezing stone chapel on the edge of the city.
The vicar had a head cold and sniffled through the vows.
Megan’s responses were clear, flat, and entirely transactional.
“I do.”
“I will.”
They did not kiss.
When the vicar pronounced them man and wife, Greg merely offered her his arm.
She took it.
Her fingers through his thick broadcloth sleeve felt as cold as the chapel stones.
The carriage ride back to Aylesford Manor took 4 hours.
They sat on opposite benches.
The interior of the coach smelled of waxed leather and the lingering scent of the lavender pomander someone had foolishly hung from the brass lamp.
Greg ripped it down and tossed it out the window within the first mile.
Megan didn’t blink.
Instead, she opened a leather-bound folio she had brought with her.
“What is that?”
Greg asked.
The steady rhythm of the carriage wheels over the rutted roads was making his teeth ache.
“The household accounts,” Megan said, not looking up.
She traced a line of numbers with a bare, unmanicured fingernail.
“Brian sent them over to my uncle’s house yesterday at my request.”
Greg crossed his arms, sinking deeper into the tufted squabs.
“And and you’re paying double the market rate for coal,” she replied, turning the page.
The thick paper made a dry, crisp sound.
“The supplier is a Craig, who happens to be your housekeeper, Brenda’s brother-in-law.
A remarkable coincidence.”
Greg rubbed his jaw.
It bristled with midday stubble.
“Brenda has been with my family for 40 years.
She practically raised me.”
Megan finally looked up.
The pale winter light filtering through the carriage window cast harsh shadows under her cheekbones.
“Then she should have learned to steal from you with more subtlety.
I am terminating Finch’s contract tomorrow morning.
I have already secured a supplier from Newcastle who will deliver at a sensible rate.”
A flare of the old aristocratic irritation sparked in Greg’s chest.
“You move quickly.”
“I am securing my investment, your grace.”
She said, her eyes dropping back to the ledger, “If this estate goes bankrupt, I am back on the street.
I prefer the carriage.”
She didn’t speak again for the rest of the journey.
Greg watched her read.
He watched the slight unconscious furrow of her brow when she found an error.
He watched the way she chewed on the inside of her lower lip.
It wasn’t an attractive habit.
It was anxious, deeply human, and wholly absorbed.
When they finally pulled into the gravel drive of Aylesford Manor, the rain had stopped leaving the massive stone facade looking damp and hostile.
The staff was lined up on the front steps, 30 men and women in stiff black and white waiting to greet their new duchess.
Greg stepped out first, the cold evening air biting at his neck.
He turned and offered his hand to Megan.
She took it, stepping down onto the gravel.
Her boots crunched loudly in the quiet.
Brenda, a stout woman with a face like a rising dough, stepped forward and dropped a deep curtsy.
“Welcome to Aylesford, your grace.
We are overjoyed.”
“Brenda.”
Megan interrupted.
Her voice wasn’t loud, but it carried perfectly in the damp air.
“I will require the pantry keys, the wine cellar inventory, and a list of all current vendor contracts in my sitting room by 8:00 tomorrow morning.
Furthermore, will be served at 7:00, not 9:00.
Anyone unable to adjust to the new schedule may collect their severance from Mr.
Brian.”
A heavy stunned silence fell over the steps.
Brenda’s mouth opened, shut, and opened again.
She looked at Greg seeking a reprimand, a retraction, anything.
Greg looked at his new wife.
She stood perfectly straight, the wind pulling at the hem of her gray skirt, her face a mask of absolute unyielding authority.
She wasn’t asking for their approval.
She was establishing her territory.
Greg met Brenda’s pleading eyes.
He gave a single dismissive shrug.
“You heard the Duchess,” Greg said dryly.
He turned and walked into the warmth of the hall, leaving Megan to dismantle his household exactly as she saw fit.
Within a fortnight, Aylesford Manor had physically transformed.
It was not a transformation of beauty.
Megan did not buy new draperies or order exotic flowers.
The transformation was entirely sensory, rooted in friction and labor.
The cloying dusty smell of disuse that had permeated the long corridors was gone.
In its place was the sharp biting scent of beeswax, lye soap, and lemon oil.
The floors were stripped and polished until they gleamed like dark eyes.
The heavy velvet curtains were dragged out into the winter sun and beaten raw, releasing decades of trapped soot.
Greg found himself a stranger in his own home.
He had spent the last 3 years confined to his study, drinking too much and signing whatever Brian put in front of him.
The crisis arrived not with a letter or a scandal, but with a sound like a cannon firing in the courtyard.
Greg was in his study nursing a cup of black coffee when the heavy timber crack echoed through the manor.
He was on his feet and out the door before the vibrations stopped ringing in the floorboards.
Outside, the world was a blinding, chaotic swirl of white.
A massive blizzard had blown in overnight, dumping 2 ft of heavy, wet snow across the estate.
Greg pushed through the heavy oak front doors, the freezing wind punching him in the chest and stealing his breath.
“Brian!”
Greg bellowed over the howl of the storm.
The butler was already in the courtyard, a heavy woolen coat thrown over his nightshirt, pointing toward the sprawling complex of stables and barns to the east.
The roof of the oldest sheep barn, a massive, sagging structure Greg had meant to tear down for 3 years, had completely caved in under the weight of the snow.
Greg ran.
The snow dragged at his boots, freezing his ankles instantly.
Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in his blood.
There were three shepherds who slept in the loft of that barn during lambing season.
By the time he reached the wreckage, a small crowd of stable hands had gathered, digging frantically with shovels and bare hands at the splintered beams and buried thatch.
The smell of crushed pine, wet earth, and terrified livestock filled the freezing air.
Sheep were bleating in a high, panicked chorus from the surviving pens.
“Greg!”
The voice cut through the wind and the chaos.
Greg whipped his head around.
Megan was standing on the edge of the rubble.
She wore her heavy gray traveling cloak, the hood pulled up, but it offered no protection against the horizontal snow.
She was directing two men with pry bars, her voice a sharp, cutting whip.
She was entirely in her element, an architect of order in the midst of disaster.
“Get those beams lifted on three!” she shouted, pointing with a red-gloved hand.
“Do not pull the thatch until the weight is braced, or the rest of the loft will come down on top of them.
Greg shoved his way through the men, grabbing her by the arm.
Her sleeve was soaked through, freezing into a stiff shell of ice.
“What the hell are you doing out here?”
Greg roared, the wind snatching the words from his mouth.
“Go back to the house.”
She yanked her arm out of his grip, glaring at him with a ferocity that made him take a step back.
“Your men are buried under your rotting roof Greg.
Get a shovel and make yourself useful, or get out of my way.”
She didn’t wait for his response.
She turned back to the wreckage, grabbing a discarded shovel from the snow, and driving it into the packed ice.
Greg didn’t argue.
He found a pry bar and threw his weight against a fallen crossbeam.
For 2 hours they dug.
The cold stopped hurting and became a dull, heavy numbness.
The smell of blood mixed with the wet wool as they pulled the first shepherd out.
A boy of 16, his legs snapped like a dry twig, but breathing.
They found the other two an hour later, bruised and battered, but alive, huddled under a collapsed feeding trough that had shielded them from the crushing weight of the slate.
When the final man was hauled onto a makeshift stretcher and carried toward the kitchens, the adrenaline abruptly drained from the courtyard.
The wind continued to howl, mocking their temporary victory.
Greg dropped the pry bar.
His muscles screamed in protest.
He turned to look for Megan.
She was standing near the surviving pen, staring blankly at the ruined barn.
The shovel had slipped from her hands.
She was swaying a slow, unnatural tilt backward.
“Megan.”
Greg lunged forward.
He caught her just as her knees gave out.
She felt impossibly heavy and terrifyingly fragile all at once.
Her hood fell back.
Her face was the color of old parchment.
Her lips tinged with a bruised sickly blue.
Her eyes were rolled back showing only the whites.
“Megan!” he shouted shaking her shoulders.
Her head lolled against his chest.
She was burning.
Despite the freezing snow caked to her clothes, heat radiated from her skin in violent unnatural waves.
“Brian!”
Greg bellowed, scooping her up into his arms.
The icy shell of her cloak crunched against him.
“Get the doctor now.”
The next 48 hours were a blur of copper-tasting fear.
The doctor diagnosed it as a severe inflammation of the lungs brought on by exhaustion and exposure.
He prescribed mustard plasters, steam from a kettle laced with camphor, and rest.
Then he looked at Greg with grim apologetic eyes and told him to prepare for the worst.
Greg did not leave the master suite.
He dismissed the maids.
He dismissed Brenda who wrung her hands and cried wet useless tears.
He locked the heavy mahogany door and dragged a hard-backed chair to the side of the bed.
The room smelled of sickness.
It smelled of the sharp stinging mustard plaster cooking against her chest, the sour tang of fever sweat, and the heavy humid vapor of the boiling kettle.
It was a suffocating cocktail replacing the clean scent of lye and lemon.
Megan thrashed in the bed.
Her strong practical hands, usually so still and deliberate, clawed at the bedsheets.
The fever stripped away her logic leaving only the raw frantic panic of a trapped animal.
“The shillings,” she muttered, tossing her head side to side on the sweat-soaked pillow.
Her alto voice was cracked and raspy.
“Count the shillings.
Uncle will take the silver.
Hide the silver.”
Greg dipped a linen cloth into a basin of cold water.
He wrung it out, his own hands shaking, and pressed it to her burning forehead.
“The silver is safe, Megan,” he said softly.
He didn’t know if she could hear him.
“You hid it well.”
“They’re coming for the house.”
She choked out, her fingers weakly grasping at his wrist.
Her nails dug into his skin.
“I can’t.
I can’t balance it.
It’s empty.”
“It’s full,” Greg lied, leaning closer.
He smoothed the damp hair away from her face.
He saw the faint, faded scar above her left eyebrow he had never noticed before.
He saw the permanent calluses on the pads of her fingers.
“You balanced the ledger.
The debt is paid.
You did your job.”
“Don’t turn me out,” she whispered, a tear leaking from the corner of her tightly squeezed eye.
It was the most horrific sound Greg had ever heard.
It wasn’t a demand.
It was a plea.
The invincible Duchess of Aylesford reduced to a terrified, impoverished girl waiting for the locks to be changed.
“Please, I’ll work.
I’ll scrub the grates.”
Greg felt a violent tearing sensation in his chest.
It felt like a physical rupture.
He didn’t love her because she was beautiful.
He didn’t love her because she was compliant.
He realized, sitting in the humid, foul-smelling dark, that he loved her because she was the only real thing in his entire hollow life.
She had kicked the doors open, stripped the rot away, and stood in the freezing snow to dig his people out of the dirt.
She was a force of nature, and he was terrified of the quiet that would return if she died.
“I’m not turning you out, Megan.”
Greg said, his voice breaking.
He took her hot, rough hand in both of his and pressed it to his mouth.
“This is your house.
You own it.
You own me.
Just breathe.
Please, just breathe.”
She didn’t hear him.
She slipped deeper into the delirium.
Greg sat by the bed, listening to the agonizing wet rattle of her breath.
And for the first time since he was a child, he prayed.
He didn’t pray for an heir.
He didn’t pray for his estate.
He prayed for the terrifying creature to open her eyes and insult him.
The fever broke on the fourth morning, leaving behind a pale, hollowed-out shell that smelled faintly of stale camphor.
Greg was asleep in the hard-backed chair, his chin resting on his chest.
His broadcloth coat wrinkled and smelling of stale sweat.
He woke to the sound of a dry, rasping cough.
He jerked upright, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Megan was awake.
She was lying flat on her back, staring at the canopy of the bed.
Her face was gaunt, the sharp cheekbones now looking painfully skeletal.
The fierce, assessing light in her hazel eyes was dimmed, replaced by a profound physical exhaustion.
Greg moved to the edge of the bed.
He reached for the water pitcher with a clumsy, heavy hand, pouring a glass and holding it to her cracked lips.
She drank greedily, her throat working in slow, painful swallows.
She fell back against the pillows, closing her eyes for a long moment.
When she opened them again, she looked at him.
She looked at his unshaven jaw, the dark purple bags under his eyes, the wrinkled ruin of his clothes.
“You look terrible.”
She croaked.
Greg let out a breath that shuddered through his entire frame.
He set the glass down.
A hysterical raw laugh bubbled up in his throat.
“I look terrible.
You look like a corpse that was dug up to sign a will.”
The ghost of a smirk twitched at the corner of her mouth.
It was a fragile, beautiful thing.
“Who is managing the staff?”
“Brian.”
Greg lied smoothly.
He wasn’t about to tell her that the house had virtually ceased to function, that meals were cold and the fires were unlit because he had refused to leave her room screaming at anyone who dared knock on the door.
“The estate survived your absence, Megan.
Don’t flatter yourself.”
She sighed a long, rattling exhalation.
She turned her head slightly, staring out the window at the gray overcast sky.
The snow had stopped, but the frost remained.
For a long time, the room was quiet.
It wasn’t the tense, combative silence of their early days, nor the shared working silence of the library.
It was heavy laden with things unsaid.
“Greg.”
Megan said finally.
Her voice was quiet, lacking its usual density.
“Yes.”
She didn’t look at him.
Her hands resting on top of the heavy woolen blankets curled into loose fists.
“My cycle is late.
Six weeks late.”
Greg froze.
The words hung in the air, cold and clinical.
“The doctor confirmed it when he was examining my lungs.”
Megan continued, her tone eerily detached.
It was the voice she used to recite grain yields.
I am with child.
Assuming the fever did not harm it, you will have your heir by autumn.
She finally turned her head to look at him.
Her eyes were stark, stripped of everything but survival.
The second half of the contract is fulfilled.
The debt is entirely paid.
Greg stared at her.
He felt a sudden sickening jolt of vertigo.
He had prayed for her life, and her first instinct upon waking was to hand him a receipt.
She was closing the ledger.
She was preparing for him to retreat back into his study, leaving her to the nursery and the cold efficient halls.
A sudden hot anger flared in his chest, but it wasn’t directed at her.
It was directed at the miserable transactional prison they had locked themselves inside.
He stood up.
The chair scraped violently against the floorboards.
Megan flinched, pulling the blanket slightly higher up her chest, her eyes widening in anticipation of a reprimand.
A contract?
Greg repeated, his voice low, vibrating with a dangerous energy.
He paced to the foot of the bed, gripping the heavy mahogany bedpost.
You think this is still about a contract?
What else would it be?
Megan asked, her voice cracking slightly.
She hated being weak.
He could see it in the defensive set of her jaw.
We agreed upon the terms.
I am merely informing you that my obligations are met.
Damn your obligations!
Greg swore.
He didn’t shout, but the intensity of his words seemed to suck the air out of the room.
He walked back to the side of the bed.
He didn’t sit in the chair.
He sat on the edge of the mattress, the springs groaning under his weight.
He leaned over her, his hands planted on either side of her shoulders, caging her in.
Megan’s breath hitched.
She stared up at him, the analytical mask slipping entirely, revealing the panicked girl beneath.
“The terms have changed.”
Greg said, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper.
He smelled of old coffee and fear.
“The contract is void.
I am tearing it up.”
Megan swallowed hard.
“You can’t.
I upheld my end.
You can’t cast me out.”
“I am not casting you out, you impossible, infuriating woman.”
Greg snapped, though his hands were trembling where they gripped the mattress.
“I am renegotiating.”
He leaned closer.
Their faces were inches apart.
He could see the pulse beating frantically at the base of her throat.
“Item one.”
Greg lifted his eyes, locking onto hers.
“You are never going out into a blizzard to do a roofer’s job again.
You will manage from a desk with a fire, or I will nail the front doors shut.”
Megan blinked, entirely derailed.
“Greg.”
“Item two.”
He interrupted, his voice thickening.
“The physical arrangement.
Tuesday nights are abolished.”
A flicker of genuine hurt crossed Megan’s eyes, quickly masked by a flat, deadened acceptance.
“If you find my company in bed so distasteful.”
“I am abolishing Tuesday nights.”
Greg said, his voice cracking, “Because I want Wednesday nights.
I want Thursday nights.
I want you in my bed every damn night of the week, Megan.
Not because we have to, because I hate sleeping in this freezing house without you.”
Megan stared at him.
The silence in the room was absolute.
The ticking clock on the mantel seemed to freeze and item three.
Greg finished his voice dropping to a ragged vulnerable breath.
He lifted one hand from the mattress and carefully gently traced the line of her sharp jawline with his thumb.
Her skin was dry and warm.
You are going to stop acting like an employee.
You are the Duchess of Allersleigh.
You are my wife and God help me I need you.
The estate needs you yes, but I need you.
If you die on me Megan, I will let the whole damned manner rot into the ground.
He didn’t say I love you.
It was too soft, too poetic for what they were.
He offered her something heavier, something grounded in the very dirt of the estate she managed.
He offered her indispensability.
Megan didn’t speak.
Her pale hazel eyes searched his face desperately.
Hunting for the lie.
The polite fiction, the aristocratic trap.
She found only exhaustion, fear and a brutal unvarnished honesty that mirrored her own.
Slowly, painfully she raised her hand.
It shook violently.
She pressed her rough calloused palm against his unshaven cheek.
The scratch of his stubble against her skin was loud in the quiet room.
You are going to regret giving me that much authority.
Megan whispered a fat uncharacteristic tear spilling over her lower lash line and cutting a clean path down her fever flushed cheek.
Greg closed his eyes leaning his weight into her hand.
A massive crushing weight lifted off his chest leaving him breathless.
I doubt it, he murmured turning his head slightly to press his lips against her palm.
It tasted of salt and lye soap.
It tasted perfect.
Just tell me the roof in the west wing is fixed.
A choked wet laugh escaped Megan’s throat.
She let her head fall back against the pillows, her fingers tangling weakly in his dark hair.
It’s fixed, Greg.
She said, the harsh practical edge of her voice softened by something entirely new.
We used the good slate.
Outside the winter wind battered the heavy leaded windows, but the thick glass held.
Inside the fire snapped in the grate, driving the chill from the room.
The ledger was closed.
The real work had finally begun.
THE END
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Disclaimer
This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. If you would like to share your story, please send it to [email protected].
