by AFHiggins
A miracle loan should not be able to erase a person. Vesper Reed reads contracts for a living. In her city, bad paperwork can bind, bite, bleed, and ruin lives. But the new Civic Clean Relief Pilot looks almost harmless. Fast debt relief. No blood price. No soul collateral. No family guarantor. Rent arrears vanish. Pawned rings come back. Old debts disappear. Then the borrowers start disappearing too. Work shifts vanish from records. Leases rewrite themselves. Pharmacy profiles clear. Witness statements go missing from police files. The city is not forgetting people by accident. It is deciding who still counts. The loan does not collect from the future. It mines the past. Now Vesper must prove the erased were real before the program balances its books with everyone who remembers them. Clean Break is a dark urban fantasy legal thriller with supernatural contracts, predatory systems, dangerous paperwork, sharp banter, civic horror, stubborn community memory, and slow-burn romantic tension.
