Sign-In
Cart
The Interest on Life
Paperback
Publisher Price: $10.00
Publisher: David Lagattuta Jr.
Published: Feb 16 2026
Pages: 42
Weight: 0.14
Height: 0.11 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
In the Shadow District, time is not measured in hours. It is measured in debt.
Elena has lived for twenty years under the weight of a single signature. When a rare illness threatened her life, she entered into a contract with the Chronos Exchange, mortgaging twenty years of her unborn son's natural lifespan to pay for treatment. It was supposed to be temporary. A bridge. A sacrifice she could repay.
But markets fluctuate. Interest compounds. And the powerful never lose.
Now Leo has turned twenty-five, and the contract has matured. Elena is fifty thousand dollars short of buying back the years she sold. In seven days, the Exchange will collect its collateral-twenty Vitality Years extracted from her son, leaving him a hollow shell.
Desperate, Elena confronts Silas Vane, a high-ranking broker in the Exchange. Instead of mercy, he offers her a task: recover a stolen Time-Core from the lawless industrial wasteland known as The Hive. Complete the mission, and Leo's debt will be erased.
But the stolen Core isn't a device. It is a Natural-a rare young woman born with extraordinary life reserves, harvested as a living battery for the elite.
As Elena descends into the Shadows, she is forced to confront the true machinery of her world: a system where the wealthy buy longevity and the poor become fuel. With time slipping away, she must choose between saving her son, saving a stranger, or dismantling the system that profits from both.
The Interest on Life is a tense, emotionally driven dystopian novella about motherhood, debt, sacrifice, and the cost of survival in a society where contracts matter more than conscience.
For readers who enjoy morally complex dystopia with a strong emotional core and high-stakes tension.
Also from
Lagattuta, David
Also in
Fantasy
The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, Book 1) (Indie Exclusive Edition)
Gillig, Rachel
Paperback
The Princess Bride Deluxe Limited Edition: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure
Goldman, William
Paperback
Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution
Kuang, R. F.
Paperback
Japanese Gothic: A Folk Horror Novel of Japanese Mythology, Murder, and Family Duty Across Two Timelines
Baker, Kylie Lee
Hardcover
Heaven Official's Blessing: Tian Guan CI Fu (Novel) Vol. 8 (Special Edition)
Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
Paperback
Assistant to the Villain: A Cozy Fantasy Romantic Comedy from a Tiktok Sensation
Maehrer, Hannah Nicole
Paperback