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"Two hundred," I blurted out. It seemed like a ridiculously high number to me, and I didn’t even know what he was expecting from me for that kind of cash. He raised his eyebrows then shrugged and pulled out his wallet. Inside, there was a stack of bills, and he handed them to me. I wanted to count them, to make sure he wasn’t trying to fuck me over in some way, but I figured that would have been rude.
He leaned back in his seat, spreading his legs, gesturing to the spot on the floor below him.
"What are you waiting for?" he demanded. His voice had shifted tone now, something sharper, crueler—a glint in his eye that told me he enjoyed talking to me this way, and now he felt as though he had the power he wanted over me.
I stared down at the spot he was pointing to, for a moment not sure if I could do this. I could give him back the money, tell him I was sorry, go back to the changing room and get changed into my jeans and hoodie again. I could leave this place and never come back, chalk this all up to some stupid mistake and pray nobody ever found out about what I had done, how close I had come to going through with this.
But then, I thought of my family. How much they needed me right now. And how, despite everything, I would do anything it took to protect them.
Pushing my shame to the back of my mind, I sank down to my knees between his legs and reached for the zipper of his pants.
Chapter One – Selina
I didn’t even bother to keep the smile on my face as he headed for the door.
"Thanks," the client muttered to me as he pushed open the door to my room and headed out again. I almost laughed at the sound of those words. Thanks? For what he had done to me? Yeah, that was a hard thing to believe.
I grabbed the envelope he’d left on the bedside table and quickly counted all of the cash he’d left there. I’d been fucked over too many times to trust that these johns wouldn’t try to get away without paying me everything I was owed. And Stefano took a cut from me anyway, no matter if I got screwed over or not.
All the money was there, thank God. I stuffed it into the drawer and flopped back on the bed, catching my breath for a moment. I knew it wouldn’t be long till Stefano sent in the next client, and I needed to shower and change the sheets before then.
But I was exhausted. Shit, I hadn’t been sleeping lately, with all the powder I’d been taking, and it had left me sluggish and out of it. But a bump right now might be what I needed to get myself up and going again—sure, it might not have been the smartest move right before I had another client, but they got what they paid for. And if I needed a few lines to get through another booking, so be it. They weren’t paying me enough to stay sober.
I grabbed the small baggie stashed in the bottom drawer of the bedside table and tapped out a generous line onto the scratched, stained wood on top. I tipped my head back, clearing my throat before I leaned down to snort it up in one go.
Fuck. The high hit me hard, rushing from my chest out to the tips of my fingers, where I could feel it tingling with every move I made. I grimaced, almost a smile, if you looked at it the right way.
Getting these hits of highs, it was the closest thing I found to happiness these days. I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually felt that warmth in my chest, that sureness that everything was going to be alright. How the fuck was I supposed to believe that, after the shit I had seen? How the hell was I meant to trust that there was anything out there worth waiting for when I felt like everything was falling apart?
I dragged myself to my feet and climbed into the shower, washing off the memory of my last appointment from my body. I could still feel his hands all over me, grabbing hold of me, pulling in close to me, his rancid breath on my neck as I tried to close my eyes and dissociate long enough to get through this. His tongue in my mouth, rubbing all over my lips as he tried to get me to respond in kind. At least he wasn’t one of those cocky guys who acted as though he had just blown your mind six ways to Sunday when he was done. No, he seemed to understand that I hated this, and he just wanted to get his nut and then get out. Fine by me.
The lukewarm water flooded my body, and I felt the high start to build in my head, turning to anger. I knew I needed to chill the hell out before my next client arrived, but sometimes, the reality of all of this would hit me like a ton of bricks, and I didn’t know how to handle it.
Stefano had been exploiting me like this for … I didn’t know how long right now, and I didn’t really want to think about it, either. It had been the better part of a decade since he had picked me up at the club I’d started working at as a teenager, after he’d found out that I had a reputation for providing extras to clients for a little more cash. He'd told me that he could get me more clients, more money, and provide me a safe room to work out of. Even though I was young, I should have seen then that it was exploitation—that he was talking about a brothel, about becoming my pimp. I had been so desperate to get out of the club, where all the girls seemed to hate me for how willing I was to give those extras away, leading to all of them getting pushed for it too, I had accepted.
And now, I was stuck there. Never making enough money to get out, and whatever I did come up with, I sent it back to my family account. Secretly, of course—I used a fake name, not wanting them to know where I was, not wanting them to even know I was still out there at all. I was sure they hated me, after they found out what I had been involved in; I could still see the sadness written all over my father’s face when he had discovered how I had been making money to pay for his treatment, the hurt as he realized that his precious little girl had become a whore.
And it was that expression that played on my mind when I was servicing the men in Stefano’s brothel. So much so that I needed something to get it out of my head. And that’s when I started using—drink, at first, but the smell of it was strong enough that clients started complaining, so I turned my attention to something a little more subtle. Coke—the powder was enough to give me the energy to get through another shift, and soon, I found myself hooked on the foul shit.
Stefano provided it, of course, for an extra cost. I tried not to think about how much of my money was going directly back into his pocket; it tore me up inside just to imagine it. I had convinced myself I was doing all of this for a good reason, when I had started with it, but these days, I couldn’t even con myself into believing that anymore. No, I knew what was happening here, and I knew that I was just working to support my habit, trying my best to get through all of this without losing my mind in the process.
I stepped out of the shower and heard something downstairs—voices, raised, the sound of a commotion. Some guy didn’t get a date with his usual girl, or something, no doubt. The men who came to this place, all of them were scum of the highest order—the kind of men who wanted women who hadn’t had a choice about getting involved in this business, who clearly got off on the fact that they were stuck here with no way out. Maybe it should have led to some friendship or support between us, but we all just kept to ourselves, too ashamed and strung out to focus on anything other than getting through the day and making it out the other side again.
But the noise didn’t drop off. The voices were getting louder now. Normally, Stefano’s men would have dealt with whatever chaos was going on down there quickly, to avoid putting off the other guys getting serviced, but whatever this was, it clearly wasn’t going away that easily.
I cracked the door to my room and peered out, along the corridor lined with peeling paint. I could hear men yelling to each other, what sounded like orders.
"Go up to the top floor, clear out all the girls!” one of them yelled. I froze. Shit. Was this a raid? Cops? I knew they hated us almost as much as the pimps who whored us out did, and they would do everything they could to make us pay for daring to work in a job like this in the first place. I was about to dive back into the room when someone appeared at the top of the stairs and rushed towards me.
"I’m here to get you out," he told me, lowering his voice and grabbing my arm. "Come on. We need to go."
"Get me out of what?” I demanded, defensive. I wasn’t going anywhere with these guys. I knew Stefano was mafia, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if that was exactly what these guys were too, trying to clear out the rest of the girls so they could start a brothel of their own.
"We’re here to help you," he urged me, and I narrowed my eyes at him, crossing my arms over my chest, trying to evaluate the situation.
Okay. If I left with them, I could get out for a while, at least, and maybe I could keep the money that had been left by my last few clients, claiming to Stefano when he asked that these guys had taken it from me.
"Wait here," I ordered him, and I went back to the bedside table, emptying it of the cash and the baggie I’d kept there. He shook his head, pointing to the bag.
