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He lifted his head, the dim lighting finally allowing me to get a good look at his features. I was instantly offput by the huge scar on the side of his face, longing to shrink back. In his hand was an envelope, which also freaked me out a little bit.
“Margot Rollins?”
“Uh-huh. That’s me. Who are you?”
“I was asked to invite you to a meeting of a very special admirer.”
“I beg your pardon?” I half whispered, trying not to stare at his face in horror. The horrific scar had to be from a knife wound. Who the hell was this guy?
“You will be paid well for your time.” He handed me the envelope, which I hesitated to take.
But I did, my curiosity getting the better of me. I stared at him for a few seconds before opening the flap. There were several hundred-dollar bills. Instantly, I shoved it back at him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are or what you want but I’m not a whore. I’m an actress. I’m not for sale.”
When I started to turn away, he chuckled and the sound was far too ominous, as if he held some huge, dark secret.
“I assure you that the woman who’d like to see you is only requesting an hour of your time to talk. Nothing more. This is a mere token knowing you are a busy young woman. One thousand dollars now and one thousand after you meet with her.”
Why did I have a strange feeling this had something to do with the woman I’d waited on at the diner? I turned around fully, crossing my arms. “Where is this meeting?”
He pulled a piece of paper from his jacket, slowly extending his arm. I snatched it from his hand quickly, giving it a quick glance. The meeting was at the finest five-star hotel in the city, the kind of place where rooms were one thousand a night, suites three times that. A lump formed in my throat. The time was listed for nine in the morning, which I could do since I didn’t need to be at the diner until eleven.
“What is this meeting about?” I demanded, staring at him without blinking.
“That’s between you and the party involved.”
Why was it he didn’t want to tell me the woman’s name? “O-kay. And if I don’t choose to go to this meeting?”
He grinned and I was expecting to see gold teeth. “Then sadly, it will be your loss. This is a business opportunity for you and nothing else.”
I mulled over the request, two thousand dollars going a long way. I could pay rent for a couple of months, buy food, and have medicine for my mom. Maybe even a couple of books that she’d been wanting to read since she was mostly bedridden.
“What do you say, Ms. Rollins?”
Swallowing hard, I felt the heavy pulse in my neck and sighed. “Okay, I’ll be there.”
“The penthouse suite.”
“Can you tell me her first name? Anything?”
He debated, staring at me as intently as I was doing to him. “Her name is Maria.”
Maybe I was an idiot for going to a meeting with a stranger, but I wasn’t going to deny how much my little family needed the money. With my mother’s diagnosis two years before, I’d made the tough decision to move in with her to try to ease the burden of hiring help when she wasn’t in the hospital receiving chemo. We thought we’d been out of the woods almost four months before, my mother’s remission allowing her to even work parttime.
But her cancer had returned with a vengeance.
My once beautiful mother was all the family I had in the world, our friendship stronger than any disease could take from us. She didn’t deserve the horrible illness, her once beautiful raven hair falling out in clumps, her tears almost breaking me. But she was stronger than I was, never complaining even when I’d often been forced to make ramen noodles three nights a week.
This was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. However, I was no fool. If it was some scam, I would go to the police, giving up the second part of the money promised.
Maybe I shouldn’t have spent the first thousand dollars, but my mother and I needed a safe place to stay, not some homeless shelter.
I stood in the lobby of the fancy hotel, feeling like a pauper dressed in blue jeans that were close to being threadbare and a shirt that I’d owned for five years. As I headed toward the elevator, I felt eyes on me, the fabulous people all dressed in fancy clothes acting as if I was going to steal from them.
Meanwhile, I’d never broken a law in my entire life. Not one. My mother had instilled right from wrong, good from bad. She’d taught me to be a lady and care for animals and older people. I’d followed every decent path. So had my mother. We deserved a tiny break. Just one.
As the elevator headed to the twenty-fifth floor, butterflies swarmed my stomach. I’d longed for sleep, but it hadn’t come, worried about what I would find once I was here. At least my mother had laughed for the first time when I’d been able to bring home two of her favorite books. It didn’t matter I’d hunted them down in a used bookstore. She hadn’t cared.
Just seeing a smile on her face meant the world to me.
