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11
CAMBRIA
Since the night that Abram tried to break in, I haven’t seen him at all. He never told me where he was going, and even though I’m not hisgirlfriend,I’m worried about him. Even Ariella doesn’t know where he is. At least, she isn’t telling me.
It’s been ten days, and every day that goes by increases the risk of Cole finding me. I’ve reset the trap that Abram walked into, but now I’m starting to feel like it isn’t enough. A bear trap, a gun, whatever. I’m just as vulnerable as I ever was if Abram isn’t around. I feel like a fool, trying to protect myself as a tiny woman against a known killer.
Cole hasn’t tried to reach out to me since the first time he left prison, but I know better than to assume that this makes me safe. I work in a strip club, for fucksake. Even if he didn’t come looking for me, he could walk right in and see me from the front door. The thought of Cole walking in on me dancing for other men makes me sick to my stomach, even though I hate him and resent him more than anyone.
Even more than Abram.
I have to admit, even though I’m nervous about not having Abram here, I feel like I dance better when he can’t see me. I’m always so careful not to be too flirty with the patrons just in case he’s watching and feels jealous. He hired me for this job, but I still catch him giving me questioning glances every once in a while when he’s here at the club. Could he allow himself to get jealous over me even though he put me in this position? That would be extremely self-defeating.
With his history, that wouldn’t surprise me a whole lot.
Without his gaze following me all over the stage, I feel free to dance as provocatively as I want to. The tips begin to flow in easily within only a few minutes, and I have to admit a sense of pride at how willing men are to relinquish their hard-earned money to me. I’m not even touching them, but for this moment, they worship me.
I’m spinning around my pole when I catch a glance from a man at a table just behind the crowd that has collected around me. He’s staring at me with an unreadable, vaguely threatening expression.
This isn’t uncommon, of course. Men come in here all the time who secretly hate women. They get off on watching us debase ourselves. But the end of the night, they’re the ones who paid to come in here just to leave with a hard dick and no money.
Sometimes I enjoy when these types come in because it gives me the motivation to tease them harder. This one, however, doesn’t seem to be interested in the dance at all.
When my session is up for the hour, I step down off the stage and watch the man’s eyes follow Mandi as she steps up. His expression doesn’t change; cold, unamused, brooding.
I start to walk over to the bar when I notice that there are at least three other men who have taken the same position: seated at a table, refusing to engage with any of the girls, or even order anything to drink. They paid the cover charge, so they’re legally allowed to be here, but the longer they stay, the more agitated the girls will get that they aren’t paying.
Ariella waves me over to the bar with a smile on her face. As I make my way over to meet her, I watch peripherally as one of the strange men at the tables reaches at his side, pulls out a gun, and fires three times into the ceiling.
At first, there are shrieks of confusion. When the music is cut, at least five men have risen from their seats, guns drawn with rage in their eyes.
“Everybody get on the fucking ground!” shouts the one that had been watching me.
Ariella’s face turns completely white, and I can see the panic in her eyes as she considers what to do. It’s obvious that she wants to kneel down behind the bar, at least to limit her exposure to whatever hell we’re about to have rained down on us.
Before I can shout out to her, I’m grabbed from behind as both my hands are cuffed together. “Fucking walk!” shouts a male voice from behind me as he shoves me forward into the backstage area. All of the other dancers have been cuffed or chained, and within ten minutes of the first shot being fired, we’re all gathered at the back.
Surrounded by men with pistols, now joined by more men with machine guns, we cower in the corner of the room. I can hear at least two women crying quietly to themselves when one of the men shoves the tip of his gun into the side of one woman’s head.
“If you want to make this difficult, we can make this difficult. Don’t say a fucking word, don’t scream, none of that shit,” the leader of the group orders as more armed men file in.
“Please, we don’t need to do this,” Ariella pleads, fighting back tears herself.
Without a word, the leader walks up to Ariella and smacks her in the head with his pistol. She falls to the floor like dead weight, her temple bleeding onto the floor.
It’s damn near impossible not to scream at the sight of our own leader, our den mother, potentially dead on the floor in front of us as we face death ourselves. These men aren’t bluffing. They aren’t fishing for anything. They know why they’re here, and they aren’t going to let a couple of loud-mouthed strippers change their course.
They will kill us all if they have to.
But why?!
And where the fuck is Abram?
With my phone tucked into the band of my dance clothes, I fish it out with my hands behind my back, attempting to trigger the emergency response. My fingers are curled too awkwardly around the phone as I press the button, and I’m locked out temporarily. Fuck.
It will probably only be a few minutes, but minutes count more than anything right now.
As I listen closely, I can hear the men out on the floor absolutely ravaging the place. Broken bottles, gunshots, somebody pounding something with a sledgehammer. I have no idea what they could possibly want with this place, but I have a bad feeling that it’s related to Abram’s uncle and their little underground business.
