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The man shrugs, his tight shirt rippling with the movement. “Quiet. Had to toss out a guy who ran out of money. Stef is crying, but that isn’t new.”
Giulio sighs loudly. “Again? She’s been here what, a month? I can’t really sell her as a ‘new girl’ anymore. She has to stop with the tears.” He turns around to gesture at Damien. “Call, um, whatsherface. So she can talk to Stef and teach her how to fake it better.”
Damien’s hand on my neck tightens again, then I hear a small huff. “I don’t know whowhatsherfaceis, Giulio.”
Giulio rolls his hand and snaps his fingers. “You know… Bernardo, you know who I mean, right?”
Bernardo clearly does not know, because he shakes his head. “One of the other girls?”
“No, no. I mean… Ah, right. Chantal! FromBare Essence. She’s got a way with the girls like nobody else. Actually, I’ve said I want to promote her, right?” Giulio claps Bernardo’s shoulder. “Thanks, man. Damien and I are gonna be in the VIP room, so let Donny know it’s reserved right now.”
So many names that mean nothing to me. I don’t know if I should try to remember them. Lucia would, probably. She was always better at remembering people than I was, telling me about this or that man who’d hit on her at a party.
But that had been before Victor Corvi had taken her, when she’d been more my sister and less a stranger I barely even recognized anymore.
I swallow hard, trying not to think of the way Victor had tried to convince me to step away from Damien and Giulio and to go with him instead. I don’t know what kind of idiot he thinks I am, but at the same time… Lucia seems totrusthim. It’s all fucked up, but I hadn’t had much of a choice once Giulio had put the knife to my neck and forced me to go with him and Damien anyway.
Giulio chats with the man at the door for a little longer, and I startle when Damien’s fingers flex on the back of my neck and he guides me deeper into the shithole that’s supposed to pass as a strip club.
It’s trashy, to put it lightly — not that I’ve been in enough strip clubs to know what is or isn’t classy, but I know this one is far from the top tier — and everyone looks… tired. The women are putting on a token performance, something I quickly look away from, and the men leer and reach out and grab even though I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to touch. No one stops them.
We keep pausing while Giulio talks to people. He smiles and jokes with them, putting me on edge. Giulio kidnapped me. He runs seedy clubs. He’s the heir to a large, sprawling criminal empire, complete with drugs and human trafficking. How can he be so… irreverent, so jovial? My father was constantly angry, always threatening violence. Giulio’s father had… he’d raped my sister, over and over.
He’d made me watch.
I blink at the sudden prickling in my eyes. I don’t want to cry. I can’t cry, not now. I don’t even deserve to cry, not when I think about what Lucia has gone through, what the women here are going through.
We finally arrive at a black door decorated with some tacky decals. Faded letters declare the room beyond “VIP.”
Giulio opens the door and immediately goes to sit on the wide couch. I notice it’s made of a black, smooth material. Not leather, nothing so rich could possibly be here, but something easy to clean.
There’s a bed pushed up against the far corner, and a pole that runs down the center of the room. All the seating is arranged around the pole.
Damien taps my ankle with his foot, wordlessly telling me to move inside.
Giulio grins and pats the spot on the couch next to him. “Vanessa… Nessa, is what your sister calls you? Come on, sit with me. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
I stay standing, folding my arms across my chest, as Damien closes the door behind us. “You can call me Vanessa,” I inform him as haughtily as I can manage, trying not to let him see just how close I am to breaking down. But Lucia had gone through so much worse. I can deal with a conversation with Giulio Pavone.
Giulio laughs and claps his hand against his thigh. “Sure, why not. Vanessa’s not a bad stripper name anyway.” Then he smirks at me, even as the color drains from my cheeks. “You do you, but I don’t know if you really want to piss off your new boss, though.”
I stare at him. “I’m not a stripper, and you’re not my new… boss,” I tell him. I’m dizzy on my feet, my knees threatening to buckle, but I’m not going to sit next to him. I try to pull away from Damien, to lean against the wall and gather myself.
Damien sighs and shifts his hand from my neck to my shoulder. “Giulio, don’t scare her. We took her for leverage against Corvi.”
Giulio rolls his eyes and flops back on the couch. “Spoilsport. But we can’t keep her around doing nothing. That’s just a waste. She’s hot enough, and we really don’t have any girls that corner thatgirl next doorvibe the way she does.” After a brief pause, he leans forward again. “Actually, we’ve got no idea if we even need her anymore. I’m definitely putting my money on Corvi, but who knows, maybe my old man pulled a surprise win.”
“Last I saw, Guerra was on his tail,” Damien comments. His attention suddenly focuses on me. “Was your sister sleeping with him? They were pretty cozy.”
I blink at him. The idea of Lucia having sex with Angelo Guerra is baffling. “What? No! She wouldn’t sleep with him.” But doubt nags at me, just a little, as I wonder just what Lucia had been up to.
Giulio pulls out his phone and dials a number, setting it to speaker. It rings a very long time before somebody finally picks up.
“The number you have dialed is out of service,” a vaguely familiar masculine voice says.
Giulio lights up. “Whoa, really? You gotta tell me: how fucking bloody was it?”
There’s a pause, and a snort. “You realize your dad’s got you listed as ‘ungrateful brat’ in his phone?”
