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Now, I’d seen something better, and while I might never be able to get a fucking white picket fence, I didn’t want to be stuck as one of Tyson’s girls forever either.
Forever, or until he decided I wasn’t young and pretty anymore, kicked me out on my ass, and left me homeless.
The strip club—The Palace—was a few blocks away from my apartment building, but I still circled around the long way. I didn’t want to make it too obvious to any overly observant people where I might be headed. I knew the club owner, Vina, simply from being around the block. She used to do my job until she started dancing. She now owns the club after she married the owner, and he was subsequently shot a decade later. Surely, she’d help me out. We weren’t close or anything, but we tended to look after each other around here, just like I looked after Heidi. Now my hope was Vina would look after me.
I only needed a chance, just a chance to prove myself. I could dance. I used to do ballet when I was a child with one of my foster families, one of the few that actually took an interest in me. Unfortunately, they couldn’t adopt me. They already had seven children and were pushing it financially as it were. I tried to understand, but I was only eight, so it still broke my heart when they had to move to Europe because of Evan’s job, and I was left behind and put back in the system.
So, two years of ballet. It wasn’t much, but it had given me grace and love of movement, and I never stopped practicing, although I could only improve so much without further lessons.
A chance to show them I knew how to move, and the clients would like it. I may not make as much money there as I did—theoretically, although Tyson managed it all—hooking. But that didn’t matter. I needed to take my life back, and this was the only way I knew how.
I came up a side street and stopped, surveying the area before turning the final corner to the club. It was open twenty-four hours, and I’d like to say I was surprised that even at this time of day, there were customers present in the club, several of them drunk already, or perhapsstilldrunk from the previous night.
My hands were shaking. I needed a drink myself.
Finding Vina behind the bar talking to the girls there, she greeted me with a raised tattooed eyebrow. She recognized me but didn’t remember my name. So, I introduced myself, shaking her hand as though this were a typical interview.
“Vina, I’m wondering if you have any openings for dancers…” I glanced around, “… or waitresses.”
She scanned me, her eyes wandering up and down my body before finally resting on my face and the bruise I’m sure was forming around my nose and eyes.
My smile dropped before she even had a chance to speak, and I saw the answer on her face. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said, her voice dark and heavy with a hint of an accent I could never place. “Nothing going at the moment.”
I felt something in me break, and I leaned across the bar, gripping the edge of it when she moved her hands out of the way. Although I’m sure I looked crazy, I couldn’t help it as desperation gripped me internally. If I came out of here empty-handed and was seen, then all of this would be for nothing.
“Please.” My knuckles almost turned white with my grip on the edge of the sticky bar. “I have to get out, and I have nowhere else to go. I’ll do anything… cleaning, taking out the trash, counting money, I don’t care. I just have to get out.”
Although her expression softened, her eyebrows lowering and crimson lips turning down, the sympathy evident on her face, I knew she hadn’t changed her mind. Vina understood my desperation, and she came toward me and took my wrists in her hands, stroking my arms with her thumbs.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie. I’d help you if I could. You know I would.” I saw her gaze wander over the scars on my arms and bruises on my face again, but I took no consolation of the pain in her eyes, reflecting mine. “I promise you, the moment I have something, I’ll call you first. Do you have a number?”
Dragging my arms out from her grip, I mumbled my number, reminding myself to get it switched over from my old sim to my new one. She wrote it on the inside of her arm in between all the permanent inked artwork that adorned her skin.
I turned to leave when she snatched at me, taking my hand again. “Do you need somewhere to stay tonight? We’ve got a girl upstairs, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind a roommate for a while.”
I tried to smile but couldn’t and simply shook my head, muttering a thank you and turning to leave. I know Vina had a business to keep up, and she tried to help as many girls as she could, but I also knew she couldn’t simply let in every stray girl who wandered her way. Because then the club would be full of girls she couldn’t afford to keep, the place would shut down, and no one would have a job anymore.
I’m not sure why I thought I deserved any better than the life I had in the first place.
Try as I might, I couldn’t keep the tears at bay, not even until I was walking home, and I could cry along the way in peace. No, they were streaming down my face, thick and fast as I exited, and I wiped them away hastily. Momentarily, I forgot I had bothered to put on eyeliner and mascara and cursed when it smeared on the back of my hand, and, of course, all over my cheeks.
The bouncer grabbed my arm as I went to leave.
“Let me go, Carl,” I whispered, no energy left for any sort of confrontation.
“Girl, look at me.”
I did, and I hated the sympathy I saw on his face. Carl was almost six foot seven, arms like tree trunks, and covered head to toe in tattoos, a large skull adorning the back of his shaved head.
But his eyes, he had the softest eyes.
I never did find out what he went to prison for all those years ago, but I did know he had a good heart with a wife and family he loved very much. He couldn’t get much work other than this with his history. Who would give him a chance? But I think he liked being here, had made himself the unofficial guardian of the girls who worked here, and they loved him for it.
I’d love to have that sort of protection, but apparently, even when I thought I had it, I didn’t really.
Another reason I wanted to work here—Carl would slam Tyson’s head into the bricks if he tried to get to me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
