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Two
-Lilah-
This time five weeks ago, I would have been shutting down my fancy computer and calling a friend to see if they wanted to get a drink after a not-so-tiring day of working in a cubicle.
I’d probably head home first, pet my demon spawn of a cat, and then get dressed in something skimpy. Then, I’d go out and have fun, flirt with men until they paid for my drinks, and go home to start the whole day over again.
Five weeks ago, I lived a dream.
Well, at least one thing hasn’t changed.
I’m still dressed in something skimpy and fun.
And I guess I still flirt with men until they pay me, so there’s that.
But instead of dancing on a crowded dance floor of a max capacity bar in North Jersey, I’m dancing on a stage in a crowded gentlemen's club that smells like baby powder and Axe body spray.
Quite the change in circumstances, if I do say so myself.
Truly, if six weeks ago you told me that the virginal, sweet, press picture-perfect youngest daughter of Mayor Turner would be taking off her clothes at the mafia-owned club Jerzy Girls, I would have had you committed.
But one day, in a dark, luxurious office, my world of peace and parties and affluence changed forever.
* * *
-Five weeks earlier-
“How can I help you?” the man asks. He’s my age, maybe a few years older, his hair cut short on the sides and combed back on the top, the color a dark dirty blonde. His face is serious, full of intentional aggression and intimidation, but he doesn't scare me.
I know his type.
Too much money, too much power, entitled since the day he was born.
The man who raised me is a well-loved mayor and has that same air: entitlement, greed, power.
And always, always stirring beneath the surface is the need to get more.
That’s the weakness of men like this—greed. And if you use it just right, you can use it to control them.
But I was trained from the day I was born to combat that in public, to give the voters a balance. To smile pretty, to use my siren’s eyes to win the vote, to get the donation, to distract from the unsavory side of politics. I mean, there is no way a man with a gambling addiction, who bet in underground games until he was so underwater he was emptying his oldest daughter’s trust to keep his tabs balanced, could have raised such a picture-perfect specimen. He must be good, right? That’s what my presence brings to the table. Stability. A reassurance that this is a good man worthy of your vote, your money, your trust.
“You know who I am, yes?” I ask, dragging my hand along the back of the chair across from the man. My red-tipped nails have been filed into sharp points, the kind that makes a man wonder what they would feel like digging into his back.
Every part of my life has been about creating a trap for men. Now, I’m using that power for something else. Something new.
Right now, I am using it on Paulie Carluccio.
The grandson of the current boss of the Carluccio crime family.
Paulie's father was once destined to marry my mother before she refused to be tied to the rival of her secret love. Before she realized that if she got pregnant by her father’s intern, she could avoid dragging her children through the seedy underbelly of politics, greed, and money of New Jersey.
Funny how that works, isn’t it? How the best intentions can backfire so spectacularly?
“Delilah Turner,” Paulie says then folds his fingers together like he’s actually Michael Corleone in The Godfather instead of the near-powerless grandson of a true boss and just barely four years older than me.
Yes, I did my research.
Paulie Carluccio is four years my senior, and from what I understand, he just became a capo—or captain—of his grandfather’s family last year.
