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Did I even care?
“Let me buy you a drink.”
I glanced to my left, my head feeling like it weighed a ton as I turned it. The guy sitting next to me looked nice, with a light gray button-down shirt, his tie loosened and his hair slicked off to the side. He was clearly a businessman, maybe coming to the club to unwind after a stressful day of mergers. I looked down at his hand, saw the gold wedding band, and lifted my gaze back to his face. He didn’t look the least bit ashamed that he was here, trying to pick up some random girl while his wife was probably at home with his kids.
I didn’t even bother responding. Being here wasn’t helping me, not like I’d hoped. I’d wanted to be surrounded by people, to feel like I was nothing among a sea of everything. Instead I felt suffocated, like my own thoughts, my own needs were taking me further into the recesses of a place I’d never be able to claw myself back up from.
But going “home” wasn’t an option. I needed fresh air, needed to breathe. I needed to still be close enough to something, to someone instead of surrounded by nothing. I pushed my way past the deadbeat husband, through the heavy crush of bodies gyrating on the dance floor, and finally made it outside. I sucked in a deep lungful of air. A few people were smoking to the side, the stench of cigarette smoke cloying, suffocating. I moved past them, turned the corner of the building, and found myself in a semi-quiet, pretty dark alley.
I had some privacy, some breathing room, but stayed close enough to the corner of the building to feel like I wasn’t alone and foolish for coming out here. When I sat on the curb, the smell of piss, vomit, and stale beer filled my head, making me want to gag. But I didn’t move. I felt this tingle of reality deep inside me, this problem that I’d never solve making me its prisoner. I could hear people around the corner, their laughter, their drunkenness causing them to be carefree.
I stared at the alleyway before me, the darkness creeping around, promising absolution, nothingness. That’s what I wanted, to just be swallowed whole.
This alley wasn’t where my problems stemmed from, just the one where the mystery man had taken control and “saved” me with a gun and unconcern. No, my problems had started when I was born into a world that didn’t want me, when I was introduced into a life that already hated me.
I looked up and into the “eye” of the security camera pointed at me.
I pushed the tears away with angry swipes to my cheeks. I wouldn’t cry for anything, for anyone, least of all myself. I’d gotten into this mess, and I’d figure out a way to get out of it.
Leaving. Running. That was my only option. They might find me, probably would if I was being honest, but they’d just take me here, now, anyway. Running would at least not make me a victim. It would make me a fighter, and that’s how I’d survive.
Until they catch up with me, which they will eventually.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, so tired. I hung my head, closed my eyes, and just let the deep bass of the music come through whenever the front door was opened. The hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood on end. I lifted my head and saw large black boots in my vision. I couldn’t see the man who stood in front of me clearly, the shadows were too thick, but for some inexplicable reason I knew I’d seen him before.
That night in the alley. He was with the man in the suit.
They’d been dangerous, the violence swirling around them like an imprint, a promise. They hadn’t said one word, yet their message had come through loud and clear.
And then he held his hand out to me. I should have gotten up and left. I didn’t need any more trouble, but I found myself just sitting there, looking at it, wondering if it was a lifeline or an offer to drag me further into hell.
“He wants to see you,” the man said, his voice deep, serrated. I felt his words slice into me like a rusty knife, opening me up, draining me dry.
But instead of going, leaving the clear threat I knew awaited me, I found myself placing my hand in his, letting him lift me off the ground, and following him as he led me farther into the darkness.
ChapterEight
As soon as I stepped through the door I knew exactly where I was, who sat in front of me. I didn’t know his name, but I knew he was the man who’d been in the alley, the one who’d pistol-whipped that asshole who’d assaulted me.
His office was hot, or maybe it was the way he stared at me. It was like he could see right into my very soul, and threatened to snatch it up and devour it if things didn’t go his way.
He didn’t say anything for long seconds, but his silence spoke volumes. “Come closer,” he said—ordered—calmly.
I took a step forward.
“You know who I am?”
I shook my head. “I mean—” I swallowed after I said those two words. “You’re the man from the alley, the one who saved me.”
“Saved you?” He leaned back in his chair, his focus on me.
I nodded. “From that asshole.” I stared at the TV monitors behind him, an array of shots of the interior and exterior of the club. He was the one behind the “eye” then, watching, calculating.
I heard the door behind me shut with a deafening, finalclick. I was now left alone with this man.
I’d been a crying mess, broken and so damn scared of where my life was going, when that other shoe would drop, I hadn’t even been able to stand. But here I was, for some unknown reason, and I didn’t know whether to beg for help or run in the other direction.
I felt like I was this little rabbit facing a feral, starved lion.
