House of Sin (The Oily Cat #1)

THERE ARE NO HAPPY ENDINGS HERE, ONLY PAID ONES

PROLOGUE

The world ended in fire, though not all at once, and not in any way that made sense when I tried to piece it back together afterward.

It came apart slowly, cracking beneath pressure, until everything I knew had split open and left me wandering through what remained, unsure how to live inside it.

After the mine collapsed, time lost its shape.

Days blurred into one another, and nights stretched on too long, heavy with a silence that settled in after something vital has been taken.

I moved through it all as if I didn’t quite belong there anymore, like I had been left behind in a life that no longer recognized me.

Before, I had been a wife. A mother. I had known the rhythm of small things. Of warm meals, worn hands, and the steady comfort of a man who came home at dusk smelling of sweat and earth. It hadn’t been a grand life, but it had been mine.

Then the mountain took him, and everything that followed felt like living in the hollow it left behind.

For a long time, I believed the grief would be the hardest part, that the ache of losing him would be the thing that defined the rest of my life. I didn’t yet understand how much worse it could become.

They came in the middle of the night, long after the town had gone quiet. I remember the way the door splintered under their boots. The smell of whiskey. Their cruel laughter. I remember thinking that I should run, but that there was nowhere left to go.

I fought them. I don’t think I will ever forget that part, no matter how much I might want to.

I screamed until my throat burned, clawed at whatever I could reach, tried to kick until my legs gave out beneath me.

But they were bigger, stronger. And the world had already taken everything from me once—what was left to defend?

By the time Emil and Nell found me, I was barely aware of anything at all.

I lay in bed afterward, staring at the ceiling, paralyzed.

No matter how hard I scrubbed, how raw I made my skin, I couldn’t wash them off.

It wasn’t just pain; it was a theft. The bruises faded in time, as all bruises do, but what they took was not something that could heal so easily.

It settled deeper than that, in a place I could not reach.

There wasn’t a dramatic turning point, no sudden clarity or surge of anger that set me on a new path.

The change came quietly, almost without my noticing, growing in the empty spaces where everything else had been stripped away.

I understood that I could keep drifting as I was, letting what had happened hollow me out until there was nothing left, or I could find some way to shape what remained into something that still belonged to me.

The idea came to me slowly, born out of a need to survive.

Butte, Montana, was a mining town, and in every dark corner of it, there were men willing to pay for the things they couldn’t find anywhere else.

The world of brothels, though hidden, was as old as the town itself.

I had never imagined myself stepping into that world.

My life before had been far removed from it, sheltered in ways I hadn’t fully appreciated until it was gone. But I was no longer that woman.

I started small, the plan in my head taking shape over the course of weeks, although it felt more like years.

The old saloon at the edge of town became my starting point.

The wood was worn down by years of neglect, the windows clouded with the stale remains of a past life.

Still, there was something there I could work with, something I could build from if I was willing to try.

I had no money left, my husband’s life insurance hadn’t covered much, and my attempts to find work had been met with rejection.

So I borrowed what I could, scraping together enough to buy some meager supplies.

I bargained in the town square, traded favors, haggled for furniture and linens, anything to make the place livable.

I quickly learned how to negotiate, how to smile without meaning it, how to get what I needed from men who thought they were doing me a favor.

Piece by piece, the place began to change. But walls and furniture were not enough to make it what I needed it to be. For that, I needed women.

I found them in the places most people avoided looking, in the corners of the town where hardship had settled.

They were not weak, as some liked to believe, but worn down by circumstances that had given them few choices and even fewer chances to reclaim them.

What I offered was not perfect, and it was not easy, but it was a kind of control—something many of us had been denied for far too long.

The Oily Cat wasn’t a grand name, but it was memorable. There was warmth inside its walls, a sense of intention in every detail, from the heavy curtains to the steady flow of whiskey, to the way the women carried themselves with confidence.

There were rules, too, and they were not suggestions. Respect was not optional, and neither was consent. Payment came before anything else; and any man, or woman, who chose to forget themself was reminded, quickly and without apology, that they did not hold power there.

Over the next several months, my brothel grew in popularity.

Men spilled in from the mines every night, half starved for flesh, for comfort, for anything that made them feel bigger than the holes they crawled out of.

But no matter how many clients or how much money came in, I couldn’t shake the memory of that night, the attack, and the way it had shaped me.

The woman I had been before that night was gone forever, buried beneath the ashes of the life I once had.

The Oily Cat was my rebirth, a way to survive in a world that had shown me its darkest side. It wasn’t just a business, it was my revenge. My way of taking control when everything had been stolen from me. I thought survival would be the end of the story, but I was wrong.

This is not a story of survival.

This is a story of vengeance.