Chapter One — Elena #2
But sensible had gotten me here, hadn’t it? Sensible had gotten me a doubled debt and a hand over my mouth and a car door opening onto nothing.
“Okay,” I said.
************************
The hotel was nothing like anywhere I’d ever been.
It was not a casino hotel. There were no ringing slot machines, no carpets printed with aggressive patterns, no smell of smoke and alcohol.
This was something quieter and more absolute.
It featured a private elevator that required a key and floors that didn’t creak.
A suite that opened onto floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the city, the Strip laying out below us like a circuit board lit from within.
I stood in the middle of the living room and didn’t sit down.
He set his jacket over the back of a chair and worldlessly moved to a bar cart near the window.
He poured two glasses of something amber, setting one on the coffee table in front of me without pressure or ceremony.
Then he sat in the chair across the room and looked at me with those still, exposing eyes.
Aside from the fact that I felt vulnerable, the air between us felt like it was charged with something like adrenaline.
I sat and picked up the glass, because my hands needed something to do, and I didn’t drink from it.
“They call themselves loan brokers,” I started.
“When I first came to Vegas I needed to make rent for three months straight—I was in between jobs, and someone at the club told me about a service that gave advances. Private lending. Fast approval, flexible terms.” I heard how na?ve it sounded, even then.
Especially then. “The interest rate was in the contract. I just didn’t—” I stopped.
“I didn’t really understand what compounding meant.
Definitely not the way it works when the people you’re borrowing from aren’t a bank. ”
He said nothing. He just watched me with those eyes that didn’t give anything away. No dismissiveness, impatience, or calculation. He listened the way very few people listened: like the information actually mattered.
“By the time I realized what was happening, I owed twice what I’d borrowed.
I’ve been making payments — I make payments every month — but the interest grows faster than I can cover it, and now they’re saying…
” I set the glass down. My throat was tight.
“They’re saying cash isn’t what they want anymore. ”
“I know what these men are,” he said, his tone simple.
“I figured you might.” I looked at him directly for the first time since we’d sat down. The lamplight softened the severity of his face without quite erasing it. “Who are you?”
He considered the question. “Someone who finds men like that inconvenient.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”
Yet he didn’t offer one. His eyes landed on my wrist. “You should put ice on that.”
I pulled my sleeve down. “I’ve had worse.”
Something shifted in his expression. Not pity—I would have gotten up and left for pity. It was something harder to name. A kind of recognition.
“You’re a showgirl,” he said. It wasn’t a question. The stage makeup I hadn’t fully removed probably told him that, the glitter still clinging to my collarbone, the remnant of false lash adhesive at my right eye.
“Yes. I’ve been for three years.” I paused. “You can check if you want. I’m not hiding anything.”
“I wasn’t asking if you were.”
The events of the alley were already acquiring the slightly unreal quality of things that happened to other people—the arms around me, the car door, the sound of someone hitting the ground —and underneath all of it was the knowledge that nothing had actually been solved.
“Tonight,” he said, “you sleep. Tomorrow, we talk about options.”
We.
That word landed somewhere in my chest and sat there.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked.
He held my gaze. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he uttered in a level tone, “I was there.”
Not quite knowing what to say in response, I swallowed.
I sat in a stranger’s suite in the small hours of the morning with a bruised wrist and half my stage makeup still on, and somewhere beneath the fear and the exhaustion, something else was moving. Something warm and dangerous and entirely inconvenient.
I didn’t understand it yet. I only knew that when I finally looked away from the window and back at him, he was still watching me with those quiet, unreadable eyes.
Okay, I’m drawn to him.
Somewhere between his unreadable expression and his fierce aura, I found myself wanting to be closer to him.
His presence was both comforting and unsettling, I didn’t know how to explain it.
While I didn’t fully understand the tension between us, I knew I couldn’t ignore it.
I should keep my distance, yes. But it seemed like fear and exhaustion seemed to be responsible for lowering my defenses.
I don’t know this man.
But, regardless of what I did(or didn’t do) something was sure: This night was the beginning of a change that might be irreversible—I just didn’t know if that would be to my salvation or devastation yet. I just didn’t want to leave.