Chapter 1 #2
Without another word, she stands, adjusts her boobs in her skin tight tube top that she really shouldn’t be wearing at her age, and walks away without a backward glance.
Leaving dread in the pit of my stomach and making me second guess everything.
None of my dad’s men have tried anything like they did that night in the basement but my mouth has been silenced a handful of times to put me in my place.
I can work a pole like it’s nobody's business, seduce a man with a quirk of a smile, and without desiring it... I can suck a cock until a man is pleading to God and coming within seconds. I’ve been cornered and groped without permission, shoved to my knees before a man, lost a lot of dignity, but haven’t been pinned down by anyone since that night.
The Prez hasn’t allowed it and I don’t know why that scares me but it does.
I feel like I’m constantly waiting, looking over my shoulder for the ball to drop.
I see the way the Jokers stare at me like it’s only a matter of time before they do it again.
It’s what keeps me in place, scared to live, and breathing out a single word that will only lead to me getting raped again by just a small lift of the Joker’s President’s pinky finger.
The beatings still happen repeatedly like Sunday church, an obedient bone will never be in my body and I think I rebel on purpose just so I can have some control over my life and feel a spark of something from disobeying orders.
I sometimes think just taking a blade to my wrist will stop it all, but that’s not my ending.
I want to leave this place one day on my terms, not because I was forced to.
Somehow, I just know with my bastard dad, my time is running out, and with how my mom looked like a kid on Christmas morning just now…
I’m going to wake up so broken beyond repair one day that I’ll just be an empty shell.
It’s the same dreadful feeling I had two years ago in that basement.
Whistles and loud laughs of men bounce off the walls when the next song comes on.
My cue to get back out there and smile until my cheeks hurt.
I bite back a groan when ‘Bad Things’ comes over the speakers.
This isn’t a True Blood episode and this song always makes the men get even crazier out there.
Learning to dance from Doris, I’ve worked that pole like my life depended on it because it does.
It’s either dancing for Hazards Strip Club, owned by the Jokers, or being passed around like someone offering a joint to all the one percenters again because they won’t refuse a chance to get a high from me.
Dropping to my knees at the entrance of the curtains, I start crawling towards the edge of the stage in slow movements with my back slightly arched, flipping my hair while biting my lower lip.
I hate this. Nothing is hidden, I wish I could be dressed in my favorite leggings and oversized sweater that is stuffed in my locker, it brings me comfort.
Instead, I parade around in lacy underwear that I’m forced to wear and it doesn’t leave anything to the imagination, all my past bared to the world as horny men gaze at me as if I’m an object and not a person.
I love to dance, don’t get me wrong, but only if it’s something I want to do in a carefree way.
Not this way. It’s supposed to be sensual and exotic how my body moves but it just makes me feel dirty with all the predator eyes on me.
With a few hair flips, the front row drunks try reaching out to touch me with eager fingers but I slide back on my knees until my front is facing away from them so I don’t have to look into their greedy eyes.
With a couple of hip rotations and an eye roll that I know no one can see, I slowly start to bend backwards until my back touches the floor with my legs spread in the air and my body arched off the sparkly black stage.
Usually, I’m pretty good at ignoring the gazes on me but I feel one that sends body wracking chills over me.
It’s kind of like someone spilling acid down my spine.
Tipping my head back, my back arched so it looks like I’m in the throes of passion when in reality it’s completely fake, I see a pair of cold, vacant blue all-too-familiar eyes staring me down from the edge of the stage.
Cruz.
The man that made me bleed when I didn’t want to give him an ounce, a man I once found handsome standing at six feet tall, broad shoulders like he would protect me from anything that came my way. Little did I know he would ruin me, he became my villain when I needed a hero.
My heart stops beating for a second and it’s like he knows because a snail-like smile takes over his face, showing the devil looking back at me.
He never comes here, always doing the bidding of Payne without argument like a good little soldier, and hardly looks at me when my father is around, while I try to stick to the shadows at the compound.
He always stands too close when we’re alone in the same room, sneaking in touches that feel snake-like but he hasn’t done anything else for two years, just torments me with words instead of actions.
Right now, he’s gazing at me like I’m no longer a person, as if I’m owned.
His.
I break eye contact, climbing to my feet, stumbling in my exotic heels towards the pole on shaking legs, and cursing myself for showing weakness.
Bile crawls up my throat, pooling in my mouth and I’m counting down how much longer until the song ends.
Twenty more seconds. If I run, it’s only going to be reported back to Payne and I’ll end up on my knees in that fucking cold basement with more scars dragging down my body.
I’m going to run out of exposed skin one day.
I should have listened to Uncle Rig when he told me to stay away from Cruz.
His exact words still play on repeat in my head to this day,
“That boy, something isn’t right with him in the head, Tillie, and you stay away from him because a man without a soul is only good at one thing. Not feeling a damn thing.”
I remember it so clearly, sitting on the leather seat of his motorcycle, playing with the handles as he worked under the hood of a GT350.
He would always glare at Cruz whenever he was around especially when I started growing boobs.
I should have fucking listened when I was fourteen, I could have avoided him like the plague even if it wouldn’t have changed a thing, at least the thought of preparing myself would have made it better for me.
It took me having my body violated by Cruz to realize what monster lays beneath.
When the song ends, my feet can’t carry me fast enough off the stage.
Bypassing my vanity without stopping to wipe off my makeup, I head straight to my locker and swing it open so hard that it bangs against the metal locker next to mine.
Not bothering to even change out of my underwear that sticks to me like a second skin and glitter covering me from head to toe, I quickly shimmy into my skinny jeans and my green sweater that hangs off one shoulder while slipping my feet into my converse in hurried movements.
Grabbing my bag from the bottom, I shut the locker door and jump back with a shout stuck in the back of my throat.
“Tillie, you weren’t trying to run away from me were you?”