10. Demi
DEMI
“What did you do to him?” I try to get back into the room, but the door is locked.
The building is like fucking Fort Knox, like they’re guarding the Hope Diamond or the Crown fucking Jewels.
“Come. It is time to leave.” Michael Douglas is wearing his kind face today, almost as if he pities me for getting involved with the clients, who are here simply to booster the owner’s bank balance.
I bang on the door with my fists. “Let him go! He did nothing wrong!”
I know they can’t hear me, even if they’re still on the other side of the door. The rooms are soundproofed as well as blacked out; the guys at the top are taking no chances with their VIP guests.
The bodyguard grips my left arm and tries to pull me away, and I reflexively karate chop his lower arm with my right hand. His eyes widen with surprise momentarily, then he picks me up, slings me over his shoulder as if I’m a rolled-up carpet, and strides away from the room.
“Put me the fuck down!” I pummel his back with my fists, but the guy is made of stone. My hands are on fire, and he doesn’t even react, doesn’t even tell me to shut up.
When we reach the changing room, he sets me down and blocks the doorway, arms folded across his chest, eyes steely.
“What did they do to him?”
“Get dressed.”
I plant my feet squarely apart, ignoring the pain shooting up my leg from my swollen ankle and tilt my chin upwards. “He didn’t try to touch me. You know you can’t—”
“Three…” He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t acknowledge that I spoke.
“—give someone a fucking electric shock. He didn’t break the rules. All he did—”
“Two… Get dressed or I will take you outside as you are.”
I’m only wearing panties—white panties—my nipples still hard from my brief session with Brian.
I believe him. They treat their paying guests like criminals if they get too close to the women, so they’d have no qualms about leaving me outside naked.
I’m nothing to them but a money-earner, and my gut clenches at the thought of them getting away with treating women like shit and laughing about it in their exclusive fucking clubs over a bottle of Hennessy and a stinking cigar.
I grab my sweatshirt and tug it over my head, stuffing my arms through the sleeves like a teenager sulking over not being allowed to stay out past curfew. I glare at him, and he stares straight back at me, unfazed.
I step into my running tights, wobbling when I put all my weight on my sprained ankle, and slide my feet into my sneakers without untying the laces.
Dressed, I grab my purse and face him. “I want to speak to the boss.”
His top lip curls into a smile that’s more like the snarl of a wary dog. “Time to go.”
“The guest did nothing wrong. I want to make sure he isn’t hurt.”
His expression is neutral when he says, “I will pass your message on.”
The anger raging inside my chest turns white-hot like barbecue coals reaching their peak grilling time. “I don’t believe you.”
“Not my problem.” He shrugs.
“What will happen to him?”
“Why do you care? You’re not paid to care about the guests.” He says this with such sincerity that I almost laugh.
Almost.
“Um, perhaps because it’s common decency? Have you never heard of compassion? Kindness. Consideration for your fellow human beings?”
I know I’m wasting my breath, but while I’m here talking, I still have a connection to the club. I can’t walk away now. I need to do something to redeem myself and ensure I still have a job to come back to even if it grates on my every nerve like a screeching mic.
“Sure.” His eyes suggest otherwise, and from the way he blinks, it occurs to me that he might be wearing an earpiece, that this entire conversation is being monitored, and his instructions are coming from above. “Time to leave.”
“I want it noted that the guest didn’t touch me.
” I raise my voice, so the fuckers know I’m bypassing Michael Douglas and talking directly to them.
“I made a mistake and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have encouraged the discussion about the red light, but I’m still learning, and without being briefed on that kind of situation, I had to improvise. ”
“We’re done here.” Michael Douglas tries to grab my arm and I dodge him, landing awkwardly on my sprained ankle.
“You might be, but I’m not.” I raise my fists in a classic self-defense pose, and this time he smiles.
“Have it your way.”
He steps forward and blocks my punch to his jaw which wouldn’t have landed with any impact given the height difference. Picking me up again, he gives me a fireman’s lift through the building while I yell at him and try to get free.
“Let me go! I haven’t finished yet.”
He doesn’t speak. At the exit door, he opens it easily with one hand, and sets me down carefully outside, catching me when I try to duck around him and get back inside the building.
“I’ll be back for my shift tomorrow.” My hoarseness is as much from the emotions gurgling in my chest as from yelling. “I just want to know—”
He slams the door in my face, and I’m left staring at it, the words still balancing on the tip of my tongue.
“Fuck!” I kick the door with my swollen foot and yelp in agony, tears filling my eyes.
Then I realize that, in his haste to get rid of me, Michael Douglas didn’t point me in the direction of the club’s entrance. He left me here in the alleyway. Unchaperoned. Pulse spiking in the hopes of finding Brian when they escort him from the building, I peer left and right, checking I’m alone.
My cell tells me that it’s 02:17. The sun won’t rise for several hours, and when it does, it won’t reach the gap between these two buildings, so I position myself in the shadows at the opposite end of the alleyway and wait.
Almost an hour passes before the visitor door opens and a man walks out.
I don’t have to see his face to know it isn’t Brian. This guy is well-dressed in dark-colored pants and a classic sweater, obviously expensive, but he shakes hands with the bodyguard and walks away, head held high. I wonder if he’s going home to his wife, and bile rises in my throat.
Forcing myself to watch his progress to the end of the alleyway, I don’t swallow until he’s out of sight. Then I return my attention to the door.
Over the next couple of hours, two more guests leave the same way. Both designer-clad, both with strong gaits that suggest they might whistle all the way home.
As soon as the gray light of dawn starts to permeate the shadows in the alleyway, I give up and make my way home. I can’t risk getting caught, not after my little outburst earlier, because I need this job now more than ever.
This isn’t just about forcing cracks in a trafficking ring led by billionaires and mafia families with untold power. This is about Brian too.
Pacing the sidewalks, I don’t put my earbuds in because I need clarity.
According to Brian, the reason I had no clients for three nights was because the light outside my door was red.
But why? The bodyguard with the snake tattoo wanted me to believe that it was my fault, that no clients chose me because I was somehow less alluring than the other goddesses. Or was that simply miscommunication?
I dismiss that notion with a shake of my head; he knew what he was doing when he told me that, and I understood perfectly. So, why was Brian not permitted to wait for me? That’s easy: my green light wasn’t coming on. Which brings me back full circle to my original question: why?
Do they know who I am?
I shiver and bunch my shoulders up around my ears.
They must have access to some of the world’s most advanced technology, so potentially, if they choose to deep-dive into my personal data, it will only be a matter of time before the warning flags start waving.
But these people are not your regular career criminals with a backlist of petty thefts and substance abuse.
If they had an inkling that I was working for the NYPD, my body would be rotting in the bottom of a river right now with a cement slab weighing me down.
Or… my throat clicks when I try to swallow.
They’re using me to get to Brian. It would explain the red light, withholding the one thing from Brian that he came for—Nyx—to make him want her more.
Reverse psychology in its simplest form.
Tell someone they can’t have something and their subconscious will automatically respond that they must have it.
No matter the cost.
In Brian’s case, I guess it would have cost him more than just money, if tonight was an indication of what’s been going on while I’ve been sitting in my room bored out of my skull. But still, he kept returning. Night after night, until he got what he wanted.
I find myself smiling at the thought that he’s as invested in me as I am in him, but it’s going to end badly. For both of us.
Because Brian must have something they want badly enough to keep him coming back; they’ll keep pulling his strings until he finally caves, and that’s what worries me most. JADED is only the bottom of the iceberg.
Claw your way up to the top, and the prices will match the prizes.
The more forbidden the fruit, the higher the fee.
Now that Brian is on their radar, they’ll apply pressure in all the right places until there’s no longer a way out for him. Until he’s so embedded in whatever is going on behind the scenes that they’ll keep bumping him up the slippery slope while removing his footholds along the way.
I don’t know him, he could be another Fish with mistresses all around the world and a string of assassinations under his belt, but that’s not what I feel in my gut about him.
He’s better than that.
And I have to stop it from happening.
Back at Kate’s apartment, I stand under the shower with my eyes closed until the walls start to close in on me with tiredness. Then I wrap myself up in a fluffy robe, climb into bed and sleep for six hours straight.
I wake feeling sluggish but determined.
The DI set a preliminary timescale of six weeks when I initially took the job at JADED, but I’m worried I don’t have that long.