20. Ivy
IVY
The room is exactly what I expected, and nothing like what I expected at the same time.
It’s private, tucked at the end of a corridor that smells like leather and burning candles.
Dim lighting, the kind designed to soften everything, to make a room feel smaller and more intimate than it actually is.
Red undertones in the walls. A heavy door with a lock on the inside.
Soundproofing—I can tell by the way the noise from the rest of the club drops to nothing once the door clicks shut behind me.
And then there’s the table.
It runs along the far wall, arranged with the kind of care that suggests ritual.
Everything in its place, everything deliberate.
Leather restraints. A riding crop. A collar with a short lead attached.
Candles, maybe for wax play? Probably. A blindfold, silk by the look of it.
A paddle. A few items I recognize from experience and a few I’d need a longer look at to identify.
Whatever Vincenzo Russo does in this room every Thursday night, it isn’t vanilla.
I slide the mask into place. Black lace, covering everything from my hairline to the bridge of my nose. In the mirror across the room, I barely recognize myself. The auburn wig, the heavier makeup, the corset, the mask. I’m someone else entirely, which was the point.
“I’m in the room,” I murmur, my lips barely moving. The earpiece picks it up anyway.
Nick’s voice comes back, low and steady. “What do you see?”
“Vincenzo has a hobby.”
“Meaning?”
I run my fingertip along the edge of the riding crop without picking it up.
“Meaning there’s an entire table full of things that would add up to a real problem for our friend if anyone found out what he likes.
” I glance over the rest of the spread. “The works. Restraints, crop, collar. Whatever the old man is into, he’s very specific about it. ”
“Is the camera running?”
I adjust the pinhole on the corset so it faces outward at chest height. The angle will capture most of the room. I checked the feed on my phone before tucking it away. Clear image, good resolution. “Done.”
“Good. Now we wait.”
Yes. We wait. For me, it means standing in the middle of the room with my hands clasped in front of me and my spine straight, because that’s what the role requires.
A woman like the one I’m pretending to be doesn’t sit.
She doesn’t fidget. She occupies space like she owns it and waits for the person who’s paying for her time to arrive and submit to her.
The word submit keeps circling back in my head. I glance at the collar again. The restraints. A man like Vincenzo, who has built an empire on dominance and fear, comes to this room every week to be the opposite of the man in control of everything and everyone around him. It’s textbook, in a way.
No wonder Gabriel wouldn’t tell us the specifics.
A few minutes pass before the door opens.
I straighten, expecting to see the man I once considered my protector, the closest thing to a father I ever knew.
Instead, I find a woman in her forties with sharp cheekbones and a tablet balanced on one hand.
She’s dressed in the kind of understated black dress that tells me she’s management.
She’s wearing an apologetic look. “Mr. Russo called in a moment ago.” There’s a slight accent to her voice.
“Something has come up. He sends his apologies and says he’ll be in next Thursday instead. ”
Goddammit. Does he know? Is this a message? How could he have found out?
“Son of a bitch,” Nick mutters in my ear.
It takes everything I have not to show my disappointment and the fear touching the edges. “I see.”
“However,” she continues, looking down at her tablet, “we do have another client who’s been waiting, and he has specifically requested someone with your… skill set. If you’re available.”
In my ear, Nick’s voice goes tight. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I keep my expression neutral. Controlled. This woman is watching me, expecting an answer. The answer matters because a real employee doesn’t turn down work. A real employee doesn’t look rattled. She says yes because saying no raises questions, and questions are the last thing we need right now.
“Send him in,” I reply.
“Ivy, you’re fucking kidding me,” Nick mutters. There’s a warning in his voice.
I don’t respond because I’m not alone. The woman nods, taps a finger to her tablet, and leaves. The door closes.
“It’s fine,” I murmur once she’s gone.
“It is not fine.”
“If I say no, they’ll notice,” I hiss. “If they notice, they’ll start asking questions about the new girl who showed up for Vincenzo and then refused to work. We can’t afford that. Not when we need to come back next week.”
The silence on his end is thick. “Nick?” I whisper.
“I’m here.” His voice is clipped. “I don’t like this.”
No shit. “You don’t have to like it. You just have to sit there and drink your drink and let me do what I’m good at.”
The door opens again.
The client is a man in his mid-fifties. Soft around the middle, wearing a suit that costs more than most people’s rent.
Salt-and-pepper hair, neatly combed. He has the look of a man who spends his days giving orders and his Thursday nights paying someone to take that away from him.
I’ve seen the type before. They’re predictable and manageable, and they usually finish faster than they’d ever admit.
He stops just inside the door, taking me in. The corset and the mask, and the heels. Whatever he sees, he likes it, because he swallows hard and his breathing changes.
I don’t smile. Women like the one I’m playing don’t smile.
“Close the door,” I order. My voice is lower than usual, stripped of everything that makes it mine. This is a performance. I’m very good at performances.
He closes the door.
“You know the rules?” I ask.
He nods, eager. Already, he’s changed from the man he was ten seconds ago.
“Say it out loud,” I command.
“Yes. I know the rules.”
“And you know what to do.” I don’t move or gesture.
I simply wait. That’s the art of it, really.
The waiting. Most people think dominance is about action or force, but it isn’t.
It’s about the space between commands. The anticipation that builds in the silent moments.
The pause that makes a grown man forget he runs a company or commands vast fortunes.
Right now, in this room, he is nothing unless I decide otherwise.
He lowers himself to his knees. Slowly. I wonder what it does to his suit. Obviously, whatever he gets out of this is worth more than whatever he paid for it.
“Good,” I murmur. “Hands behind your back.”
He obeys without hesitation. “Good boy.”
In my ear, Nick is very, very quiet. I can hear him breathing, though.
Short, controlled breaths, the kind that come from a jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth.
Good. Let him listen. Let him sit out there with his borrowed membership and hear every second of this, because this is who I am.
This is what I can do. If he’s going to be with me, he’s going to know all of it.
“Eyes on the floor,” I tell the man kneeling in front of me. “You don’t deserve to look at me. Do you?”
“No. I don’t.” His chin drops immediately.
“Good. Do not look at me unless I give you permission. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” he murmurs.
“I can’t hear you.”
“Yes.” Stronger this time, but trembling a little.
I circle him once. Slowly. My heels click against the hard floor with each step. I let it build. I let the anticipation do the work. When I come to a stop in front of him, I wait until I see his hands trembling behind his back before I speak. “Tell me why you’re here.”
“I—” His voice catches. “I wish to serve.”
“You wish to serve?” I scoff before clicking my tongue in disappointment. “Do you deserve to?”
A visible shudder goes through him. “No.”
“No. You don’t. You haven’t earned anything yet.
” I pick up the riding crop from the table—not to use, just to hold.
To let him hear the leather shift in my hand, to let him see it from the corner of his vision as he stares at the floor.
“You are going to stay exactly where you are. You will keep your eyes on the floor. And you will tell me every reason you don’t deserve what you came here for tonight.
Every single one. And if I think you’re lying or you aren’t trying hard enough to please me, we are finished. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t hear you.”
“Yes.” Louder this time. Raw.
“Very good. Start talking.”
He does. He lists his failures with the desperate urgency of a man who’s been waiting all week for someone to demand this of him.
On and on he goes, like he’s been making a list. Allowing someone to speak over him in a meeting.
Upsetting his wife by forgetting their anniversary—then being unable to perform later on, in bed, something he attributes to stress at work.
He forgot to rinse the sink after shaving this morning.
His company’s quarterly revenue didn’t go up at the rate he projected.
In other words, he goes from A to Z, listing every single mundane aspect of his life while I tap the end of the riding crop against my palm.
The whole time, Nick listens.
I let it go on for exactly as long as it needs to, and not a second longer. When my customer has run out of words, breathing like he just ran a mile, I ask, “And what about that useless thing between your legs? Is it hard now, for me? Or is it limp and useless?”
Nick’s breathing changes.
“It’s… hard,” the man admits, trembling. “Very.”
“Show me. Do not look at me,” I warn, sharp, and he jumps a little before fumbling for his fly. “Show me what little control you have over yourself, you useless nothing.”
“Yes. Yes, I will.” He’s breathing faster and harder than ever as he unzips himself, then withdraws what is by any standard an average penis. Nothing more, nothing less.