He stops in the crowd, and I see the way other men look at him—with apprehension. I see the way they move aside to let him pass. Fear whispers over my skin. The other men are panting after the girls, but not this one. He’s too cold for that, too sure he can have any one of them with a snap of his fingers.
And that’s what he does—snaps his fingers like I’m a stray puppy who’s lost her way.
That’s what I am to him.
I hurry to catch up. I get curious looks from the other patrons, but I ignore them. I’m not sexy and beautiful like the women onstage. I’m still wearing my white shift from Harmony Hills, my hair long and uneven at the bottom. We’re not allowed to cut it.
There’s a stairway to the side of the stage, and I follow him down. A guard of some kind waits at the bottom. His gaze flicks over me, dispassionate, as if evaluating me as a threat. I guess we both know I don’t pose any, because just as quick his gaze returns straight ahead.
The room below is more basement than office, the ornate wooden desk out of place on a concrete floor. The man in the suit shuts the thick steel door, locking us in.
His footsteps echo as he crosses and sits behind the desk.
“Sit down,” he tells me without even looking at me.
Sixteen years of training, of scripture ensure that I do what I’m told. I perch on the old wobbly chair in front of the desk. This room scares me. It’s suited to interrogation…or torture. If that door can keep the noise out, it can hold my screams inside. No one would hear me over the thud of music anyway. And that guard waiting outside… I know without asking that he wouldn’t let me leave.
I’ve traded one prison for another.
The man pulls out a cell phone and dials. Alarm spikes through me. “Who are you calling?” I demand, my heart beating fast.
“The police,” he says, his strange gray eyes meeting mine.
Panic claws at my chest. “No,” I burst out. “Don’t.”
One eyebrow rises. “Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll give you a lollipop before they send you home.”
“You can’t send me back there.” When I was five years old, I colored on the walls of the chapel. I had to write I am a sinner on my arm twenty times with a steel-tipped feather. You can still see the scar of the last r on my hand if I’m in the sunlight. The punishment for running away, for getting dragged back, would be much more severe.
That earns me a low laugh. “I can do anything I want with you. You seem like a smart girl. You already know that.”
“Then let me stay,” I whisper.
Pale eyes narrow. “Why?”
“Like those girls out there.” My heart is beating out of my chest. I don’t even know what I’m saying, whether I really want this or not. Whether I can even do it. “Let me work here.”
Frustration flashes across his stern face, so slight I would have missed it if I wasn’t staring at him—studying him. Learning him just like I learned Leader Allen for years. “Those girls,” he says, his voice like ice, “are grown women. Adults. Every one of them is at least eighteen years old, because my club doesn’t break the rules.”
He doesn’t seem like a man who follows rules, but I know what he means. He picks which rules to follow and which to break—and he has no reason to choose me.
I swallow hard. I know what’s coming, I just don’t know if I’ll survive it. “Please.”
He scans me from my loose hair to my ragged dress down to my fraying cloth slippers. “And you…well, you look all of twelve years old.”
Do I really look that young? Do I really seem that innocent? “I’m eighteen,” I lie.
He smiles as if we share a secret. As if we’re both lying. “Of course you are. And I’m only calling the cops to protect your pretty little cunt.”
I blink, the word a slap. I don’t even know what it means, but I know it’s bad. I know because of the harshness of the word, the hard c and guttural ending. I know because of the appreciation in his eyes when he says it—a man like this wouldn’t like anything sweet.
He stands, and it seems like he’s ten feet tall. I shrink against the wooden chair, but there’s nowhere to go. “The truth is,” he says, his voice smooth as water, “I’m calling the cops to get you out of my hair. And the only reason I follow the rules? Is to keep the cops from sniffing around, disrupting business. My real business. Understand?”
“Not really,” I whisper.
The corner of his lip turns up. “All you need to understand is that you can’t stay here. This isn’t a boarding school or a sweatshop. There’s no place for you here.”
The words hit me harder than they should. I’ve only been in this building a few minutes. It should mean nothing to me. He should mean nothing to me. But it’s more than this building—more than him. It’s like he’s speaking for the whole city. Like he’s speaking for everything outside of Harmony Hills. That was the only place I’ve ever had, the only place I belonged. And it was going to kill me.