Dear Diamond

by Walls, Stephie

  “Hop on. I wanna get home.”

  I held out a helmet, which she situated on her head. It didn’t take long for me to securely adjust it. For a split second, my heart raced as I absorbed all that was Nikki. The makeup was gone, as was the corset and G-string, but the eyes that haunted me remained. And she was sexier in fitted jeans, a T-shirt, and a leather jacket than most women were in lingerie. She rocked anything that touched her body, and right now, I’d kill to be the fabric that had the luxury of clinging to her skin. There was no denying what Jesse saw in her, nor why he wanted her for himself. I just refused to let it happen. She might not want me, but she damn sure didn’t want him. If I could save her from that fate, calling in this favor would make the years I’d spent in the box worth it.

  Nothing that beautiful should belong to anyone, and I’d make sure Nikki was free.

  10

  Nikki

  The engine roared to life, and I realized that in a short amount of time, that sound had started to ignite a fire within my soul. It fueled me with energy, and electricity coursed through my veins as soon as the hum of the motor flowed through to my skin. I imagined the vibrations to be as addictive as narcotics, or maybe that was the man who brought the noise to my ears and the rumble between my thighs.

  It was raucous and should have startled me with as frazzled as I was after the encounter in the parking lot, but it calmed me with the anticipation of the freedom I found on the back. The solitude, the lack of noise except the rustle of wind, the inability to communicate with anything other than nature—it trumped yoga, chocolate, and my little experience with sex. Ryker didn’t have to ask me twice to hop on. The moment he put that helmet on my head, I was ready to ride.

  And then he took a right out of Swank’s parking lot rather than left.

  I leaned in while he could still hear me above the whistle of moving air. “Where are we going? My apartment is the other way.” My fingers dug into his side as I pulled myself closer to him.

  Ryker angled his head so he could watch the road and talk to me at the same time. “My place.” He put his feet on the ground at the stop sign and waited for the argument he anticipated.

  “I need to go home.”

  “You need to be safe. That isn’t in your apartment. You haven’t even heard from your mom, have you?” He was well aware that I hadn’t, so there was no point in asking.

  I shook my head. He revved the engine, put it in gear, and that ended that discussion. As much as I wanted to be mad, I didn’t want to be alone. My apartment wasn’t safe, and if Ma hadn’t called, I couldn’t imagine what that meant for her wellbeing, much less my own. There was safety in numbers, and Ryker was currently my only plus one. Keeping my head down had also meant not having friends. Without Ma, I was on my own in the neighborhood.

  In what felt like the blink of an eye, we’d gone from Swank to Ryker’s, and now I waited for him to unlock the deadbolt so we could escape the wind and the night. It was after two, and my body was exhausted, even if my mind hadn’t shut down. Inside the club, I had a false sense of security. Thinking the bouncers would protect me from anyone U21 was ludicrous—they were Union 21—yet inside those walls, I hadn’t felt threatened.

  The parking lot incident had scared me. I’d never been that close to anyone yielding a weapon, especially not as a threat toward me. Ryker was even more confounding. There was zero reason for him to be involved in this or with me. Nevertheless, he hadn’t left my side. As promised, he had never allowed me to be alone, and he’d stood between me and darkness.

  He dropped his keys onto the kitchen counter, and once I’d stepped into the apartment, he closed the door and locked it. “You hungry?” Ryker moved past me, mesmerizing me with a myriad of colorful ink as he went.

  My stomach gurgled as if it had a mind of its own. I chuckled with a hand over my belly to muffle the sound. “Starving actually.” I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and dancing took a lot of calories. Once I’d finished paying Ma’s debt to Jesse, I planned to find one of those pole gyms to workout. I’d never exercised so hard in my life.

  “What are you in the mood for?” He ducked his dark head into the fridge, but he didn’t offer any suggestions.

  I guess he wanted me to toss out a request. “Honestly, I’m not picky. Whatever you feel like making. Or if you don’t want to cook, I can eat a sandwich or a piece of fruit.” Without a response, I kept going. “A handful of nuts. A pack of ketchup…”

  Ryker turned with an armload of stuff and gave me the side eye. “Condiments? Really?” He shook his head in disbelief. I thought it was funny. “How about chicken parm?”

  I assumed he meant some ready-made thing from a box until he unloaded his arms onto the counter. Ryker had tomatoes, fresh herbs I couldn’t identify, mozzarella, chicken, and God knew what else. “You’re going to make it from scratch? This late at night?”

  He continued to fish ingredients from the cabinets as he talked. “We have to eat, and nothing’s open at this hour. Plus, why not make what you want at home? It tastes better at less than half the cost for twice as much.”

  Every detail I learned about this man surprised me. No piece fit together with the last. “Where’d you learn to cook?”

  “My mom cooked every meal we ate. She could make some elaborate shit with virtually nothing. If she got a chicken, there wasn’t a single part of it that went to waste. She had to get creative, but she has a knack for it.”

  I just couldn’t picture a young Ryker sitting around his parents’ kitchen table eating homemade meals. In my mind, he’d come out of a test tube—there was no way he’d incubated in a womb—pierced and covered in tattoos. I couldn’t picture him as a little boy, either. Somehow, he’d entered the world as a grown man with mountains of attitude and a pissy disposition.

  Totally enraptured, I studied every move he made from breading the chicken to frying it. The sauce was a work of art that he seemed to throw together like most people did a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It all unnerved me, likely since I didn’t know what to expect. I hated spontaneity. I needed clear-cut rules and fully developed plans. Monkey wrenches in my life only left me unsettled, which was where I currently stood.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  He stopped working and wiped his hands on a dish towel. His brown eyes searched my face in confusion. “You said you were hungry.”

  “No, not dinner. This thing…with me. Why are you doing it?”

  Ryker popped a chunk of raw broccoli into his mouth and chewed before he answered. He was the only person I’d ever seen who could make food sexy. “I told you—”

  “No bullshit. The real reason.”

  He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple danced down his neck and back up. The tattoos expanded and then constricted; it was art in and of itself. The browns of his eyes swirled with golds and hints of green as his pupils pulsed and then dilated.

  I expected some in-depth or detailed explanation for whatever had caused him to go protective alpha over a woman he didn’t know.

  He shrugged. “Not a clue.”

  I arched my brows, not believing his response.

  Ryker stopped what he was doing and turned the burner down on the simmering sauce. It smelled divine. “The night of Chase’s bachelor party, I couldn’t take my eyes off you. Yeah, you were gorgeous, but it was the intensity in your stare when you were on stage. And you stared me down.” He paused and let that sink in. “I can’t explain it, but your energy was different than anyone I’d seen up there.”

  I smirked. “That was rage.”

  His shoulders shook when he laughed. “Oh, is that what you call it?”

  “Well, I certainly can’t say taking my clothes off for money was ever on my bucket list. I hated everyone there. If men weren’t willing to pay for that sort of…” I stopped to consider the word I wanted to use. “…entertainment, then Jesse wouldn’t be able to exploit women to make money.”

  “The majority of those women gave Jes
se the ability to exploit them. I’m not playing devil’s advocate or anything, but most of them have a better life than they would otherwise.”

  I couldn’t believe what I heard, but I wasn’t about to argue with him. I didn’t know the girls who worked at Swank, and Ryker did. He likely had more detailed information about what they were doing there. “I just want to do my time, make the money I need to give Jesse, and get out.”

  Ryker shifted his attention back to dinner and bobbed his head in pacifying acknowledgment. There was something he wasn’t saying.

  “What?”

  His lips parted in a heavy sigh. “You’re never going to get out.” Remorse, or possibly resignation, filled his tone. “None of them ever do.” Ryker didn’t make eye contact and kept moving around the kitchen.

  “Not if I don’t give him any money, you’re right.” I took a deep breath, knowing what I was about to say would light a fire I might not be able to put out. “I need to take him the cash for the last two nights, Ryker. Every day that I don’t make payments, the balance doesn’t go down.”

  I stared at his muscular back while he messed with noodles and steamed broccoli—or whatever it was he currently did at the stove. The fabric stretched taut across his shoulders and biceps, leaving ink to peek from beneath it like the colors played an infinite game of hide and go seek. It was distracting to say the least. I couldn’t tell if my mouth watered from the sight of him or the smell of dinner.

  “Ma’s in more danger every day that passes that Jesse doesn’t see me. I can’t keep hiding out, waiting for him to come to me. I need to go to him.” I kept talking, hoping he’d listen to reason and take me to see the man I loathed.

  Ryker reached into the cabinet, still not saying a word, and grabbed two plates. I wanted to get in front of him and shake the shit out of him until he responded, even if it wouldn’t do any good. Then he turned toward me, filling the plates with food. “You’re never going to get out of this.”

  The sadness I met when his eyes found mine nearly tore me in two. The only thing that kept me from falling apart was my confusion. “I don’t understand.” I shook my head and furrowed my brow. “It’s not going to take me that long to work off eleven thousand dollars. I have almost two thousand from last night and tonight. And if I pick up more shifts, I could do it even faster.” It was basic math.

  Ryker wasn’t stupid. He could see the numbers. “Except your mom keeps adding to the total, and Jesse’s interest compounds faster than you can pay it.” He set a plate in front of me and handed me silverware.

  The chicken was golden brown, perfectly fried, and the thick sauce piled chunks of tomatoes on top of a bed of angel hair pasta. I’d never seen broccoli such a vibrant green. All in all, it was a stunning presentation, and it smelled better than it looked. But suddenly, I was nauseous and couldn’t fathom taking a single bite. “What are you talking about?”

  Ryker hadn’t been struck by an inability to eat. He’d loaded his mouth while I stared at my food, and now I waited for him to chew before he spoke. “I don’t really know how to put it in any simpler terms, Nikki.”

  “Well try,” I screeched. My arms flailed at my side in what could only be described as borderline hysteria or me attempting to take flight.

  “You said yourself that your mom has already stolen more dope since you agreed to pay off the first situation. You took responsibility for her the day you agreed to Jesse’s terms—meaning, as long as she keeps taking, your debt keeps piling. And even if she doesn’t do another bump, Jesse’s math doesn’t work like the rest of the world. You’ll never see a decrease in your balance.”

  I swallowed back the bile threatening to wretch from my stomach. “But that’s not what he told me,” I argued, though it was more with myself than Ryker.

  Pity marred his brow and worry shaded his eyes. He didn’t smile often, but this was the first time I’d seen his lips turn down in a frown. The tic of his jaw spread panic throughout my body. “Did you get the specifics of the terms?”

  A bit of relief washed over me. “Of course. I have to work a minimum of three nights a week at the club. One hundred percent of what I make those nights goes to Jesse to pay on the balance. If I want to work more, I can, and I can keep it or use it to pay down the debt faster.”

  “Any mention of interest?”

  I chewed my lip for a second and then released it. “I mean, I didn’t ask for an APR, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Have you stopped to look around the club? Wondered why those women stay so long? Or why they move to other jobs in the club when they stop dancing?” He knew I hadn’t, or he wouldn’t be asking.

  Ryker set down his fork and came around the counter. The aura that constantly surrounded him nudged me away from the bar top. It wasn’t a physical presence, but it might as well have been—it carried as much weight as he did. He rested his hands on my hips, and I wondered what the hell Ryker could say that he thought he needed to ground me for. That’s exactly what he did by holding me in his grasp.

  “Nikki, those girls all started with debts similar to yours. They never pay them off because it’s not possible to do. Jesse keeps them in his service.”

  My mind muddled with the idea of what he meant. I couldn’t have heard him right. He had to be mistaken.

  “It serves everyone involved.”

  When I dropped my sight to my feet, Ryker leaned over and stared up at me from underneath. I lifted my chin to prevent him from getting a crick in his back. Clearly, he wasn’t going to allow me to hide from this or stick my head in the sand.

  “Jesse makes money, and his club thrives. People in the neighborhood take note of what crossing the boss means in the long run and know the Union will own them for life.”

  I had to work to force the whisper to part my lips. “But what about the girls at Swank?”

  Ryker didn’t back down, and even though pity lined his brow, he gave me the truth. “They all started out just like you. Angry and thinking they’d have the Union paid off in no time. Once they realize it isn’t going as planned, they’ve already settled into the lifestyle.”

  Never. I could never get used to doing this as a career or being in service to a sleazeball.

  “The girls at the club are more similar to you than you want to admit. None of them—that I know of—set out to work at Swank. But once they got there, they found something they’d never had…security. Yes, they tip out to Jesse, but in return, he keeps them taken care of and employed.” He said that as though it was worth the exchange of their freedom, dignity, and respect. “Don’t be so quick to judge, Nikki. That’s the best some of those women can ever hope for.”

  I stood there in stunned silence, absorbing everything he’d said. The heat from his palms burned through my shirt, searing my skin beneath the fabric. My hands shook uncontrollably as I pushed Ryker away. Every nerve ending in my body frayed, leaving me raw and agitated. I’d worked too hard to stay clean from these people. All I’d ever wanted was to get out of Glendale Heights and Dacon, Illinois. And if what Ryker had said was true, the moment I’d agreed to help Ma, I gave all that up.

  Tears pooled in my eyes, and I fought like hell to keep them from falling. It wasn’t sadness those drops expressed; it was full-blown fury. My head turned from side to side in utter disbelief as I seethed. No one’s mother should ever ask their child for this sort of ransom, yet mine had offered me up as a sacrificial lamb.

  Ryker invaded my space against my will. I could hear myself mumbling, although I didn’t know what the hell was actually coming out of my mouth. I couldn’t make sense of my thoughts much less the wild movements of my arms. He captured my jaw in his hands and forced me to keep my head still. As his thumbs stroked my cheekbones, my eyes stilled on his. They were soft and warm and inviting. The harsh edge was gone, and in its place was peace I didn’t comprehend. It lured me in until my mind quieted.

  Once he had my attention, he searched my face. I wanted to memorize every inch
of him in this moment. I doubted I’d ever again witness the softness that currently sedated me.

  “This is why I didn’t let you go with Sam last night…or tonight.” His eyelids closed slowly and then reopened. His Adam’s apple moved when he swallowed, but I didn’t take my sight off him to watch the seduction of its dance. “You asked me why, and I can’t give you an answer that will satisfy you. All I can tell you is that from the moment I laid eyes on you, I had to get you out. I spent years in prison for a crime I didn’t have a damn thing to do with for U21. I’m not letting you serve a life sentence for your mom. And if the time I did results in getting you out from under Jesse, then at least I know I saved someone else from the fate I couldn’t escape.”

  I quit fighting the emotion behind my lashes and let the tears fall freely. Ryker might be spouting total bullshit. It was possible nothing out of his mouth was true. But I wanted to believe him. I needed to. Otherwise, if he couldn’t save me, my fate had been sealed. I’d never escape.

  “I can’t do this forever.” I choked on the admission and hiccups followed, breaking up my ability to string a sentence together. I took a deep breath before I continued. “I’ve done everything right. I played the game to ensure I didn’t have to stay in this godforsaken town. There’s no way I can be a tenured employee at Swank. I want to scour my skin with a Brillo pad every time I take that stage. It’s degrading, and I hate it.” I’d lost control of my mouth and my emotions. A chill ran down my spine, and my flesh erupted in goose bumps at the thought of this being my life. “Please…” I had no idea what I begged him for, but it was the only word I could muster.

  His arms surrounded me, and he tugged me to his chest where I cried against the plane of his hard pecs. Fingers traced circles on my lower back while his other hand held me tightly around the shoulders. Ryker allowed me to deplete my emotional well, and when I finally stopped jerking against him like a spastic basket case, he lowered his lips to my ear. The heat of his breath tickled my neck, and the clean scent of lemon reached my nostrils. I had never been a fan of citrus until I smelled it on him.