“Knock it off,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you won’t know what you’re talking about until I know that you’re protected. Now, please, meet my father.”
“I can’t just meet your father in Russia. I don’t have a passport. I have a job. I have a new assignment. I can’t just take off in a plane to go to another part of the world.” A part of me, though, was fascinated with the possibility that I would be able to see Russia. It sounded like excitement to me, although I would have never told him that.
“He’s not in Russia at the moment,” he said. “You forget, his syndicate has a worldwide reach. He’s living in London right now.”
I narrowed my eyes. “London?” I felt my heart rate decrease. Although the possibility of going to Russia was something that was exciting for me, it also seemed just a bit dangerous. Maybe I was relying on stereotypes about that country, but it seemed like a place that was desperately poor. A land where stray dogs were on the streets in packs, and people didn’t have heat or running water.
But London…that was a different story. I had always wanted to visit that particular city, and it didn’t seem quite as dangerous and intimidating as Russia would have. “How long has he been living there?”
Asher shrugged. “I got a message from him a few days ago. He’s investigating a merger there, and so he’s going to be living there for the next few months at least. Maybe the next few years.”
“Well, I still don’t have a passport. And it takes like 90 days to get one.”
“I can get you a passport in a few hours. It won’t be real, but it will look real enough that nobody will ever question it.”
I was starting to warm to the idea. “But what about my job?”
“Ask them if there is an assignment that you could do in London. I’m quite sure that the music scene there is something that you could investigate and get some amazing photographs of. And they have Freegans there, too, if they want to keep you on that particular story.”
“What about your job?”
“I’m the boss. I can take some time off, and this would be something that is important enough for me to be away from the office for just a little while.”
I took a deep breath. “But what am I going to find out there? I mean, what your father does is pretty despicable. I don’t know if I can stand to be around that man for longer than an hour or so. And what if my memory comes back to me? I might suddenly remember my abduction, and then knowing what your father does might make me want to kill him slowly. I might make things worse, Asher, if I do meet him, for just that reason.”
“I know. I’ve thought about that, too. I don’t necessarily have an answer for you there, except that perhaps it would be wise for you to try to recover your memories before you go over there. That way, you can be prepared.”
“What does that supposed to mean? How can I recover my memories? Hypnosis won’t do it. I’ve already looked into it.”
He took a deep breath. “I know that. But I might know of one way that can help.”
“And what’s that?”
“I would like to take you to the underground sex club where you briefly worked.”
Chapter Nine
“What? Why would I do that? Why would I want to do that?”
“Hear me out. I’ve done research, too, on recovering memories after a traumatic brain incident. And it turns out that the sense of smell is one of the most powerful senses there is, as far as recovering memories which are lost after trauma. If you could go there and experience that club – see the sights and, especially, smell the scents – then you might recover some of your memories there. If you could process through them before you go and see my father, then there would be less chance that you’ll spin out over there. I want you to be prepared for what he has done. I need for you to be prepared for that. The best way that I know how to prepare you for that is for you to come to terms with what happened to you at that club.”
“Oh? Since when did you become a therapist?”
“CJ. I’m trying to help. If you would like to see a therapist about your memory problems, than I will be more than happy to support you in this. But I’m trying to force you to remember quickly, because, well, there’s really no time to waste. You need to meet my father, and you need to get under his protection, and that needs to happen quickly. We don’t have months and months for you to gradually remember your life for the past two years. We literally have only a matter of days.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Asher, there is something that you’re not telling me.”
“No, in this case, I’ve told you everything. Sophie and I have met, and she has made threats against you. She’s basically told me that if you and I get back together, she will have you killed.”
“But you slept with her. I can never, ever trust you after that.”
“CJ,” he began. “I know that you don’t know me very well, because your memories of me are gone. But please, listen to your heart. What is your heart telling you about me?”
I let out a breath. Asher got me there. My heart was totally with him. My instincts told me that he and Sophie had never even slept together at all. I just couldn’t imagine him doing something like that. And I didn’t have a bad feeling about him at all. There was no inner voice that was screaming at me to run away, as fast as I could as far as I could.
“That I can trust you,” I finally said quietly. “My heart is saying that I can trust you. My brain, on the other hand….” I just shook my head, unable to speak.
He smiled. It seemed that he knew that he had won. “Listen to your heart. You should always listen to what your inner voice is telling you. Your brain might be playing tricks on you. Sophie put all this doubt in your mind, but you have to clear that out and just listen to what you really believe.”
When he said that, it was like something clicked in. The clouds parted, and I could think clearly. “Okay,” I finally said after a few minutes. “I’ll go to that club, to try to regain my memories of what had happened. And then I’ll go and meet your father.”
He looked totally hopeful when I said that. “And that means that you’ll marry me?”
“Well, that’s contingent, isn’t it? On what your father says?”
He nodded. “It is. I’ll admit that it’s contingent on that. If he doesn’t give the blessing, then…”
“I’m in danger, no matter if you and I stay together or not.”
“Basically, yes,” he said.
I shook my head. “You’re choosing to tell the truth about this. I guess I should listen.”
“I guess you should.”
I suddenly knew that this whole thing was an enormous risk for me. Everything was riding on what Asher’s father said about me, and whether or not he agreed to protect me.
I could either end up the happiest woman in the world, and be the wife of Asher Sloane.
Or I could end up dead.
Chapter Ten
The next day, Asher and I went to an unfamiliar place. It was a non-descript building that had no signs on the facade or any indication on what it was. It was in the heart of a busy street on Midtown, though. Yet, anybody walking past it would have zero idea on what might be behind the doors.
I took a deep breath, because I was nervous. A part of me wanted to tell Asher just to turn around and never look back. But another part of me wanted to go through with this. Needed to go through with this. Perhaps it would be the key to at least a part of my recovery. At any rate, perhaps it could help me work through the trauma that happened there at the club, which could, in turn, help me to process what Asher’s father was involved with.
Then again, it could possibly backfire and make me even more upset about Asher’s father. I hoped that wasn’t the case, because I really, really needed for him to accept me and give Asher his blessing on our union.
We walked through the doors, and there was a woman there behind a window. She took one look at Asher, smiled, and waved both of us in.
I looked at Asher questioningly.
“I was here once before,” he said with a smile. “I, uh, paid a visit to the owner of this club. So, now, I guess, I get the VIP treatment because Robert, the owner, knows never to fuck with me again.”
“I see.” I chose to believe that was the only reason why Asher would have occasion to visit this place. God forbid he would come here for some other reason.
We were led into the main part of the club, which looked like a standard strip club with unusually beautiful women. I always imagined that a stripper would look a certain way – bleached blonde hair, huge fake ta-tas, way too much makeup. A basic trailer trash trollop. A porn star.
But these women weren’t that. They were beautiful by any standards, and it was clear that they would be beautiful out in the world, too. These women were elegant and looked more like models or movie stars than strippers. None of them looked “rode hard and put away wet.” Not one of them looked like they might have a guy named Bruno at home who wears wife-beaters and sports a bad mullet. Not that there’s any other kind of mullet but bad, especially for a man.
“Okay,” Asher said to me. “These women are highly paid by the men that they escort. Their going rate is in the thousands of dollars for a night, and they might earn hundreds of thousands for a month away with one of these men.”
We were approached by a woman who asked for our drink order, told us that her name was Anais, and said “you two looking for a third?” She smiled, and I was stunned about how easily the topic of prostitution came up. I guessed that there was no point in beating around the bush with these women. They know that the men, and women, came in there for one thing, so they might as well clear the air right away.
Asher held out a stack of hundred dollar bills and said “we’re looking for Andrea. Is she working today?”
Anais looked disappointed, but told us that Andrea was, indeed, in the club that evening. “But she’s busy,” she said, her eyes fixed on Asher.
Meanwhile, I was looking around the club, trying to find anything familiar about it. Asher was right, though, about the nose being a pathway to the brain. Smelling the scents of the bar – the smell of cigarette and pipe smoke, the perfumes that the girls wore, the cologne that the men were wearing – these all seemed vaguely familiar to me.
I took a deep breath, trying very hard to calm my racing heart. Anxiety was welling up in my throat, and I gripped Asher’s hand tight.
“In the meantime,” Anais said, “can I at least interest you two in a lap dance or….” She raised her eyebrows.
“No,” Asher said. “We’re good.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll tell Andrea that you two are here.” And, at that, she went through a door and disappeared briefly. Then, not five minutes later, she came back out and walked around the club, going from table to table, finally landing on a table full of five or six well-dressed men.
I was still gripping Asher’s hand. He told me that he wanted to see Andrea in particular, since Andrea was apparently my “mentor” at the club. The hope was that seeing her might trigger something in me, and, if she was wearing a particular kind of perfume, that, too, might trigger me.
Two of us sat there watching the crowd interact. Everywhere around us, women were giving lap dances and girls would disappear behind various doors with various men. They would inevitably emerge 10 or 15 minutes later, and the girl in question would continue walking around the club, looking for someone else to give a lap dance to and, presumably, have sex with.
I shuddered to think that this would have been my fate had Asher not saved me. Having sex with multiple men a night for money, walking around in g-strings and barely-there tops, and “dancing,” if you could call it that. It really looked like a lot of grinding, and the men’s hands were running everywhere on these girls.
“I always thought that men weren’t allowed to touch the girls in these clubs,” I said to Asher.
“This club isn’t legal. If it were, the girls certainly couldn’t be prostituting themselves.”
“Shouldn’t we try to shut this place down?”
Asher looked pained. “I thought about that. I really did. But another club would spring up in its place, and owner of the new club wouldn’t be under my control the way that this one is.”
“And why is the owner of this club under your control?”
“He just is.”
I nodded my head, and sipped my drink and said nothing. I wondered about Asher – how he could apparently just snap his fingers, and, just like that, a sex trader could be brought to heel.
Asher looked at me, and gripped my hand. “CJ, I don’t think that you know how much power the Pushkin name carries. That’s why it’s so important to me that you’re just as protected by my father as I am.”
I knew what he was talking about, but, still, I felt anxiety well up. It was bordering on fear. I felt that my memories of this place were slowly being unlocked.
In a few minutes, a tall red-headed woman headed to our table. She had long legs, large breasts and, like every other woman in this place, was drop-dead gorgeous. And she was naturally gorgeous, too, because her makeup was minimal.
“CJ,” she said. “I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”
I shook her hand politely, and she sat down at the table with us. “Andrea,” I said, although the word came out like a question.
I looked over at Asher, who was studying me intently. I shrugged, which was a non-verbal cue to him that I didn’t recover my memories just yet.
She also looked at Asher questioningly. “What’s going on?” she asked suspiciously.
“CJ wanted to come here to see if anything would trip her memory. As you know, she was in a serious accident when she left the club all those months ago. She lost a part of her memory, and she would like to see if she can recover them and process through them.”
“Oh,” Andrea said. “I see.” And then she took my hand. “Come with me, CJ.”
I looked over at Asher nervously.
“You’ll be okay,” he said to me. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”
I nodded nervously, and Andrea led me through the club. We came to a door, that seemed vaguely familiar, and we walked through. There was a dressing room in there.
“Okay,” she said. “I wanted you to be alone with me so that the rest of the club doesn’t distract you.” She sat down, and put one beautiful leg on the table in front of her. “Come here, CJ.”
My heart pounding, and went and sat next to her.
She put her wrist up to my face. “Breathe.”
I did, and the perfume on her wrist was powerful to me. It was an isolated scent, which was exactly what I needed.
All at once, things started to flood back to me. I felt panicky, and then I started to remember being there with her. I remembered the man who wanted me to do the gang-bang, and I remembered the guy who owned the yacht. I didn’t remember either of their names, but I remembered their faces and what they wanted me to do. I even remembered Andrea telling that her stage name was Ginger, and that she enjoyed the job because of the money and the perks that came with it.
“Ginger,” I said. “Your name is Ginger.”
She smiled and nodded her head. “There you go. You’re starting to remember, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding my head. “I do. I remembered that I felt absolutely hopeless being here, like I had no way out. I remembered that you encouraged me to do drugs, because I had to work here. If I stopped working here, I would be putting the people I love in danger.”
She nodded her head encouragingly. “What else do you remember, CJ?”
I felt my heart racing, faster and faster. “I took some drugs. Ecstasy and acid. And I remember hallucinating.” It was amazing how many memories were cascading into my brain just by getting a smell of Andrea’s perfume. “That man beat me.” I couldn’t remember his name, but I could see his face, plain as day. “I did something that pissed him off and
he beat me.” I shuddered, and I could feel my blood pressure rising with every word I said. “How can you work for a man like that?”
She shrugged. “I never do anything to piss him off. And, if I do, I know how to get out of it. But I have to say that, for the past month or more, Robert has laid off all the girls. I don’t suppose you know anything about that, do you, CJ?”
I shook my head. I did know about it. It had something to do with Asher “controlling” Robert with threats about his father. All at once, I fell just a little bit more in love with Asher. He might not have been perfect, but he went out of his way to make sure that the girls at this club were more protected than they were before. That meant a lot to me.
But I had to admit, at the same time, I dreaded meeting his father. To think that this man was involved in this kind of work….I shook my head. Could I marry into a family like that? Could I have a father-in-law who was into such a despicable vocation? I would want to kill him, maybe, once I met him.
I loved Asher, but I had no idea if he was for me.
Andrea put her arm around me. “You’re lucky you got out of here. I know that I talked this place up, and how much fun it is and all of that. But I was giving you a sales pitch. I really hate it here, and I can’t wait until my time here is up. I really need to put this all behind me and concentrate on getting on with my life. Finding a life, for that matter.” She looked sad.
“Andrea, if you hate it here, you can leave. Robert can’t keep you here any longer.” Even as I said that, though, I wasn’t at all sure if what I was saying was true. Asher apparently had some control over this Robert, but I had no idea how much control he had over him. Would Andrea be safe if she left?
She just shook her head. “It’s only for a few more months, and then I can hopefully leave. I admire you and envy you, but I’ve come this far. I might as well see it through. After all, Robert is a violent man, and, even though he’s been less of a bastard for the past month or so, I don’t think that he can be trusted not to…” She shook her head. “Well, you know what happens when you leave.”
Close Up: Exposure Book Three Page 7