by Claire Adams
Nate was damn good at his job, too. There was no way he was going to mess this up. I liked to joke with him that he wasn’t any good, but he had been working private security for as long as I had been doing private investigation. Nate knew how to keep people safe.
He had even helped to protect the president when he visited Iraq the previous year. I knew I didn’t have to worry about him, but I still did. Nate couldn’t control the situation around him, and he certainly wouldn’t be able to protect himself if they started shooting.
We had decided together that there couldn’t be any guns in this trade. Nate was pretending to be just a normal guy. A normal guy would be terrified of what was going on, but he wouldn’t bring a gun. PJ and Chase couldn’t risk brining guns either, although we did stash some small tools in the bag that PJ had just in case she got tied up or put into handcuffs; which we hoped would not happen.
“We’re closed,” the doorman said as he looked at the men then directly at PJ.
“I’ve got an appointment at noon,” Nate said.
I couldn’t see what Nate was acting like, but he sounded good. His voice was quiet and reserved like he wasn’t really sure what was going on or how he should handle himself. He certainly didn’t sound very confident and that was exactly what I had hoped for. With his flashy clothes and lack of confidence, Stephano was going to think Nate was just some wannabe that got in way over his head.
The three of them waited outside the door while the man went inside and got someone else. It was a good thing I hadn’t come with them because the second guy was one of the men who had been in our hotel room when I returned the previous day. He had a bruised eye that I had given him. He didn’t look very happy at all to have to come out and deal with Nate, Chase, and PJ.
“What do you need?” The guy asked as he looked at PJ.
“I set up and appointment, I wanted to make a deal for her,” Nate said.
“What’s your name pretty girl?”
She looked at Nate and then back to the man at the door. It was a tense moment as I watched from the van. I really hoped she wouldn’t answer him at all. If she was pretending not to speak English she needed to play the part all the way.
“She doesn’t speak English. She goes by Ilsa though.”
“Ilsa, you from Russia?” the guy asked.
PJ nodded her head yes as she looked down at the ground. From what I could tell, things were going really good so far. Nate was acting like he had no idea what was going on, PJ was being shy and demure, things were going great.
I would have preferred that she not respond when the guy asked if she was from Russia, but I figured even if someone didn’t speak very much English they would still know when their country’s name was said. I had to trust PJ and her judgment in the situation. It was her lead we were going to follow; she was going to be the one there with Ana.
“And who are you?” the man asked Chase.
“I’m just a friend here to supervise.”
“You need a protector?” the doorman asked Nate and then laughed.
It was pretty funny because Nate was built like I was, with a big frame and lots of muscles. Chase, on the other hand, had plenty of muscle, but he was much thinner than both Nate and I were. It seemed a little odd that Chase would be there to protect Nate.
“He’s my brother,” Chase said. “I just want to make sure nothing bad happens to him.”
“Nothing bad will happen if you don’t start anything,” the man said as he opened the door to the club. “You two go sit there. You come with me,” he said to PJ.
PJ just stood still and didn’t move. She took a moment and looked around the club so I could see the set up and how many men were in there. I saw a couple guys by the front door and a couple sitting in the audience. There was a good-sized camera setup with lighting that I assumed was to take pictures and videos of the girls when they were on the stage. I didn’t see Stephano, though.
“Come with me,” the doorman said as he grabbed PJ by the hand and pulled her into the back room.
It was pretty obvious that the man had dealt with plenty of girls that didn’t speak English before. He didn’t try to talk to her too much and he guided her by pulling on her hand instead of worrying if she understood what he was saying to her.
I had to wonder just how many women had come through those doors before PJ. There had probably been hundreds of women bought and sold at that club. It made me sick to think about all those young girls being purchased by guys and what those men were going to do with them. Even when this job was done, there would always be scum of the earth that didn’t treat women right.
PJ did a great job of looking around so I could get a perspective of everything that was around. She certainly did know what she was doing. Every time I got a hint of worry that she would do something wrong, I remembered that she was highly trained for situations like this. Well, maybe not specifically our situation, but she could think quickly on her feet and I was confident she was going to help us get Ana out of there.
“Boss, here’s the girl. There’s a kid in the audience that wants you to buy her. I heard she came over from Russia and the kid says she’s too much work for him.”
Victor must have actually talked to the doorman guy and not actually to Stephano when he set up the appointment for us to come to the club. It was clear that Stephano didn’t know a thing about us showing up, but he didn’t seem to care much.
“She looks like shit, did the kid not feed her? What’s her name? She doesn’t look like she speaks English, at all. Does she?”
“No, boss. Her name is Ilsa.”
“Roxy!” Stephano screamed.
My blood went cold as I stared at the screen. It couldn’t be my Roxanne. He couldn’t be screaming for her. I couldn’t blink as I looked at the monitor and waited to see who came into focus. What the hell was going on? Why would Roxanne be there with Stephano? My blood pressure increased as I became more and more enraged when I saw that it was in fact my Roxanne that Stephano had called.
“Roxy, clean this damn girl up and get her a sandwich; she looks like she hasn’t eaten in a week. Make her look good for the camera and tell her what to do on stage. Her name is Ilsa.”
“Yes, I’ll make her look beautiful,” Roxanne said as she looked at PJ.
I felt like Roxanne was looking right into my eyes as I stared at her. My mind raced to try and figure out why she was there. I could see she had a busted up lip but she didn’t seem to be there against her will. My stomach churned with the thought that she had willingly gone there to help Stephano. I had to hold out hope that she was only there because she wanted to help get Ana out.
PJ grunted like she was in pain and then looked down at her arm, where I saw Roxanne holding onto her tightly and pulling her into the other room. When they got to the room, there were two men standing by the exit door and at least a dozen girls getting dressed in the room.
The women were in various stages of undress as they did their hair and makeup and put on sexy outfits that they were going to dance in. As PJ looked around the room, I found Ana in the corner as she got ready. She actually looked much better than I had expected. But that could have been because she had her hair and makeup done.
It was distracting to watch the monitor and see random women walking around without their clothes on. I had to say my job was probably much more fun than Nate and Chase’s jobs were. While they sat in the lobby of the dance club, I got to watch all the naked girls get ready to dance.
“Ana, this is Ilsa. I need this table so I can get her ready,” Roxanne said.
It felt like it was on purpose. Like Roxanne was making sure that PJ knew who Ana was. I didn’t think that Roxanne knew we had monitoring there with PJ, but I didn’t know for sure. PJ could have told her when the girls were all together. But no matter what, I felt like Roxanne wasn’t trying to trick us. In that moment my blood pressure started to return to normal and I believed that she had just gone to Stephano so she could
help with Ana.
“Why are you here?” PJ asked as Roxanne started to clean off her face roughly.
“Don’t talk. You’re supposed to not speak English. They will notice if you talk to me. Just get on the stage and dance and look pretty.”
PJ did stop talking, but I wish she hadn’t. I also wanted to know why Roxanne was there and what exactly she thought she could do from inside that PJ wasn’t going to be able to. But my answer came very quickly when one of the men handed Roxanne a bottle of pills.
“They all need to take at least one. The older girls can have more than one if they want,” the man said to Roxanne.
“Stay here and get ready. Don’t swallow this,” Roxanne whispered to PJ as she handed her a pill and a cup of water.
It was at that moment that I knew for sure that Roxanne was there to try and help. I hated that I had questioned her reason for being there at first. But at that moment, I knew she was trying to prove that she was useful and could help. It was a good thing she was there, too. Having someone that was helping Stephano was the best we could have hoped for. Instead of one of the men handling the girls, it was Roxanne.
PJ watched as Roxanne went around and handed pills to all of the girls but she skipped Ana. It was the saddest thing ever when Ana then came up to Roxanne and asked for her pill. I wasn’t sure what exactly the pills were, but they were obviously addictive if the girls were asking for them when they didn’t get one. I suspected that was why the other girls had said Ana looked drugged up when they had seen her before.
Mentally, I made a note that Ana might have to deal with some pretty bad withdrawals once we got her out of there. I didn’t know exactly what she was taking, but anything that she took on a regular basis was going to require withdrawing from. Drugs that zoned the women out would make them easier for Stephano to handle. The girls probably just did what he asked and didn’t ask any questions.
The girls that spoke English would be too drugged up to talk. Stephano had set up the perfect situation for him. The girls were going to be high all the time and that made them much less work for him and much easier to handle.
“Let’s go, girls. You need to be ready in five minutes,” Roxanne said as she held out her hands to show all five fingers. “You need to go on stage and dance,” Roxanne said to PJ as she moved seductively to show her what she needed to do.
“Why is Ana dancing? I thought she had a buyer?” PJ asked.
“Shut up!” Roxanne said as she slapped PJ across the face.
Chapter 20
ROXANNE
I hated that I had to slap PJ, but I saw Stephano coming out of the corner of my eyes and I knew he had seen her talking to me. There was no time to think of anything else and I couldn’t risk that he thought I was working with PJ. If PJ got caught, I wasn’t going down with her. I was going to figure out a way to get Ana out of the situation.
“So, she speaks English?” Stephano said as he joined PJ and I.
“No, she was babbling some crazy shit and smarting off to me. I don’t know for sure what she said, but it looked like she was calling me names and she spit on me.”
PJ looked pissed that I had thrown her out like that. But there wouldn’t be a reason for Nate to be selling the girl if she was nice. He would have kept her. I really didn’t have a reason to slap PJ except to make it look real to Stephano. I had to hope that PJ would understand the situation and just go with it.
I noticed that PJ had glasses on and she had not been wearing them before. I wondered if they were some sort of video device so Jackson could see what was going on. It was a good idea, but I didn’t see any device for her to talk to him or for him to listen to what was going on.
The problem I had was that I didn’t know their whole plan. I had left the hotel after talking briefly with PJ. It was a mistake of me to just come and meet up with Stephano without at least talking with Jackson. I should have stood up for myself and insisted that I stayed involved.
Now, it was too late, I was involved and PJ hat shown up as well. Now we were both in the mix with Ana. It was going to be up to the two of us to make sure that everything went off without a hitch. Getting Ana out of the club was going to be near impossible, so I really hoped they had not expected to break her out right away. My best bet was that we were all going to make it back to Stephano’s house and then try and plan an escape from there.
“I guess that’s why the kid is trying to sell her off. It’s alright, we can break her later. Did she take a pill?”
“Yes I gave her one.”
“Here, take another,” he said as he shoved a methadone pill into PJ’s mouth and then poured water in there.
My stomach clenched as I held myself back from intervening. PJ looked up at me with fear in her eyes and I couldn’t say or do anything at all. I had to pretend to be there to help Stephano, I couldn’t act out. If I had tried to stop Stephano, he would have made me take a pill and I couldn’t take something like methadone. My body reacted poorly to pain medication and I could stop breathing if I took one of them. Or at the very least, I wouldn’t be able to function, and I couldn’t have that happening.
Stephano held her nose and mouth shut until she swallowed the pill and then he let her go. PJ looked at me with a look that could have killed me. I knew she was pissed, but at that point, I didn’t really care. She wanted to be the girl that was sold to Stephano and that was how he treated girls like her. I couldn’t exactly step in and try and say anything or he would know something was up.
“You better get her to dance, I don’t want to keep her for long. I need a buyer to see her today,” Stephano said as he left us and walked around to look at all of the girls.
He admired Ana for an extra long time and I saw that he forced another pill on her, too. She had already taken one from me and I knew she had taken one earlier in the day. I worried that she was very addicted to the methadone and it was going to be hard for her to get away from it once we got her out of his care.
“You can be mad at me if you want. But I’m going to help get Ana out. You need to go on stage and dance. Leave your glasses on the stage so Jackson can see the audience.”
I wasn’t sure her glasses were a camera, but PJ’s reply made me positive of what I had thought was going on.
“I know what the fuck I’m doing, I’ll leave the glasses wherever I want to,” PJ said as she stood up and followed the other girls out to the backstage area.
It sucked that she was so mad at me, but I couldn’t risk Stephano thinking I was on anyone’s side but his. I had to be a bitch so I could get everything done that needed to get done while we were at the club.
If Stephano trusted me, it would be possible he would leave the girls in my hands when we got back to his house. Instead of trying to find me a match, he might decide to keep me to help with the girls. Having me there to work with the girls could be exactly what we needed to get them to safety. I didn’t know what the security situation was like at his house at night, but with all the drugs these girls were taking, I didn’t think he would need that much security at all. Most of them would probably be passed out by the time it was dark outside.
But for the time being, I needed to dance first so that the rest of the girls saw what had to happen when they had their turn. I could still remember when Ana had come to the club and one of the other girls did the first dance to show Ana what to do. It seemed like a million years ago, but it had only been a few weeks.
So much had happened in the last few weeks. So much more than I could have imagined. Meeting Jackson and Chase that night in the club had changed the entire trajectory of my life.
“Okay, ladies, I’m going to do a dance, then it’s your turn,” I said to the girls as I made my way onto the stage.
I knew that Nate and Chase were going to be out there, but I couldn’t think about them. I had to concentrate on the job I was sent to do and that meant that I had to give a kick ass show for Stephano. He wanted me to show the girls that effort was imp
ortant in their dance, not because the girls had to dance well, but the buyers wanted sexy women and a woman who was willing to show off her stuff on the dance floor would be more willing to make her man happy when she got home with him.
I stood at the edge of the stage and waited for my music to start. I took a couple deep breaths as I walked out on stage and started to peal my clothing off in time with the music. I made sure to give Stephano my undivided attention, mostly because I didn’t want to look at Nate or Chase. I knew they were going to be surprised to see me up there and I also knew that if I looked at them, I was likely to break the character I was pretending to be.
Every time I danced, I pretended to be someone else. It was the only way I got through my shows. I would pretend to be a naughty school teacher or a hot businesswoman, and I would become the character on the stage. My fans loved that about me and that was why they continued to come back and see me over and over again.
My hips moved from side to side as I held onto the pole in the middle of the stage. I saw that one of the guards had brought the girls to the edge of the stage so they could all watch my dance. As I turned around, I caught a glimpse of Nate and Chase as they watched the stage, they were only a few seats away from Stephano, but I tried my best not to look at them again. Nate looked like he was about to jump out of his seat and join me, while Chase was half covering his eyes.
The first night when Chase and Jackson had come to the club to watch me dance, I remembered seeing them. The two of them were wide eyed and fascinated by me. They didn’t look away at all during my whole dance.
Having a handsome guy like Jackson ask for one on one time with me was something I liked. As a dancer, it made me feel special and like what I was doing was actually good. I didn’t even mind that he just had questions about Ana that night, I was happy to answer them as long as he paid for his private dance.