“Nothing. None of your business, I gotta go,” he says, rushing off again, leaving me with a million questions and a very bad feeling in my gut.
Chapter 4
Viktor
Five years. Five years of my life gone.
That’s about as much time as I spent in the marines. I don’t like that line of thought. It crushes me. The marines defined who I was more than anything in my life besides my family. So what has prison done to me?
It has hardened me. Even more than fighting overseas, if I’m being honest. I expected to see certain things in combat. I knew I’d lose people. But we were allies working towards a common goal.
In prison, it was every man for himself, and I hated myself for the things I had to do, just to get out. Just to have the hope that on the other side, there was still something good that waited for me.
I didn’t deny the charges in court. I merely stated my case as best I could. I told them what happened, and why I reacted as I did. I told them about my military service, and how much I fought and bled for my country.
But for that, I was sentenced to ten years. I got out with five on ‘good behavior’.
Good behavior.
That’s a joke.
Five years in a private prison, with other violent offenders. The food was shit. The guards treated us like shit. And we preyed on each other. Prison gangs ran things more than the prison administrators. Guards and prisoners working for thugs with connections on the outside.
Playing it good, doing my time and getting out was my goal. But how could I do that when I had multiple gangs pushing me to choose a side or get gutted by both?
In the end I did my best to stay out of the real fights, but I didn’t come out clean.
I feel guilty, real guilty. But above it all, I feel bad about the woman I lost.
I never even got to tell Alice what happened. I never had her full name and address. She was staying in Vegas only temporarily — she said she was staying in a hotel. I never gave her my full name and I had no address, fresh from serving my stint in the marines.
I had no hope of tracking her down. Not unless she was still at that club, after all these years, and I know the career of most strippers is pretty short. She would be long gone from there. Especially since her home was in Los Angeles, and she was just there for a brief stay.
She had dreams. She wanted to own her own little store. She wanted to raise a family. And the thought of her having moved on... it breaks my heart. I try not to think about what would happen if I find out she’d gotten engaged or married while I was locked up in a cell.
I can’t let thoughts like that drag me down, though.
Leaving the prison, one of my last remaining wartime buddies picked me up. In good times, he’s the last guy I’d turn to. He never came back from our time serving in Afghanistan and Iraq right. He couldn’t hold down a regular job, and he fell in with the wrong crowd.
But where do I get off judging? At least he avoided prison. And for all his faults, his new ‘friends’ had connections in my prison that helped me get through without getting tangled up in anything too bad. Without having to do anything that risked my getting out on time.
“You should come work with me and the guys,” he had offered on the car ride back. ‘The guys’ being his buddies, involved in all manners of crimes that I didn’t want to get tangled up in.
I had told him ‘no thanks’, because I was planning on staying legit and seeing to my dreams. Same as always. I needed to put the past in the past, and move forward with my life.
Looking back, I feel like a fool.
Months of job searching, crashing on his couch, and what do I have to show for it? Endless rejections. Even in a city like Vegas, which is supposed to be the best spot in the country to come look for work.
But the best I got on offer was a job as at a grocery store. The owner offered to pay me under the table, because corporate wouldn’t let him hire a guy with a criminal record. The pay was for less than minimum wage.
The job I was on my way to accepting before prison would’ve paid me $120,000 a year.
I’d be lucky to see that in a lifetime like this.
So one day, as I was getting ready to head out on another fruitless job search, my buddy comes to me in a fancy new suit. He’s always coming back with some shiny new outfit or toy, but he never makes me feel bad for freeloading. He never needs to. My guilt eats at me every day, and I wonder if I shouldn’t just take off out of Sin City.
But where would I go? I don’t even have enough for a plane ticket.
“Hey, Vik,” he says, “we need some help for something.” He’s anxious about asking me, I can tell right away. I’ve turned him down every time he asks, so it’s no wonder.
But this time I listen. I listen because I’m desperate. Because living off of anyone’s charity isn’t my style. And that sleeping on my buddy's couch saps a bit more of my pride and my soul each day.
“There’s this guy, right? A real piece of shit, trust me. He runs a sleazy brothel. Hurts the girls, ships ‘em in from the Philippines away from their families to people who do God knows what to them. Well… we need to put the fear of God into him, if you know what I mean.”
What am I supposed to say to that?
Chapter 5
Alice
I’m avoiding the girls smoking as they watch the stage. I’ve been dancing for six years now, and dancer years are like dog years. I see the new girls come, hot as hell, expecting all the guys to give them their entire wallet just because they’re sexy.
They quickly learn it doesn’t work like that. To make money, it’s not enough to look good. Hell, sometimes it doesn’t take any looks at all. It takes customer service skills. You need to make the guy feel good.
I see their jealous eyes as I take man after man up to the VIP lounge, and I know the rumors they’re spreading about me. They think I give blow jobs or full sex, but that’s not true. I’ve only done anything beyond a good, clean dance with one customer, and I left the club for him.
I’m one of the cleanest dancers in this place, but I don’t have a lot of friends to show for it. Though honestly, now that I’m in my early thirties and with a young kid to take care of, it doesn’t bother me much. The newbies are all of twenty-two and half of them are only concerned with taking Instagram selfies in the dressing room. The others are like me, no matter their age. They’re paying for college or kids, and we’re in it to make money.
I appreciate their hustle, and they appreciate mine. Vaguely I wonder which of them I could trust enough to live with me and Cierra as I lead a well-dressed gentleman up to the VIP lounge. I go through the same old routine before ushering him into the private room. I smile, and I bring my fingers to my black bikini, and I wiggle my ass as he watches and hands me $20 bill after $20 bill.
Every single one, I mentally spend on Cierra, on rent, on groceries. Every winning smile I give him is going to give my baby girl a better life, and every time I moan in his ear, he’s funding my kid’s future education, whether he knows it or not.
Once his wallet is drained, I bring him downstairs, and I kiss his cheek.
“Thank you, Anthony,” I whisper in his ear. “Will I see you next month?”
He shakes his head sadly. “I’m away on business, but I’ll be back in two with a big fat wad for you, Aphrodite,” he promises, and I can’t help but giggle.
“Oh Anthony, you always have a fat wad for me.”
“I wish you’d come back to my place...” he trails off, but I shake my head, giving him a wink.
“You like me just where I am and you know it, sexy. Send me a text when you’re back in town.”
Just as the client is leaving, I hear a ruckus below. I peer out over the edge and see with my horror a few tough looking guys pushing around a bouncer. And that bouncer, Tom, is a big guy himself.
“Where is he, huh? Where is he?!” they shout at Tom, and as much as Tom is trying to remain tough and keep them back,
he’s outnumbered.
“I told you, John don’t work here anymore,” he says loudly. And my heart sinks.
John? They must mean… oh god. John. My ex-boyfriend.
We’d met here, he was a DJ, but he always had other things on the go. He said working here was more for fun and winked to me every time the topic of his work came up. I curse myself for being so stupid, for not seeing it sooner.
Then a while back he just quit entirely, didn’t even do the part time work.
“Yeah well, we need to speak with John,” shouts one of the thugs trying to intimidate Tom below. But the big bald brute of a bouncer holds his ground.
“I don’t know where he’s gone. Man just up and quit a while back,” he insists, which is true enough. None of us knew the particulars of John’s plans. Why he quit, why he hasn’t been around, or what he’s doing now.
Even I don’t know, not really, and he still lives with me. But suddenly I realize it’s way bigger than what I could’ve possibly imagined. I thought maybe he was just working under the table, maybe has some petty scam on the go.
But petty scams don’t get men like these shouting at bouncers in the middle of a busy strip club. These guys want to send a message.
“Well maybe one of these girls knows,” the wire-thin but sadistic looking thug says, reaching out to grab one of the dancers. And my hackles raise; I don’t want anyone to suffer for answers they don’t have. And I very nearly shout out to leave her alone, to draw their attention to me, when Tom blocks them and protects the other dancer as she nervously scurries away.
“Ain’t nobody here knows where he is, man! John ain’t had many friends! He wasn’t the type that was easy to like, you get what I’m sayin’? Wherever he is, ain’t nobody here can help you,” Tom insists. And for a moment it looks like the thugs aren’t gonna be satisfied with that, that they’re gonna beat the shit out of Tom. But they instead slowly back down.
“Well then. Guess we’ll have to look elsewhere… for now. But if anyone knows where good ol’ Johnny boy is,” he flicks a card onto a table nearby. “Let us know, huh? ‘Cause if we can’t find him, we’ll have to come knockin’ on your door again.”
What the hell has he gotten himself into now?
I’m not a dumb girl. I know that whatever he’s got going on is going to blow back on me, and soon, and if someone finds out where he is, then they find out where I live.
Where Cierra lives.
Chapter 6
Viktor
The corps trained me to fight with instinct; to act instead of think. Back home, that landed me in jail.
Yet here I am, parked outside a dingy ‘foot spa’ in a vehicle provided by my buddy. I know the risk I’m taking. This time, I’m risking jail not for a heat-of-the-moment lesson I wanted to teach a rapist. This time I have a record, and it’s premeditated.
I turned down Mark’s offer at first, but good ol’ Mark talked me into it.
I have no options, and Mark knew just how to push me into this. He knew I couldn’t say no to helping rescue some poor women from sex slavery. I know it happens, but now I know where to stop it.
I have nothing left to lose. I’ve looked for Alice, and she’s moved on I guess. So all I have a dismal future making less than four dollars an hour under the table. I made more than that delivering papers as a boy, but now I can’t even get a job like that again.
And at least here, I’ll be able to make a difference. I’ll be able to help people, doing what I do best.
I take the handgun from beneath the passenger seat and check it over. I can field strip one of these in little time, and I tell myself that going over the weapon will give me a moment to think this through.
Mark and I have been buddies for as long as we can remember. Mark’s not even his real name; like me, his dad was another old Ukrainian emigre, and so he got the name Macario. But that was due for some Americanizing, and we shortened it to Mark over the years.
Our time serving had messed him up. He’s involved in some criminal shit now, I know it. He’s roped me into it, even. But I can’t hold it against him. Not when I think back on the quiet, dorky kid he used to be. So kind, so giving. The sort of boy who’d give up his last dollar to another kid that didn’t have a lunch.
I saw that kindness get beaten and tortured out of him, and now he’s a jaded shell of the man he used to be.
It kills me to see him like he is now, but I’m still loyal to my friend. To the only friend I have left.
That’s the thought that settles it. Instead of being dissuaded, I cock the gun and put it into the back of my jeans and get ready. I hope to God I don’t need to use it, but there it is.
Heading into the dreary front door, it’s not hard to immediately tell that this isn’t a legitimate operation. There are cars parked out front, obviously clients, yet there’s no foot massages or bathing going on up front. Just a couple of big, thuggish guys hanging out who eye me up and down for trouble.
“Can we help you?” the lone little woman that acts as the customer service rep asks.
“I’m here to see Zheng,” I say, the name of the owner. Just saying that gets the backs of the two guys up.
“What do you wanna see him for?” one of them demands of me, a hand hovering near an undoubtedly hidden gun.
“He’s done wrong by some people. I’m here to set him straight,” I say, exactly what I was told to.
It’s apparently also the secret code to make them turn violent, because the guy goes for his gun and I spring to action.
There’s a couple feet between us, and I grab his wrist before he can pull out his gun and shatter his nose with a blow from my hand. The other guy comes at me with a knife, and it’s only by pulling the other guys arm out that I’m able to shield myself from the stab, instead letting it sink into the forearm of the thug I’d just bludgeoned.
I head-butt him then quickly, breaking his nose too as the little woman screams and runs away out the front door. It’s just as well she gets out of here, this place won’t be safe. It’s already not safe.
I beat the two of them down and take their weapons, helping myself to the knife and a second gun.
“Get the fuck outta here if you don’t wanna die,” I growl at them before heading towards the back room.
Part of me says I shouldn’t let them live. That these are some criminal thugs that’ll just get me in the back when I move on. Same as what landed me in jail. I was lucky then; the bullet didn’t penetrate my thick skull. It just really fucked me up and left me for the police to collect and charge.
I push on, up the stairs and into the back of the operation.
There’s a guy watching the door and he has a gun, which leaves me little option. I pull mine and order him to drop it. He looks surprised I even asked, takes a moment to consider whether he’ll try and point his gun at me. But thinks better of it.
“Drop it,” I order him again, and he does. I jerk my head to the side, “Go. Get out of here.”
He hesitates but then takes off, letting me carry on through the door.
But I’m not prepared for what I find on the other side.
This isn’t any brothel that might be legally run outside the city, regardless of how shitty they might be. This is sex slavery. Women, some of whom are chained up and clearly unwilling, being abused by men.
I knew what this was a front for, but I didn’t expect it to be so blatant. So heinous. The fact that there are men willing to see women who are crying and hurting...
I start to see red, but there’s too many. Even though they’re almost all clients, I can’t just start beating them all down.
My finger twitches. I wanna kill them all. Not beat them. These are men that deserve to die. Not like the brave friends and soldiers I lost overseas. We fought for their freedoms and this is how they use it, to torture those weaker than them.
I have killed men, plenty of men, just because my commanding officer told me. Just because my country asked it of me.
<
br /> What’s any less wrong about killing these pieces of scum?
But the thought doesn’t complete before I realize I made my way to the back door. My legs had kept moving, despite my inner turmoil, and I’m at the boss's office, exactly where Mark told me it’d be. It’s wide open, and a little bald man sits behind the desk, with the largest thug yet standing by his side. A bodyguard probably.
Suddenly all my reason for being here seems to matter so little.
This shithead endangered some criminal operation by smuggling in Filipino women through the ships that bring in drugs and guns. The other crime bosses don’t care that he’s a sex trafficker, a slaver. They just want him to stop putting their less-reviled operations at risk.
They want me to scare the shit out of this guy. Or end his business. Those were Mark’s words.
And he didn’t sound like he cared too much if I just ended it.
I hear a scream behind me, one of the women. I turn around, thinking maybe she saw the gun I was holding, but it’s not me she was screaming about. It’s that guy at the door I told to scram. He came back.
And he fires at me.
Thankfully my training had kicked in instantly, and I was already throwing myself out of the way before he pulled that trigger. There’s no outrunning bullets once they’re on their way, after all. He misses, but I don’t.
Right in the forehead. He’s down.
But I missed the element of surprise. The guys in the room know I’m here now. Women are screaming, men are screaming, clients in stages of undress are rushing out.
Crouched to the ground, I roll across the office door length, unbothered by the screams. I lived through far worse than this, performed under more dangerous circumstances than this organization has available to them.
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