by Skye Warren
The next morning, a different king was hunting on his lands. The king’s men found the girl and brought her back to the castle, setting the orphan to help in the kitchen. There she toiled each night and day, miserable and lonely, her beauty obscured by the dirt of her work.
One evening, she washed herself and joined the festivities in her old fine dress. The king was much taken with her, but at the end of the night, she disappeared back into the kitchens. She cooked the king’s soup during the day and danced with him at night.
One night he slipped a ring on her finger, but again she disappeared. The next day he demanded to meet the new cook who made the wonderful soup, and then he saw the ring on her finger. He washed the soot from her cheeks, and she was beautiful again, so he married her.
“You’re mine again,” Henri said. “We can put this whole thing behind us.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I mumbled, though I spoke to a ghost.
“So you’ll understand,” he said. “This is for your own good. You are nothing without men and our desire to use you. You have nothing without me. Do you understand?”
In the story, the king had valued the princess without knowing her beauty. At the end of the story, the two parts of her were merged. At the end of the story, she finally made her escape.
“I know what you are thinking,” he said. “You think your detective will save you.”
There were those damn instincts again, right on the money.
“He and I have a lot in common,” Henri continued. “We both appreciate a beautiful thing. We both understand the darker impulses, sometimes to curb them, other times to unleash them.”
Luke wasn’t like that. He had a dark past, but only out of necessity. He was a protector, not an aggressor…wasn’t he? The lines had blurred for me, lumping all men together in one bloodthirsty heap.
“Oh yes. He knows…greed, lust, revenge. The last one especially.”
“You’re wrong.” Luke didn’t want material things. He didn’t want revenge either. All he wanted was to protect women like me, to find his sister. Good intentions, honest ones.
“What does he want, then?” Henri mocked. “If he’s so concerned about your safety, then why are you in the car with me?”
A mistake. He had been overpowered, outnumbered. Any number of excuses could explain it, without him having been hurt or having betrayed me. Please let one of them be true.
“Ah, yes. You see it now. I gave him the one thing he couldn’t resist. The answer to all his searching. I gave him the truth about his sister. No, more than that. I gave him proof. As you and I talk, your Detective Cameron is on his way to Chicago with a tape of his sister. And me. It was rather brutal. Of course the statute of limitations has run out for rape. But he hopes to make a case for murder, considering she is presumed dead and I am shown hurting her. He isn’t going to win. But you can understand the temptation.”
“I’ve spent twelve years of my life fighting for the law to take him down.”
Yes, Luke would do anything to nail Henri. It wasn’t just that he wouldn’t have to kill him. It was a question of principle. This was the system he had lived and breathed for the past decade. If it failed him, then all his work was for nothing. But to leave me here?
“It was a simple trade,” said Henri. “You for the tape. If it is any consolation, he struggled with the decision. It pained him to leave you here; I could see that.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks, but at least I didn’t have to see Henri and the gloating on his face.
He stroked my hair back. “Shh, calm yourself. I won’t kill you. Nothing will happen to you here that hasn’t happened before.”
Chapter Eight
The best thing about being a hooker is the job security. In a good year, men had plenty of spending money. To a wealthy man, a prostitute might be a smart financial move—certainly cheaper than a high-maintenance girlfriend who rarely puts out. But even in a down economy, the stress and scattered families kept prostitutes in demand. Men would use any excuse to fulfill their biological urges.
In other words, they were always, always down to fuck.
The worst thing about being a hooker was also the job security…as in, the locks on my door and the guards I could see from my window. In the years I had worked for Henri, I had always lived in my own place and kept it sacrosanct, never bringing clients home, always traveling to out-call appointments in swanky hotels.
Then I had quit. When that didn’t work, I went rogue, taking Ella with me. And finally, I’d teamed up with men who broke into his little fortress and generally wreaked havoc. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t trust me anymore—thus the need for security.
They had brought me here after the night at the Barracks, to a crumbling apartment building in south Chicago. The men who escorted me were firm but not brutal. Never mess up the goods—unless on orders. So I was Henri’s girl again. He wouldn’t let me go this time.
Hell, he never really had.
One week of sitting in this room, waiting for Henri to bestow his sentence on me. Would I live or die? Though my odds looked significantly worse after last night. They had sent a client in.
I had threatened to bite off his dick if he touched me.
He had requested another girl for his hour.
I’d felt triumphant for all of five minutes. Then I heard the banging against the wall and deflated. There was a certain amount of suffering in the world. I could take it upon myself or leave it for others to endure. Standing up for myself was supposed to make me stronger, but this felt cowardly.
Still, I was surprised I hadn’t gotten any shit about it. In the old days, Henri would have beaten down my door within the hour, made an example of me. Now nothing? Even if he was on his way, the delay was a sign of problems, a symptom of his strange decline.
Certainly, the location of this apartment building left much to be desired, supporting the idea that his business was in trouble, that he was in a downward slide. That would have been comforting if I weren’t currently tethered to him. If he drowned in the criminal mire, so would I.
The neighborhood wasn’t completely abandoned, though the armed men who loitered outside the building tended to scare off most pedestrians. Every now and then, cars passed by on the street, probably keeping their doors locked and eyes straight ahead as they passed through the seedier part of town.
I imagined myself Rapunzel, sending down my long, flowing, now brown locks. Of course, for that escape plan to work, I needed a prince and—
Don’t think about that.
Besides, there were burglar bars on my window and a garbage dump beneath it. Hardly the stuff of fairy tales.
A sound at the door drew my attention. Jade poked her head in, perhaps checking to see if I was going to brain her with a chair. When I had first seen her here, working for Henri, I was surprised. And then I wasn’t. The sex industry was an incestuous lot. I didn’t know the extent of the history between Henri and Jade, but I knew that favors were strewn like pickup sticks. And no one said no to Henri.
I didn’t move from my seat at the window as she came in and set the tray down. She opened a package of saltines and put them in the canned tomato soup, stirring them around with the spoon. It was sort of sweet, aside from the whole kidnapping-and-forced-prostitution thing. She hadn’t been the one to do them, but she was helping. Or maybe she was just as much a pawn in this as I was, unwilling, unthinking. Sometimes it was easier to pretend not to care. They couldn’t subjugate a carved piece of marble.
“You eat,” she said.
I looked out the window. A familiar rhythmic sound started up against the wall behind me. Thump, thump, thump—the sound of a bed frame hitting the wall, the impact of flesh hitting flesh. Henri’s business may be in trouble, but there were still clients who came here to visit with the girls. I watched the men enter the building, heads down. I heard them through the walls. Even in the shitty part of town, hooking was good business. Maybe especially here.
“Now,” Jade demanded.
I was a little worried about her. She looked tired, desperate—coming apart at the seams. No matter their collusion, she hated Henri. Working for him must be wearing on her.
“Come eat,” she said, pleading now. “You look sick.”
Hmm, maybe that would keep the clients away, if my threats and my vehemence weren’t enough.
Thump, thump, thump.
Staring out the window, I spoke softly. “Why, Jade?”
Agitation rolled off her in waves. “You understand this. Business.”
“You were the one who sent me after him.”
“And you failed,” she cried. “You were supposed to save us.”
A throaty groan came from the other side of the wall, then fell silent.
“No.” My whole life I had been saving people. I didn’t expect gratitude—they were my sins as much as my accomplishments. But I was done with that. “I can’t save anyone.”
“You change mind.”
Jade frowned at me one last time, the wrinkles in her face crowding out her eyes.
“Henri come today. Don’t give him more reasons to punish you.”
She turned and left.
So he was finally coming to deal with the problem child. I continued to stare outside as a car rolled by. A flash of green eyes caught my eye in the window. I started in my seat before realizing they were the eyes of a kid, his nose pressed to the glass.
A black Escalade pulled into the parking lot across the street. Two men in suits emerged from the front seats, then one, slightly shorter, from the back, his gold-scrolled vest glinting off the sun. Henri.
I remained in my seat by the window, though I could no longer pretend to be unaffected. My heart raced; my teeth clenched. It was facing down an army, naked and bound. Not a question of pain but how much. No doubt of failure but how far.
As usual, two men preceded him. They pulled me up from the chair, flanking me on either side. Their fingers were like iron bands cutting into my arms.
Without looking at me, Henri strolled to the window. He looked out at the pitiful display and snorted.
“This would never have happened if you had stayed put, you realize.”
If he blamed me for his turn in fortune, he was delusional…and giving me far more credit than I deserved. Still, it wouldn’t save me. Nothing could, in the face of his wrath.
He pulled a gun out. With a handkerchief, he wiped the barrel of the weapon. He was a showman, and so was I.
“Why are you doing this?” My voice shook.
He looked over at me, his mouth a flat line. “You can do better than that, Shelly.”
“Please,” I whispered, not knowing whether the plea was real or fake, finally realizing it didn’t matter at all. When I said the words, they became real. When I lived the lie, it became me.
He pointed the gun at my chest.
This was it. I swallowed hard. There was no escape, no one to distract him. Nothing at all to barter with. He knew I’d never work for him again. My body was useless to him, my mind hardened against him. My life, forfeit.
The metal was cold. His eyes were cold. What a mess it would make.
“Why her?” I whispered.
“Why you?” he said. “Eat or get eaten. That is the choice we all face. Look at Jade. She was one of you before. The prey. Now she is like me. Predator.”
But Jade didn’t look like a predator. She looked hunted. There was another way out. Marguerite had done it. She was neither predator nor prey but her own person, one of pride and mercy, and she didn’t conform to Henri’s animal kingdom. She operated outside of it, tearing down its structures with her very presence.
“You’re wrong,” I said, a little stronger. Because I could be like her, even here, facing death. Circumstances would batter me, but they wouldn’t break me.
As if to prove me right, he told the men, “Let her go.”
I was sure I hadn’t heard him right, until they did. Both men released me, and I wobbled on my feet.
Henri held the gun out in the flat of his palm. “Take it.”
My gaze slid to the guys beside me. They looked as confused as I felt, but they knew better than to question him. Unlike me.
“Why?” I challenged. “So you’ll have an excuse to kill me? So you can say it was in self-defense?”
“I don’t need an excuse to kill you,” he said gently, as if explaining it to a child. “I’m giving you the chance to become the predator. Take it,” he repeated.
Gingerly, I picked up the gun. Though I was hardly well practiced, my hands fell into the proper arrangement. Right fist around the base. Left hand pointed down. Only put your finger on the trigger when you’re ready to shoot.
I aimed it at Henri’s heart, finger on the trigger. The men beside me tensed. If I killed Henri, they would kill me. For some insane reason, he had put his life in my hands, but he had second-strike capabilities here. If he went down, so did I, and in that way, our fortunes were still tied together.
My hands were shaking. Marguerite wanted me to do this. So did Jade. Why did it fall to me? I wasn’t strong enough. They had made a mistake putting their trust in me.
My finger tightened on the trigger. I pulled. A loud bang. The recoil.
Henri smiled. “Good girl.”
Relief claimed me. A blank. It had been a blank, and Henri wasn’t dead. It was perverse to wish him well, but he had already turned me into a prostitute. It was a relief that he hadn’t also turned me into a murderer.
It didn’t hurt that I also got to live.
Henri took the gun from my limp fingers. He turned it back to my forehead and shot—one, two, three. All blanks, though the sound was real and terrifying. Each shot sent a puff of hot air from the barrel to the center of my forehead.
I slid to the ground, a boneless, breathless puddle.
“Now that we both understand each other, we can talk.” He sat down across from me, resting one ankle over his knee. There was an uncomfortable silence before he finally spoke. “Jade tells me you refuse to work. She says you haven’t been eating.”
I closed my eyes, struggling to gather myself. So this would be a face-off with words instead of bullets. At least this was a game I could play. “I’m not hungry.”
“You’re too skinny,” he observed.
“That’s my exit strategy. I’m going to stab you with my hip bone when you rape me.”
“I like this. It shows you still have spirit.”
“Since when are you concerned with my spirit?”
“Always, Shelly. I do not sell lifeless bodies. The clients do not come here to rape an unwilling woman. Well, most of them do not. That is not your value to me. They pay for you because of how you look and how you act. For who you are.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “They don’t know who I am. Neither do you.”
“Not completely. That is part of the mystery. But there is something there; that much we can tell. It drives us to learn more. The men who pay five hundred dollars to sleep with you do not want a wet cunt to slide into, Shelly. They want a chance to understand what is inside you. They fail, and so they come back again and again.”
“Hmm.” He didn’t look high, but I wasn’t ruling it out.
“I am telling you this because right now you are not worth anything to me. You are dead like this.”
“So, this was all an explanation for why you’re going to kill me?” As if I could follow the twisty sex logic and agree with him: yes, yes, I’m better off dead.
He made a frustrated sound. “I do not want you dead. I do not want to break your spirit either.”
I was doubtful.
“I have never tried to do that. I have never raped you either, have I?”
“You haven’t,” I agreed cautiously. That didn’t mean he couldn’t start. Certainly, holding me captive was not promising.
“I want to make a deal with you. You work for me. You don’t die. In return, I will call off the
cops on the girl.”
I blinked. Claire.
“Well?” he asked, eyebrow raised.
“I guess…I want to say yes. I just want to know why. Why did you do it?”
“You know why. Those men threatened to tell everyone what had happened. My girls attacked them, stole from them. And maybe worst of all, left without delivering the goods. I would have been ruined. I didn’t like the way they spoke to me. I sent some men over to take care of it. I blamed it on you, and the cops could run you to ground, where I’d be waiting.”
“It was pretty diabolical,” I admitted.
“Thank you. It would have worked, except word had already gotten out. Fucking social media. Combined with the news and the fact that my top girl had gone missing, clients started going elsewhere. Once that happened, I had cash-flow problems.”
I felt a little like some sort of criminal therapist, listening to his sob story. How does that make you feel? I should ask. Instead I prompted, “So, the girl.”
“There are two things I want. One, for you to work for me again. And two, for that bitch of a girl dead. But I will settle for the first one.”
“Why did you take her at all?” I asked.
His eyes looked into the distance—into the past. “Everyone makes mistakes. Old ones that haunt you.” He came back to himself. “I am not going to explain myself to a hooker. Take the deal or no.”
So much for all that shit about my elusive spirit. “I’ll take it.”
“Good. Your first client will arrive tonight.” He stood, shaking out the crease in his slacks. “That means you must eat.” He turned back at the door. “And Shelly, if you do not obey me…I will track her down myself.” An enigmatic smile lit his face.
Something unsavory roiled in my gut, and I hadn’t even eaten the soup yet. After he left, I forced myself to eat. Two days of not eating and an entire bowl of soup left my stomach distended and sore, but I finished it as a show of obedience. It was a good deal, and one I hadn’t been expecting. I had assumed I wouldn’t be able to help Claire from here, at his mercy, with no leverage at all. Now I had a chance to save her, and all I had to do was the same job I had done for years.