I felt my knees go weak. After the air conditioning failure and then Malone and now the eviction, all in one day, I didn’t have any more fight to give. Nowthis?!I could feel the mansion, our last shot at saving the crop, slipping away from me.
“Of course,” said Murray as if throwing me a lifebelt, “there’s always the other option. The one I offered you before.”
I thought of Kayley, growing steadily weaker.
“What is it?” I asked. My voice was a low croak.
Murray mockingly tilted his head to one side. “Sure you don’t want to call Sean? He wassoagainst you taking that option.”
“What is it?”I wanted to throw up. But I couldn’t walk out of there without the money.
He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a printed contract. It already had my name on—all he had to do was write in the updated amount. My stomach twisted: he’d beenthatsure I’d come back.
“Sign it,” he told me, pushing it and a pen across the desk.
With shaking hands, I started to flip through the pages.
“Fucking sign it,” he said victoriously. “Or get out.”
He knew I had no choice, no matter what it said. A few phrases leapt out at me from the densely-printed text.
...provision of modeling services...
...understand that recordings will be adult in nature…
...including open leg, toys, male/female, gang—
I stopped reading.
She was my sister. What else could I do?
I neatly signed my name, just below where it said that the contract would run for two years.
Murray whipped it out of my hand and threw it into a drawer, then opened up his safe and took out ten thousand: in hundred-dollar bills, it looked like a pathetically small stack, given what I’d just signed away. He seemed to delight in handing it to me, wrapping my fingers around the bills. “Come back here tomorrow,” he told me. “I’ll take you to meet some people. I think we can set you up with your first performance right away.”
I stumbled towards the door on legs that felt waxy. I could feel a tug in my guts—it was as if I was leaving a part of me there in Murray’s office, locked away in his desk drawer, and I’d never be whole again.
“Get your hair done,” Murray told me as I opened the door. “Nails, too, and make-up.”
I paused on the threshold. “What should I wear?” I croaked.
The two heavies in the lobby heard that and laughed. Behind me, Murray laughed too. “Whatever the fuck you want,” he told me. “Thirty seconds in, those guys will have you naked anyway.”
I tried to stalk through the lobby, to not let their leers and laughter bother me, but whatever pride and confidence I’d built up over the last five months had just been stripped away. I’d gone fromciviliantocriminaland now I’d changed again. Now I wasmeat.
Back in my car, I took some deep breaths and forced down the tears that threatened to spill out. Then I drove straight to Mrs. Baker’s place and handed over the ten thousand dollars
There. Now it was done, and it couldn’t be undone. But I still didn’t want Sean to know. We had too much to do and no time to argue. I forced my face into a mask and drove to meet him.
One thing was for sure: after the things Murray would make me do, Sean wouldn’t want me anymore. No one would want me. Just as things were beginning to work out between us, I’d wrecked them for good.
46
SEAN
We had lessthan ten hours before the realtor came around to inspect the house. But it’s amazing how fast you can move, given the right motivation.
I hired a truck, backed it up to the garage and we started loading plants. There were two hundred to move and it had to be done carefully, without damaging them. I provided the brute force, lifting and carrying the pots, while Louise knelt in the back of the truck arranging them and packing them in tightly so they didn’t move around. I could tell something was bothering her—she’d been almost silent, ever since she’d called me to tell me she’d found a place. But she kept telling me she was fine and I knew better than to push...for now. As soon as we got this done, I needed to find out what the hell was going on.
