“I’m done with playing nice with you and giving you a choice. You’re mine now,” he told her. “You will want me. You will be with me.”
“Get out!” she yelled. Usually, she was mindful of making too much noise, but she was terrified right now, and everything he said was scaring her. She wanted him gone. But she had been so hysterical with fear that she had forgotten about her son until she heard a door creak open and feet pad against the wooden floor. Before she knew it, her son was in front of her, arms stretched out to protect her.
“Leave my mom alone!” Kai yelled.
Her son looked fierce, his nose wrinkled with anger and his fists balled, but she also knew he was scared, and she could see his body tremble from it. Antonis merely stared at her son before he took a step forward, and that was enough for Honey to race into the kitchen and grab a butcher knife. She stormed back into the living room with it and stood in front of her son, pointing it at Antonis.
“Leave now before I stab you,” Honey said, deathly serious.
She already wanted to stab him. Right now, she was out of her mind with anger and grief, and if he took a step closer and tried to touch her or her son, she would stab him over and over again.
To her surprise, he did take a step back, but Honey continued to point her knife at him.
“Be back at the club tomorrow,” he said before he finally left.
Once Honey was sure he was gone, she fell to her knees and enveloped her son in a hug, holding him tight.
“I tried to call Nikos so he could come and protect us, but he wouldn’t answer,” Kai said, and Honey cried harder because shedidn’t know how to tell her son that Nikos would never be able to come and protect them again.
C H A P T E R
45
BEHIND THE CURTAINS, HONEY STOOD GRIEF-STRICKEN. She could barely hold back her tears, and though she was about to step out on stage to perform next, she couldn’t do anything but think about Nikos, and every mere thought of him made her eyes water.
She couldn’t believe he was dead. But no matter how many times she called his phone last night after Antonis had left, she couldn’t get a response until eventually his phone just went straight to voicemail.
“Welcome to the stage, the one and only, Honey!” the DJ called from the other side of the curtain, and hearing her cue, Honey quickly fanned her eyes, blinking back her tears so theywouldn’t fall on her makeup, and once she was sure that most of them were gone, she stepped out from behind the curtain.
Immediately, she put on a mask, trying her best to listen to the music and treat this like any other night. If she just paid attention to the music, swayed to the beat enough, and took off a few garments, she could finish her job and leave.
The last place she wanted to be was here. She wouldn’t have been here at all if it weren’t for Antonis’s clear threat, and that she suspected he would come and drag her out of her home and put her on the stage if he had to. She had to perform right now. She had to pretend it hadn’t happened.
She had to pretend that she hadn’t lost him.
So she danced, rolling her hips seductively in the way the audience liked, feeling their beady eyes greedily follow her every movement as she tried to let the music guide her through the performance and tried to keep the more tragic thoughts in the back of her mind.
She was nearly doing a good job of it until she saw him. Antonis boldly walked across the floor and took a seat directly in front of the stage. It felt so much like a taunt that she paused in her movements, and the music no longer guided her, but her anger did.
Usually, he watched her from his office, which Honey had assumed was his way of not showing outright favoritism, even though everyone who worked here knew how he felt about her. Now, it was clear that he didn’t give a fuck about putting a show on anymore, and that he was going to let his obsession show, even to her.
She wanted to continue to perform. She wanted to be strong enough to ignore him, but she couldn’t. Honey found herself on the stage staring at him with pure hatred, and the bills nolonger fell as the audience watched her with confusion, probably wondering why she had stopped and why there was such a deep frown on the face of the woman they had all fantasized about.
Her hips couldn’t roll, and her ass couldn’t shake, and she didn’t even have the strength to put her mask back on again, because all she could feel was hatred as she looked at the man who murdered someone that she had deeply cared about.
Finally, she moved again, but not to the pole. Instead, she headed back through the curtains she came in from, ignoring the boos that followed her, and not caring that she left halfway through.
Her eyes felt heavy, and she had to apply more makeup than usual to cover up the bags that had formed from all the crying she had done last night, in the morning, and in the car before she arrived. She was barely hanging on to a thread right now, and the last thing she wanted to do was perform here.
She headed down the stairs and then went to the dressing room so she could change and leave, but stepping into the dressing room was like stepping into a funeral home instead. Before the Gentlemen’s Club opened, Antonis had made an announcement, telling everyone of Nikos’s passing, and the news had broken them down, and though it was hours later, everyone in the dressing room was still crying. It was the most depressing sight she had ever seen in the room and a testament to how much all the girls here had liked Nikos.
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Sweetie said as she sobbed. Her face was splotched red and matched her eyes. Allison sat next to her, sobbing too as she rubbed Sweetie’s back. And it seemed that in their grief, the girls had finally decided to get along again.
Honey couldn’t take the depressing sight that made her eyes prickle and instead, she fled away from the room. She felt likeshe was drowning in sadness, and if she stepped inside there with the rest of the girls, it would only swallow her up. She pressed her back against the wall as she tried to regain control of her emotions, and then she heard the sound of heels until they came to a stop in front of her.
“Honey,” Amber called tenderly. “Are you okay?”
Honey didn’t respond. She couldn’t, and Amber sighed.
