“Was that your ex-girlfriend?” Theo asked curiously.
“My ex-girlfriend’s sister,” Nikos said.
Theo’s eyes widened, but seeing the expression on his face, Theo seemed to think the better of asking about it. Good. Nikos didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted to leave it in the past. Everything that transpired between himself, Raelyn Armstead, Leonidas Petrakis, and Rheagan Thompson, he wanted to forget.
C H A P T E R
2
THE WOMEN’S DRESSING ROOM BUZZED WITH NOISE AND ENERGY as the exotic dancers of the Gentlemen’s Club on 29th in the upper echelon of Harlem got ready to perform on stage. Women walked around in scantily clad clothes, wearing mere bikinis and lingerie made of simple strings and a few inches of cloth. Music hummed in the background from the small speaker propped up on the table in the corner of the room. Chatter flowed throughout as the women talked amongst themselves while dressing and putting on makeup.
Honey Wells sat in the back of the dressing room, off in the corner, away from the chatter and group of women. She adjustedher honey blond wig as she looked in the mirror on her vanity, trying to make sure that her wig was lined up just right, so it looked realistic. Once she was certain that it was placed right, she began to pluck the baby hairs from the wig, swinging her head left and right as she looked at her hair from all angles.
When she heard her phone buzz, she grabbed it off the dresser and looked at her lit up screen, showing she had received a text. Honey tapped her phone, taking a look at the picture sent to her by her sister, and she smiled. Her son, Kai, held up a slice of pizza to his mouth while he grinned, showing all of his teeth, including the one on the bottom row that had just fallen out a few weeks ago. Honey grinned as she tapped away at the keypad on her phone.
HW—tell him not to eat too much pizza so he won’t get a tummy ache and thank you for babysitting tonight. Luv you both!
Just as Honey put her phone down, she noticed something in the corner of her eye. She turned to look at the door where Brittany, one of the dancers here, was coming inside with two huge bags of money slung over her shoulder. A few girls cheered for her while others watched her enviously, and Honey hated to admit that she was a part of the latter.
One of the bags had come from Brittany’s stage performance, which Honey didn’t care about. She made about the same amount and sometimes even more. But the second bag was one Brittany had made from working in one of the private rooms in the back, an exclusive area where VIP clients who wanted more than just a dance went. It was all under the books because it wasn’t exactly legal, and a good amount of the men who came here couldn’t have their names tied to it either. She had seen some congressmen here before, who had snuck in through the back along with other groups of high-profile, rich men.
It was an area that Honey desperately wanted to go to. She would receive way more cash than she was making now and would be able to afford a better place for herself and her son, knocking off some of the debt she had accrued from credit cards and loans, and also paying off the student debt she had gotten for those two years she spent in college for the bachelor’s degree she never got.
But she couldn’t because she was the only dancer inside the Gentlemen’s Club that wasn’t allowed to work back there.
Honey tried to shake off her envy as she turned back to the mirror and plucked a few more hairs until she was satisfied with her look. As she started to pat on her foundation, Amber, one of the few girls here that she got along with, came over and propped herself up on the edge of her vanity.
“I heard Antonis is coming back today,” Amber announced.
Honey paused as her heart began to race after hearing that. She clutched her wrist and stopped herself from shaking. It had been a few weeks since she last saw Antonis because he had left on business, going outside the country for a bit. Though it had only been a few weeks, those fourteen days or so had been bliss for her with him gone. But now that he was back, she would find herself walking on eggshells and looking over her shoulder again at the man who made her uncomfortable.
“Apparently, he’s coming back today to welcome his nephew from Greece,” Amber said, and Honey would question why Amber was privy to all of this information, but she knew Amber was fucking one of Antonis’s men, Theo. A guy who occasionally appeared here on business, and whenever he came, he went directly to Amber to get a lap dance.
Honey finished applying her foundation before she started to apply her baby blue eyeshadow to give her a soft glam look fortonight to match her blue sparkled bikini and sparkled harness strap that draped over her bikini bottom.
“You shouldn’t be getting involved with all that,” Honey warned her. She didn’t want to sound like a nagging mother, but knowing who Antonis really was, beyond the man who owned a handful of exotic clubs throughout New York and New Jersey, but who hetrulywas in the light, she didn’t understand how Amber could get involved with Antonis and his men. They were dangerous, and Honey always made sure to keep herself separate from that.
“I shouldn’t be getting involved?” Amber repeated incredulously, shaking her head. “You’re crazy for not taking advantage of the fact that Antonis wants you.”
Honey snorted.
“There’s no advantage to that,” she said, glancing at the other girls in the room. There was a reason she was off by herself, not just because she liked her solitude, which she did, but also because when she first got here, she had quickly been alienated by the rest of the girls once they found out Antonis’s interest in her.
It was not as if Honey came here to make best friends, but it was awkward being in a room with a bunch of people who were envious and didn’t like you. It made her uncomfortable, and it was nothing like the other clubs she had been at prior to this, where the other girls had at least been cordial with her.
Amber was one of the handful of girls in this room who actually liked her and talked to her. They weren’t necessarily best friends or hung out outside of work or anything, but they did talk and count on each other when it came down to work-related things. Besides Amber, the only other women Honey gotalong with here were the bottle girls, the bartender Ashley, and four other dancers.
When she first learned she would be transferred to this club a few years back, Honey hadn’t minded it and had been excited, actually. The Gentlemen’s Club was in the higher end of Harlem, and the customers there reflected that. They had more bills to throw, and the money she made from her stage performances here doubled what she made back at Uptown. But the moment Antonis had made his favoritism clear, the isolation quickly followed.
Even as she sat there now, without even looking, she could feel the eyes on her back and the glares thrown in her direction. It had been three years now, and still, nothing had yet to change. Ignoring it, she went back to her make-up, applying nude lipstick before layering lip gloss on top.
She didn’t care about the other dancers, though. She was already used to their disdain for her, but she did care about Antonis coming back, and she wished she had been given a few more days of respite, so she could sneak in a couple more floor performances— another thing she had been banned from doing. She did make double the amount here doing stage performances, but it made it so that she only made a little bit more than she had made at Uptown from her floor and stage performances combined. It was frustrating, feeling like she was stuck and trapped, all because of the whim of one man.
“All I’m saying is that maybe if you gave in, Antonis could save you from all of this,” Amber said as she gestured at the room. “No more dealing with bitchy girls, bruising your body from these poles, and dealing with horny men. Just peace without ever worrying about another dime.”
“It would be a cold day in hell before I would ever do anything with that man,” Honey said. Amber shook her head,but Honey rolled her eyes. Amber just didn’t get it. Being wanted by an obsessive man wasn’t what it seemed like. All Amber and the other girls could see were the roses, but they didn’t see the thorns that came with them.
“Honey, you’re on soon,” said Georgios, the acting manager in Antonis’s stead and his cousin. “Let’s go.”
