“Alright. In that case, I have a proposition for you.”
“A proposition,” I repeated, my spine stiffening, the wine tasting sour on my tongue. “What kind of proposition?”
“I have… a plan to take Frank’s business out from under him.”
“Really? You want a crappy casino in a dying town?”
“Well, some of us think AC is going to make a comeback. It’s smart to get in before it does. When prices are reasonable.”
“Okay. Is that why I’m here?”
“Well, I wanted to ask you out before I even knew Frank,” he clarified. “But when I saw how… fond he was of you, I got an idea.”
“I’m not going to whore myself out for you,” I said, ready to storm out of the restaurant.
Sensing that impulse, his hand shot out, closing over mine on the table.
“I wouldn’t ask that of you. I’m asking for… intel.”
“Intel,” I repeated. “On what?”
“On anything about Frank you can get your hands on. Business files, information about shady deals, any enemies. Basically, I want to know every weak spot he has so I can exploit it.”
“How do you think I can get this information?”
“If I’m not mistaken, you can move around the innards of the casino without anyone looking at you twice.”
“Okay, yeah. I mean I’ve never been to his office. And I have no idea if I can get in it.”
“If there’s anyone who can find that out, I have a feeling it’s you.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Especially with how interested in me Frank was. He’d invited me to his office a few times in the past, in fact. And if I sat and thought about it, I was sure I could come up with a dozen excuses for wanting to be there. Needing time off, asking for a raise, the list went on and on.
That said, choosing to be closer to him, to be snooping around in his personal space, was dangerous. Just being there in general increased my chances of him trying something with me. But if he caught me doing things I wasn’t supposed to? That could get me jailed. Or worse.
“Why would I do that?” I asked.
Milo leaned back in his seat.
“Ten grand to start. Ten grand for information that is helpful.”
Twenty grand was a hell of a lot of money.
Maybe it wouldn’t have been to me a few years back. Back when modeling money was good. And pageant wins were better.
But that money was way in the past.
And most of it, well, I’d trusted my mom as my manager to handle it for me, invest it, set it up for my future. She sent me back what she thought I needed to live on.
But she hadn’t invested it, hadn’t set me up for my eventual retirement from modeling.
She’d used most of it to bail out her third husband’s business. By the time I started to get suspicious, there was hardly enough to pay off my car and credit card.
I’d committed to another two years of modeling, this time handling my own money. But the burnout was fast. Too much travel. Too many people analyzing and finding my body wanting. Too many crash diets. Too many people telling me to start getting filler and Botox because I was no longer prepubescent-looking. There was just too much criticism and uncertainty.
I finally just had to wrap it up.
