A room her aunt would never use again.
With that thought in mind, Valerie swung her legs out of bed and she dressed in loose black pants and a white t-shirt, soft with its use. She pulled back her hair, wrapping it up with an elastic, and toed on her shoes. After rinsing her face with cold water from the basin and toweling off, she took a deep, determined breath and left the room.
All the clients from the night before had left before midnight. All of the clients were married and they no doubt didn’t want to raise suspicion if they were absent from their beds. Some women didn’t care, or were divorced or widowed. Those were the ones that stayed into the early hours of morning.
And because all the clients had left before midnight, Valerie had gotten much-needed sleep. Despite the events of the day before, she’d slept like the dead. She felt surprisingly well-rested. Refreshed.
Determined.
She’d felt sorry for herself yesterday. She’d cried, long after Dravka had left her room, after she’d begged him to leave. She’d cried until she didn’t have any tears left. She’d mourned this life. She’d mourned her mother, her death that always felt like a festering ache. She’d mourned ever living on Everton in the first place. She’d mourned Dravka, knowing she could never love him the way she wanted to. She’d mourned her future and the marriage, a loveless marriage, that she’d never wanted.
But now it was morning.
A new day.
Yesterday seemed like a distant memory but what remained within her was fierce determination. It consumed her. It lit her blood on fire.
I owe this to them, she thought, walking from her bedroom, staring down the dark hallway.
Valerie could finally help them. She’d been a coward for the last five years—though, at one time, shehadtried to help them. And she’d nearly gotten killed for it.
But now, Valerie had something she’d never had before over her aunt: power.
Her aunt needed her to secure a future with the Larchmonts.
Valerie would keep her end of the bargain…but she would make sure that her aunt kept to her promises as well.
Stalking to the only other room in the basement, Valerie entered the cold, darkened space. She flipped on the lights. Chains dangled from the ceiling, chains she’d cleaned more times than she cared to admit. The floor below them was spotless. On the far wall lay a tall, black cabinet, wide and heavy and expensive, one she went to and opened.
Whips and ropes and crops of leather. All different sizes, all different materials. Her aunt’s personal and prized collection.
Bile rose in Valerie’s throat. Her eyes alighted on the whip her aunt had used on her. A slim one, brown in color.
Shortly after arriving on Everton, Valerie realized that her aunt was exploiting the Keriv’i that she’d lured to Everton with the promise of payment. Sex work wasn’t illegal on the New Earth colonies. But whatwasillegal was not paying them. Madame Allegria, in her business license application, in the documentation she’d had to provide to the Earth Council, and on her books, claimed she was paying half of all credits received from client visits to the Keriv’i in her employment.
Only, Madame didn’t pay them the 450 credits that they should’ve received every single night they worked. Instead, she paid them a single credit for every client.
One.
Single.
Credit.
Dravka, Tavak, Ravu, and Khiva—before he’d managed to leave Everton—had been robbed of a small fortune, one that should’ve rightfully been theirs to claim. Credits they’d worked for, credits they’d been promised.
When Valerie had discovered all this, she’d gone straight to the Earth Council, meeting with a councilman in secret to avoid drawing her aunt’s notice. And the councilman had been very concerned and had promised that he would present the case to his colleagues…until he saw his wife’s name among the list of Madame Allegria’s clients.
After that, Valerie had waited anxiously for the trial to begin. The councilman, however, had betrayed her. Instead of going to the Earth Council, he’d gone to Madame Allegria and struck a deal with her. He would make the inevitable trial and subsequent criminal charges go away and she would erase all record of his wife ever visiting a Krave brothel. It would’ve spelled disaster for him since his bid for reelection was drawing near.
His wife never returned. The trial never came to fruition.
As for Valerie? Once Madame Allegria realized she’d been an inch away fromprison, she’d dragged Valerie down to this very room. She’d taken the brown whip from this very cabinet and she’d…
Her aunt’s punishment had been brutal and vicious in her rage. If Khiva and Dravka hadn’t found Valerie there, she would’ve died from the blood loss alone.
But Khiva and Dravka had been there. Dravka had lasered her wounds closed himself as Khiva cleaned her back. It had been the both of them that had seen to her recovery.
Since then, Valerie had never been the same. Since then, Valerie had been a scared, timid creature, one that bore no resemblance to who she’d been before Everton.
