“Fucking thing,” I growl.
Carefully, I work through the knots of my wet hair as I raise my gaze to my reflection and stare at myself. I expected to see guilt after what I’d done, maybe dark circles after whatever hour of the night it is right now, but instead, I find my skin bright. Expression alert, even.
I pause in brushing my hair, wondering what is wrongwith me that, even though I want to puke at possibly becoming a porn star, the idea of making sex tapes doesn’t change the way I feel about myself. It should.God, it should, but right now, I feel like a queen.
“You’re undercover, Charlie,” I whisper to myself as I set the brush down next to the sink. This is not a new occupation, no matter how good I feel about it. This is a job within a job and nothing more.
Step inside, Charlie. Find out who you are.Nix’s words echo in my head as I turn from my reflection and shut off the bathroom light. Is this who I am? Is this what I’m capable of? Am I going through some kind of crisis because I’m a broke widow? Or am I really darker than I thought I was?
I have no answers to these questions when I step into the bedroom and I’m faced with the wall I put up minutes before I took a shower. Feenix is written on a sheet of paper, and so is Andre. They’re taped to this wall so I can stare at the letters and hope they rearrange themselves to tell me what I want to know. Normally, they’d be pictures, but since I don’t have any, I have nothing but their first names to go off of.
They’ll get added to too, once I learn more about them.
I stare at Andre’s name like I had before I showered, wondering just what role he plays in all of this. Is this a partnership between him and Nix? And if so, why doesn’t Nix like him?
My eyes skate to Nix’s name. At the interview, he seemed more in charge than Andre. The questions swim in my head, and as with my inner reflections, I have no answers to them. I’ll just have to dig deeper into Nix, ignore these weird attraction feelings, and find my answers. And in the end? I’ll take him down too, no matter how I feel.
The one question I cannot get rid of is: How do I get from point A to point B? How do I get from the porn business to the sex trafficking? Without being caught? Without losing myself? Without falling for Nix?
I blink at that last question and immediately shove it from my mind. He’s handsome and nothing more. And me? Even if I wasn’t undercover and this was a real occupation I was looking for and I went for the bad boys, he is way out of my league.
Rich. Fit. Observant. Sinful.
No. Those aren’t the guys I go for. Those aren’t the guys who go for me, either.
A knock at my door makes me practically jump out of my skin, and my towel nearly falls off my chest. I glance at the clock and see that it’s three in the morning. Panic starts to reside behind my ribs. This isn’t a good neighborhood, and this apartment building is full of criminals.
“Charlie?” a familiar voice shouts through the door.
I breathe a sigh of relief at Miles’s voice and shout back, “One sec!”
Quickly, I tug on my overly large t-shirt and a pair of shorts, and I make my way through my dark apartment to the front door. As soon as I swing it open, Miles’s stress-lined face relaxes.
He pushes his way into the apartment, holding a small, crumpled paper bag that definitely has something inside of it.
“What’s wrong?” I immediately ask as I close the door behind him. The darkness folds around us, and shadows dance across his back, but I can clearly see how tense his shoulders are.
He whips around to face me with a glare. “You didn’t call in when you got back.”
I scowl. “Why are you so angry?”
“We – you and I – sent you into the lion's den.” He throws his free hand into the air. “When your phone repeatedly went to voicemail, I feared the worst, Charlotte!”
“Shh,” I say, stepping closer to him. “You’ll wake the entire building.”
He chuffs but lowers his voice anyway. “I’m in charge of you. Your dad is no longer here, and I’m in charge.”
I cross my arms over my chest and narrow my eyes at the only father figure I have left. “I don’t need a protector.”
He drops the bag to the floor and reaches for me, gripping my shoulders tightly. “You do, Charlie,” he growls. “You do! You have something to prove, and you’re reckless. Combine those two together, and it’ll be your body I bury next.”
“Why didn’t you just look up my location with the tracker in my glasses?” I hiss. I don’t like what he’s accusing me of, even though I know, on some level, that he’s telling the truth. “That should have eased your mind that I was alive.”
He lets me go and wipes the anger from his face with his palm. “I did, but it’s not uncommon for murderers to return the victim’s belongings to their homes.” He pins me with a look. “You should know that.”
I sigh and roll my neck. I know he cares for me as if I were his own daughter, but I have this handled. “Nothing bad happened to me, Miles. I’m fine. See?” I hold out my arms so he can inspect me for bruises. He doesn’t.
“Then where is your phone?”
