Tonight, you do.
I throw that thought aside and keep locked into the problem.
“No, just anyone with enough money, right?” I say coldly.
She flinches again, but she holds her tone steady. Almost.
“I know what I’m doing.”
“You have no fucking idea what you’re doing,” I snap.
Her shoulders jerk, but she doesn’t step back. She holds her ground on pure stubbornness.
I gesture, sharp and controlled, toward the door. “Did you hear them? Did you hear the way they reacted when you walked out?”
Her throat moves when she swallows.
“That bid, that number, doesn’t happen to just anyone,” I continue, voice tight. “You think they throw that kind of money at any woman? They put that kind of money up because they wanted toownyou for one night. Do you understand what that means?”
“Y-yes, sir,” she says. “They explain—”
“They told you the bare minimum. That’s what they do to lure women like you in,” I say. “The men you saw out there, they turn into animals in the dark, behind a locked door, when they think they’reowedsomething.”
Her face goes paler.
She wets her lips, trying to keep her voice from wobbling. “I’m safe.”
The lie is almost convincing.
“There’s a guard outside,” she adds quickly, like she’s grabbing the first solid thing she can find. “And they—”
I cut her off, a sound in my throat that isn’t quite a laugh and isn’t quite a growl.
“The guard is there to make sure you go through with it,” I say. “And to make sure you’re breathing in the morning. That’s it.”
Her eyes widen.
“No,” she whispers, but it’s not denial. It’s disbelief. Like she’s been clinging to that promise as the only thing keeping her upright.
“They don’t give a shit if you want it or like it,” I say, relentless now, because she needs to understand. “They don’t give a shit if you regret it and want out. They don’t give a shit if you’re scaredout of your mind. Those guards aren’t there to protectyou. They’re there to protectthem.”
Whatever color is left in her face drains in slow motion.
I watch it happen, and it makes my anger sharpen instead of fade because I need to drill my point home.
“You think they’re going to come running in here if you start screaming?” I ask, voice low. “If you beg for help?”
Her breath catches. Her arms tighten around herself as if she can physically hold the panic inside her ribs.
I don’t let up.
“They won’t,” I say. “They’ll wait. They’ll listen for the worst of it to stop. And if you’re still alive, they’ll call that a successful night. And if the night isn’t a success… Then they don’t have to give you your share of the money, do they?”
Silence swallows the room.
Her eyes shine, but she refuses to let anything fall. She stares at me as if she blinks, she’ll crumble.
And under the fear—under the shock—I see something else start to surface.
