“What took you so long, Felix?” The twin asked.
Felix. Logically, the man had a name, but the aura he carried made it feel almost irrelevant. He was scary and powerful, the kind of presence that made the room shrink around him and left my pulse racing without any effort on his part.
“I was showing Gianni and Stefano how to do their jobs properly.” He put his hand on my shoulder and forced me down into a chair. “The two of them can’t even collect on time.”
“Of course not,” the twin rubbed between his eyebrows.
“I was going to take the debtor as payment. But he’s a drunk; his organs are no good. Fortunately for me,” he said, motioning my way, “he offered up his daughter.”
He spoke about me as if I weren’t even there. My jaw tightened, and I clenched my fists at my sides, forcing myself to sit still. Anger boiled beneath the surface, but I carefully shaped my face into neutrality, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing me flinch.
But he could tell. He looked at me out of the corner of my eyes and I saw him smirk.
“So you’re just going to send her?” the twin asked, his voice low but edged with tension. There was a flicker of something in his eyes. I could have been imagining it, but I swear I saw concern. “Don’t do it, Felix. She’s not the debtor.”
So his twin wasn’t a heartless monster like Felix. I silently begged the universe to send me with him, because even though I was certain my fate would still be miserable, at least it wouldn’t involve being split open on an operating table.
“You think I’m that much of a monster, Rocco?” Felix said.
I silently noted the twin’s name—Rocco. He didn’t respond, but the look on his face said more than words ever could.
“I’m going to have her work at the club. We’ve been down a few girls after some incidents,” Felix continued, his tone cold and deliberate.
I thought my heart rate was already at its limit, but it spiked even higher. What kind of club was this? And what kind of incidents had left the other girls unable to work?
Rocco’s eyes swept over me, assessing, calculating, making me feel exposed under his gaze. “She doesn’t look like she’s worked a day in her life,” he said, his tone measured.
“I… I do,” I said quickly, a little defensively. “I work six days a week.”
Felix laughed, a low, dark sound that made my stomach twist. “It’s not that type of work, sweetheart.”
My stomach twisted. I knew what he meant.
“You’re going to my strip club,” he said, looking at me directly. “And if the client wants extras… well, I’ll leave that up to you.”
“Please,” I pleaded to him, for the second time that night. “There has to be something else you need me for. Anything.”
“Tell me,” Felix murmured, voice soft, the edges of his words carrying a wry humor. “What do you think you could possibly offer me?”
“I…”
I couldn’t offer him anything. I was just a waitress at a shitty restaurant, living in a shitty part of town, with a shitty life. Nothing about me could be of use to him.
Rocco, the somewhat benevolent twin, stepped in. “Are you sure you don’t need help with anything else? Cleaning out bloodstains from the back of your vans?”
My face went pale. These men were far more dangerous, far more twisted, than I could have ever imagined. And I was caught in their web of power and violence, completely at their mercy.
Felix looked at me, his gaze lingering with an intensity that made my pulse spike. Every dark, calculating glance seemed to crawl under my skin, teasing and testing me in ways I couldn’t fully understand.
“Well… I do need a maid,” he said.
A maid was infinitely better than getting my organs ripped out or becoming a stripper. “I’ll do it!”
Rocco gave a slight nod. “That should work,” he said simply, his voice calm and measured.
But the way Felix smirked at me sent a shiver down my spine. Was this truly mercy? Or just another twist in whatever dangerous game he was playing?
“Let’s get you to your new job, shall we?” Felix said, pulling me up from the chair.
