Tonight didn’t feel like a behave kind of night.
As the engine roared to life beneath me, I told myself this was about infiltration. About leverage. About dismantling a ring that treated women like commodities and thought they could buy silence.
But somewhere between the clubhouse and Bryersville, I had to admit something that didn’t sit entirely clean in my chest.
If someone was pulling her back into that building at ten o’clock at night like she belonged to them?—
I wanted to know why.
And I wanted it to stop.
8
JASMINE
Going back to work after hours was the pits.
I hated it, but it wasn’t like these last-minute, late-night meetings weren’t common. They were so common, in fact, that I got paid time and a half for it whenever it happened. Granted, it was usually only a couple of hours, but still.
Time and a half at what I was being paid was easily almost four hundred more bucks in my pocket.
And who could say no to that?
While driving back into work, I leaned forward and squinted to see. The older I got, the more the lights spidered at night. Like little gremlin tendrils, reaching out to pluck out my eyeballs in offense for not seeing them clearly enough.
At least Christmas lights were more beautiful than normal.
I sat at a stoplight and fussed with one of my contacts. The last thing I wanted to do was put on my glasses. I hated those damned things. They were Coke bottle lenses wrapped up in a massive frame where they still jutted out a few centimeters away from the glasses frame itself. I swear, I could be legally fucking blind without those things.
At least my prescription wasn’t so bad that I needed those full-on plastic things like I heard my father say my mother used to wear.
I wondered if I got my bad eyesight from her.
Was bad eyesight genetic?
I felt like that was something an educated woman like myself should have known.
A car horn honking at me startled me out of my trance. I gripped my steering wheel with both hands, taking in deep breaths to wake myself out. I knew I shouldn’t have tried to wind down for sleep. These late-night meetings were happening more frequently.
Oh, that reminded me: I needed to make sure this meeting went on my schedule.
You know, just in case I didn’t get compensated for it.
I never had that problem before but one never knew with certain things.
And I liked to keep tabs on every single ounce of my time that was billable.
“Thanks for that, Dad,” I muttered as I eased my way into the parking garage.
The concrete haven was spooky at night. The only light afforded to the place were the lights attached to the concrete support beams every few rows. I skittered quickly through the darker spots, clutching my purse and my laptop bag close to my shoulder.
I practically rushed into the elevator just to get into a bright light source.
“Phew,” I whispered to myself.
I pressed the button for the penthouse floor and then started the long journey up. Sometimes the elevator ride felt like mere seconds. And other times, it felt like hours. My eyes slowlyblinked open when the elevator doors dinged, and part of me wondered if I just fell asleep upright.
The fact that the hallway was bare with a door hanging open meant they were waiting for me. Fucking hell. I hated it when they waited for me. I rushed down the hallway, my heels clicking and my legs boasting of a day’s worth of prickle-pear.
