“I… bumped into Millie a couple times.”
“Where?”
He doesn’t answer, and suddenly I’m not sure I want him to.
“The club,” he says finally.
My stomach twists. “What club?”
“Where she’s working.”
“Working?” I shake my head. “I thought Millie was staying with my mom.”
He exhales, already regretting it. “Look. You should ask her yourself, okay? I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“What club?” I press.
He hesitates.
“The Redline.”
I nearly faint.
“No.” I shake my head immediately. “Millie wouldn’t.”
“She was working the floor,” he says carefully. “Not?—”
“I know what The Redline is.”
My chest feels tight.
The Redline isn’t a bar. It’s not a dance club. It’s a meat market, a goddamn auction block where girls with nowhere else to go get paraded around for rich fucks with too much money and not enough shame. It’s the last stop before you end up in a ditch or on your knees, and you don’t just stumble into a place like that by accident. You get dragged.
“She told me she was staying with my mom.” The words are a whisper. “I’ve been sending her every cent I have left from that grant. All of it. I thought it would be enough to keep her away from those pricks. I know Dad’s memory is shot, but he’s still working… unless she’s lying about that too.”
“What pricks?”
“I ran into them a while back,” I say, the memory sour in my mouth. “Never mind.”
“Give me their names,” he says, the humor in his voice gone completely. “I’ll teach them to stay away.”
I look at him, really look at him. The dead-serious look in his eyes. “Who the hell are you?”
“Their names,” he repeats, ignoring my question.
“I don’t know. I think it was Billy and… Trey or Trevor. Whatever. It was ages ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.” My voice cracks. “Millie never tells me the truth. I’m so fucking tired of her lies.”
“She’s trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need her protection! I’m a fucking grown woman.”
“I noticed.”
I stare at him, his arrogance so thick I could choke on it.
“The Redline?” I say slowly. “I didn’t think you were the type who had to pay for it. Those girls?—”
“I wasn’t there to pay for sex.”
