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I had no idea how she’d ended up in such a condition, but I didn’t ask her yet. Instead, I kicked the door shut and helped her over to my couch. Once she was settled, I rushed to the bathroom and grabbed the first aid kit stashed under the sink. We remained silent as I went to the kitchen and retrieved a bag of frozen fries.
Only after I was sitting at the table, facing her and carefully cleaning the blood from her face, did I finally ask the question that had been nagging at me since I first laid eyes on her.
“Was it Ralf?”
She nodded, the slight movement causing her to wince. I didn’t press her for details. If she wanted to share, she would. I knew all too well that Ralf Crosse didn’t need a reason to beat the hell out of one of ‘his girls.’
Lulu and I had met because of Ralf. In his mid-forties, with thinning brown hair and three inches shorter than me, he had never looked like someone to be feared. It was that deceptive impression that had drawn me in, along with plenty of other girls.
I’d met Ralf when he called himself an “entrepreneur,” but let’s cut the bullshit - he was just another pimp. The sleazeball ran RC’s Escorts, a so-called “high-end service” peddling “classy women” for dates with loaded, big-shot clients. Only two parts of that steaming pile were true: he did run RC’s Escorts, and most of the johns were indeed filthy rich and important. As for the rest? Some of us were better at faking “class” than others, but when the only “date” those horny bastards wanted involved us getting naked, it didn’t mean jack shit. Those of us with a knack for acting got trotted out in public, but don’t think for a second that meant we weren’t expected to fuck ‘em too. We just got paraded around like prize ponies first, before the real show began.
If I hadn’t been one of those trophy girls, I never would’ve ended up at Club Privé with a client trying the place for the first time. He had taken me into one of the private rooms and decided he didn’t like the hard limits I’d established. I fought back fiercely, reaching the emergency button that the club had in every room. Gavin had come in, intervening and throwing my client out.
Then Gavin had offered me a new job—one where I wouldn’t be paid to have sex with people I wasn’t attracted to, but where I could do whatever I wanted, with whomever I wanted, however I wanted, without judgment.
Ralf hadn’t taken the news well, but when I dropped the name of the club and the man who’d offered me a job, he backed off, telling me that when I got tired of working there, I could always return to him.
Lulu and I hadn’t been close. She’d struggled with a drug problem, and that was one vice I’d managed to avoid, but I’d liked her well enough. I had heard from a mutual acquaintance that she’d had a child shortly after I’d left, but aside from that, I’d lost track of her. Which led me to the one question I needed to ask.
“How did you find me?”
“You gave a card to Lillian and wrote your address on the back.” Lulu’s words were a bit slurred, but I understood her.
After a few minutes of silence, during which I bandaged her as best as I could, she began to speak.
“I almost OD’d a few months ago. My mom said she’d take care of my boy if I went to rehab, so he didn’t end up in the system. I just got out a couple of days ago.” She attempted a smile, but the effort was short-lived, the pain clearly overwhelming her. “Ralf heard I was out and showed up at my place, but I couldn’t afford to keep it while I was in rehab. I’m at my mom’s now, but he left a note with the manager saying he expected me back at work today.”
“You decided you weren’t going back,” I murmured softly.
She shook her head. “I knew that if I started working again, it wouldn’t take long before I’d be using again. I can’t get through that shit without something to take the edge off.” A look that resembled shame crossed her face. “I never understood how the others did it without being high or drunk.”
“Hey, we all had our ways of coping,” I replied. “Just because you couldn’t see it doesn’t mean we weren’t doing anything.”
“I can’t go back to my mom’s like this,” Lulu said, her voice laced with despair. “I’ll scare my kid. And I don’t have anywhere else to go. You were the only person I could think of who wouldn’t judge me for any of this.”
“Damn right I won’t,” I stated firmly. “We’re going to figure out what needs to be done to get you through this, okay? Get you back to your boy and keep Ralf away from you.”
“I don’t know, Sienna. He doesn’t take no for an answer. I could never figure out how you did it—got him to leave you alone.”
“It wasn’t me,” I admitted honestly. “It was the people who had my back.”
Lulu shot me a questioning look.
“This job I have, the guy who owns the club—he has a reputation.” I smiled, warmth spreading through me. “A good one for employees, but I guess he scares the hell out of people who aren’t so good.”
“Must be nice,” she said. “Having someone like that on your side.”
“It is,” I agreed.
My initial instinct was to tell her he could help her, too. I could call Gavin, and he’d help us devise a plan to fix things. He had connections with powerful people. Granted, I had some connections too, but Gavin had the relationships that allowed him to ask for favors and know who to approach about certain issues.
But before I could even reach for my phone, I remembered Gavin was at the club, dealing with some electrical issue.
Fuck.
If I just wanted to offer Lulu a job, I could’ve called Laila since she was Gavin’s second-in-command, but I needed more than just a job. We needed someone to make Ralf back off.
Fury.
