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Chapter one
Mia
Mia danced under thedim lights of the strip club, her petite, curvaceous frame moving to the beat of the pounding music. The air was thick with hungry lust, the eyes of leering patrons following her every move.
"Hey, Tiger!" shouted a man from the crowd. "Give us a closer look! I want to feel that ink dance."
Mia twisted away as his hand reached out, trying to grab at her tattoo. Her heart raced, adrenaline pumping through her veins. She felt trapped by her own skin, unable to escape the unwanted attention.
"Back off," she snapped, her voice barely audible over the cacophony of music and catcalls. She moved back to the center of the stage, to the pole she spent so much time dancing with. The pole was good. The pole was her friend. The pole never grabbed her or said lecherous things to her.
"Aw, come on, don't be like that," the man called out.
Mia stayed by the pole, well out of his grasp.
“I just wanna see that hot little tiger tattoo of yours",” yelled the guy, who was clearly drunk. “Show me your claws, baby. Bet you’re ferocious between the sheets. Miaow.”
Just then, a red light buzzed over the stage. Every time the red light turned on, it was an instruction from Mia’s boss to remove another item of clothing. There were no ifs or buts. No arguing with those lights. She had to do as she was told . . . or face the consequences.
"Damn it," she muttered to herself as she began to provocatively remove her strappy top so that now she was dancing in nothing but her bra and panties.
Now, the green light flashed on. That meant “go.” Mia had to move around the crowd, to give them an eyeful, to tease them and grind against them and most importantly, collect their cash.
Mia swallowed, steeling herself for another unpleasant round of getting pawed at by sweaty businessmen with hard-ons. Each and every one of the men in here disgusted her. Their beery breath. Their sweaty palms. The greedy look in their eyes. And of course, the fact they thought they owned a piece of her.
As Mia moved through the sea of strangers, she did her best to avoid their touch. Sweat clung to her skin. All she wanted was to shower, to get clean, then run a mile. But she couldn’t. She was a prisoner. An animal in a cage, forced to perform for spectators who saw her as nothing more than a piece of meat.
For a fleeting moment, Mia's thoughts retreated to her childhood in foster care. She remembered the cold linoleum floors and sterile white walls of the group home she'd shared with her only friend, Savannah. The two girls huddled together beneath threadbare blankets, their whispered dreams of escaping to a better life filling the darkness.
"Promise me we'll get out of here someday, Mia," Savannah had said, her green eyes shining with hope. "We'll find a real family who loves us."
"I promise, Savvy," Mia had replied, her voice trembling with determination. A fierce sense of loyalty bound them together, sisters forged not by blood but by a shared struggle for survival.
But fate had other plans—plans that tore them apart and left Mia betrayed and abandoned, her dreams crumbling like ashes around her.
"Hey, Tiger! I got somethin’ for ya.”
It was the same guy, the one who wouldn’t leave her alone tonight. He was holding a wad of cash now. Her heart fell. Mia knew that meant there was no escaping him. Her boss, Chad, watched her on CCTV from the back room. If he ever caught her doing something as bad as not going to collect money from a client, he’d punish her for days.
No dinner for two nights.
No blankets.
An ice bath.
He had all kinds of ways to make her suffer.
The man moved closer to Mia, his eyes gleaming with anticipation. He extended the cash towards her, his voice thick with a layer of insinuation, "Come on, Tiger, you know you want it."
She hesitated, her eyes scanning the crowd for an escape route. There had to be a way out of this. She couldn't do this every night. Something inside her snapped, and she decided to assert her agency. Instead of just taking the money, she spun around, her eyes locking with the man's.
"Listen, buddy," she said, her voice firm, "if you think this is gonna get you anywhere, you're sadly mistaken. I'm not that girl."
The man's expression twisted into a snarl, as if he'd been slapped. His grip tightened around the cash, his fingers digging into his palm. "You think you're all that, huh? You wanna get in trouble with your big boss, do you?”
Mia swallowed. “Just . . . hand over the money. Let’s get this over with.”
His grin grew wider, a testament to his sheer satisfaction with his power over her. “Glad you see sense, baby.”
