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Part Two
Lucky
11
FLASHBACK
5 March 2015
The Villa
My day starts like any other, with the alarm going off just after midday and bitching from a hung over Lolita, the girl I share a room with. She’s twenty-four to my twenty-one. Those measly three years are one of many reasons she hates my guts.
The other reason is because she thinks I’m standing in the way of her promotion to become one of Clay’s Entertainers.
To keep The Villa’s Entertainers exclusive enough to attract wealthy patrons, Clay limited the girls to a cozy dozen and instituted a fancy booking system that involved said patrons going on a waiting list. Lolita was gagging to be promoted after one of the Entertainers fell down the stairs and permanently damaged her back. Clay promoted me instead, earning me an enemy for life.
But the truth is Lolita was overlooked because she sucks at giving blow jobs and she sucks at fucking, although she’s moderate at hand jobs. The one thing she does excel at is pole dancing, courtesy of some fancy ballet training she received from rich foster parents before they decided she was the wrong side of adorably nuts and tossed her back into the care system.
For the last six months, I’ve endured her vitriol. Recently, after overhearing her tell one of the girls that she hates my hair and intends to cut it off while I sleep, I’ve taken to sleeping with my hair carefully pinned to my skull and secured with a swim cap.
It’s uncomfortable as hell, but so far I’ve woken with my mane unmolested.
I hear her moving around in the room and pretend to be asleep. My first client isn’t until two, so I have time to wait for her to shower and leave before I get up.
I also have time to go over my plan, make sure every angle is covered. It’s only a matter of time before Clay discovers the documents in his safe are fake. I’m one of a handful of people allowed in his inner sanctum. He doesn’t know I’m aware of the existence of his safe, but that won’t matter. I need to be far away from here when he connects the dots, because then he’ll know I’m the only one with the answers he needs.
Answers I promised to take to the grave.
Behind me, I hear Lolita disappear into the adjoining bathroom. I peel the swim cap off my head and moan in relief as I take out the hairpins.
Once all the pins are out, I sit on the side of my bed and massage my sore scalp. This is getting really old. I return the cap and pins to a different hiding spot, this time in the zip up section of Lolita’s least favorite handbag. She found three of my previous hiding spots and slashed the caps to shreds. I would be amused by her antics if I weren’t so goddamn fed up with wasting precious time to go to the sports store in Getty Falls to replace them. The last time I went into the store, the cashier looked at me funny. I could tell he was dying to find out what sex toy I intended to fashion from a swim cap. I remained silent and let him conjure up his own pathetic fantasy.
I’m in the middle of laying out my outfit for the day when I hear a knock. My grip tightens around the pearl choker my client favors. The only people who knock on the doors of the North Wing are people who don’t belong in the North Wing.
The North Wing is strictly out of bounds to patrons of The Villa and most of the male staff. It’s where the girls in the upper echelons of The Villa hierarchy have their sleeping quarters. The only way to access it is through a set of double doors in the East Wing, via a security coded entrance, which is also monitored by two of Clayton’s bodyguards twenty-four-seven.
At this time of day, before The Villa’s doors open, the only person who could be knocking is—
“What, you’re too good to answer the door now, are you?” Lolita pauses in the bathroom doorway, her wet hair clinging to her damp skin, a towel draped over her voluptuous figure.
I force my fingers to release the choker and walk to the door. I gulp down my relief when I see who it is, although it’s short lived.
“Hey, Ridge,” my roommate greets sultrily from behind me.
The mountain in front of me barely acknowledges her with a nod before his gaze drops back down to me.
Great, something else for her to hate me for.
I stare at Ridge Mathews.
Of all of Clay’s minders, he’s the one that frightens me the most, and most of them are ex-military or mercenaries and pretty damn scary to begin with. They’re supposedly here for our protection, but I’ve seen the way Ridge’s eyes follow me when we cross paths. I suppress a shudder and maintain a neutral expression.
“Clay wants to see you, asap.”
Six words no girl at The Villa wants to hear first thing upon waking up. Or at any time during a twenty-four-hour cycle.
In the mirrored picture next to the door, I see Lolita’s expression drop from sneer to sympathetic for a split second before she catches my gaze and normal service resumes.