Page 225 of Boyfriend of the Hour

He looked a lot different from the jovial Eastern European Rat Pack member I’d served at Kyle’s games two and a half months earlier. Right now, Lis Antoni could have been any other old man in the neighborhood in his faded white polo shirt tucked over a thick belly, elastic-banded track pants, a well-worn pair of New Balances, and thinning gray hair combed over a balding top. A thick gold watch and a matching chain kept the outfit from going completely senior citizen, but it was really the hardened eyes and gnarled hands that made him the kind of man you wouldn’t ever think to ask for a sucker.

“See, I told you,” Shawn said. “Good as new, and ready to go. Give her a quick shower, and she’ll be ready to perform in a minute.”

“Perform?”

I looked between the four men. Antoni was eyeing me like a buyer at a cattle market. The unnamed man behind him looked bored, Kyle wouldn’t meet my eye at all, and Shawnseemed almost gleeful to be presenting me to his—what? Boss? Overlord? The guy he desperately wanted to peg him?

I almost made that joke, but decided I didn’t want another backhand. The first one had hurt badly enough.

“You owe me a party, honey,” Antoni said as he wagged a meaty finger in my direction. “My boys liked you. And that’s before we find out what you werereallycapable of.”

“What’s he talking about?” I asked of Kyle, who still wouldn’t look at me, then Shawn, who only grinned.

“Oh, I showed him a little precious footage,” Shawn said. “We got a nice little business going on Only Fans, see. Only the best girls. Lis here helps me find the right locations, and then we put on a show for our subscribers. The paying ones, naturally.” He looked me over. “Though I just might give a piece of you for free, Sunshine. You think you can take it on both ends?”

I wanted to vomit. I almost did. Even a very muchnotgenius like me knew what he was getting at. The internet was rife with pornography, too much of it featuring women likely procured against their will and sold into some form of sexual slavery.

Not all sex work was like that. Not all.

But some.

Even a little was too much.

“Don’t touch her,” Mike growled. “You want her, you’ll have to come through me.”

“I’m fuckin’ quaking in my shoes,” Shawn retorted. “Can you even stand up after what Ares did to your knees?”

The look on Mike’s face told me he probably couldn’t.

Ares. That’s what the other man’s name was. The younger one who was currently studying Mike like he was one of those frogs we dissected in tenth-grade biology.

“Don’t,” I said, quickly moving my body between them and Mike. “Don’t you hurt him. He doesn’t deserve it.”

“He stays,” Antoni said shortly. “She comes.”

Then he walked out, leaving the other three men with Mike and me, menace written across all their faces.

“Ares,” croaked Mike. “Come on. You gotta let me out of here. I got kids, man. A family to take care of.”

The younger man—Ares, apparently—pushed off the wall and approached us. He was the other I recognized from my table at the gaming party. His face vaguely resembled Antoni’s, but much younger, probably closer to Mike’s age. He had a still-lean body, brown eyes so dark they were almost black, and only a few hints of gray feathering the tempers of an otherwise full head of dark russet hair.

He squatted down to look at Mike as if he were looking at a strange new plant growing from the sidewalk. Then he looked from him to me and back again.

“What is it with you Zola women?” he wondered, his deep, Bronx-born voice tinged with something that almost sounded like admiration. Or maybe envy. “First your sister, now you. People say they’re ride or die, but you Zola girls actually do it.” He looked to Mike. “Is it just for you, Scarrone? I’ve seen it twice now.”

“What is he talking about?” I asked Mike, who only shook his head.

Ares looked between us. “She doesn’t know what her sister did for you? How she was in in a room just like this, put her life on the line just like her? For love, she said. She was willing to die for your sorry ass at only seventeen years old.”

I gasped. Lea had donewhat?

“Eighteen,” Mike corrected him. “And I tried to stop her then too.”

“Yeah, I remember.” As he rose to standing, Ares shook his head like he still couldn’t believe it. “I don’t know what you did to earn that kind of loyalty, Scarrone, but I admire you for it. Hope you didn’t fuck around on that. She doesn’t deserve it.”

Mike’s voice was steel. “I wouldneverdo that to my wife.”

Behind him, Shawn just rolled his eyes, and Kyle looked less than convinced. Because, of course, they did. These were men who traded in others’ sexual proclivities. They depended on marriages being shams and men succumbing to their basest instincts.