Chapter 3

My phone buzzed and I almost ripped my pocket pulling it out.

I stared at it. Marcus Sullivan, my keeper, my prisoner. The man my mind recalled in the face of that bastard.

It was the first Monday of the quarter. I knew the drill.

We've been doing it for seven years. I didn't need reminders, but he sent them anyway.

I wanted to go to him immediately. That's how irritated I was. I wanted him to do what he did so well – fuck me blind, deaf, and dumb.

The man was a beast, both in bed and out of it. Mafia kingpin, five years running. I'd been waiting for someone to take him out, free me from his hold, but right now, I wanted him inside me.

My phone squeaked in my hand, and I loosened my grip, exhaling long and low through my nostrils as I leaned on my car with one hand.

It's not like I couldn't walk away from the client and his sons, but I needed to get out of the hole I had dug for myself thirteen years ago.

Thirteen!

I had kept track, kept score, thirteen fucking years of clawing back to what should have always been mine, but I had thrown away because of some sleek-looking, sleek-talking bastard.

A man I had dismissed in my journey of penance. Forgotten as I was salvaged by another. Never even considered when I became my savior’s kept man.

Well, not exactly ‘kept’, but close enough.

I owed Marcus millions, and I paid every month. Whenever a balance remained, I would service him, once a quarter, have the interest added, and the cycle would continue.

Some months, I paid less than I could afford. I paid less to keep that door open. A door that I had become afraid to close.

Because if I closed it. What would I be? Who would I be?

I had my family’s business to look after, but outside of that, I was an empty shell.

I had no taste for anything, or anyone.

I didn’t go to the movies or go to sporting events.

I went to sex clubs and nightclubs. High-brow bars and exclusive hedonistic parties. for one thing and one thing only – pleasure. The only type of pleasure I liked.

I didn’t do drugs, and drinking my life away wasn’t an option – I had already tried that, it wasn’t for me.

Sex, though, was just right. The very balance I needed. But I wasn’t the type who went with every man that came my way. I had some regulars, some not regulars, and some one-night wonders.

But Marcus had become a constant. A reliable one at that. A good one, if I wanted to be honest.

And if I paid up quickly, if I let him go. What would I become?

With the new payout from the elder gentleman, I could be out from under Marcus’ thumb before the year ended.

Had I taken that 500, I could be out today. But if I had taken that 500, Leon would have found a way to make me regret it.

I couldn't give him the chance.

My mind pushed the bastard out, and Marcus floated in. All 6 foot 9, 285 pounds of him. My mind cooled, and my body got hot.

I'm no lightweight myself. At 6 feet 6 inches and 250 pounds, I’m not small, but to Marcus… few were his match.

I could feel him as I closed my eyes, struggling to clear my mind, to focus as I thought of what lay ahead for me on this fucking project.

Tonight, I mused. I'll go tonight, on schedule. I can't have Marcus messing with me cuz I ran to him early.

Fuck!

I snatched my door open, jumped in, and skidded out of the parking lot.

My mind reeled with memories long forgotten, buried, but now threatening to consume me, blindsiding me out of nowhere.

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I had met Leon in my junior year at Uni. He was a senior, studying law. I was studying architecture. One fraternity meet, one beer too many, and I had fallen into his smile, his eyes, his boldness.

Things I didn’t have around me in my tiny, careful world.

Things I didn't know about myself, Leon shone a light on and then ignited me, body and soul. He pulled me in, took me away from everyone and everything I knew, controlling me, using me, and then he spat me out, exposed, humiliated, alone.

My father disowned me. My mother had a stroke. My elder brother, the drug addict, mocked me, the good son, and my sister…best not to talk about Rina.

After two years of debauchery and wasting my parents' money on classes I was barely attending, then dropping out of school and becoming Leon’s full-time bitch, only to later become his whore when he pimped me out to anyone who so much as glanced in my direction, I ran.

I left the city, left the country. I took the last money I had, cash I had gotten from selling the three watches I had stolen from Leon, and got on the first bus that hit the station.

I went across the border, with no destination in mind. No plan. Just escape.

I found work in clubs and bars, in various Canadian provinces, moving from one to the other, serving drinks and sometimes giving other services I had mastered under Leon’s very precise tutelage. I was twenty years old and drifting.

I was older than most in the trade, so I stuck to serving drinks or manning bars. After a year, I was strictly a server or a host who drank with customers, and I had settled down in Toronto.

One day, a particularly raunchy customer put his hands on me, and I lost it. Nobody touched me without my consent. It had become a trigger for me, and I wasn't having it.

He pressed against me, with his friends seated around. They were all laughing.

Why do predators always laugh? That was the thought in my head as I stood up, determined to walk away. I had been at that club for almost nine months, and I wasn’t going to throw my hard work out the door for some drunk fools.

I stumbled backward, taken aback as the customer rose to follow, reaching for me in the process. A large man with more muscle than necessary for any regular, standard human being.

Whether from surprise or fear, or perhaps it was anger or irritation, at everyone, at everything, at myself for being nervous, at the look in his eye that presented a picture I was too familiar with.

A gaze I had seen before from too many horny men, too many aggressive clients, a look linked to too much shame from my past, I smashed a wine bottle on his head.

His friends stopped laughing.

I turned to leave, and he grabbed me by the collar, ripping my silk shirt; buttons popped as the collar tore. I spun back to him, picking up another bottle and breaking it against the low table as I fell on my back on the food and other drinks that nobody cared or was quick enough to move out of the way.

As he tugged my belt, to rip my pants off, I stabbed him just below the collarbone.