The cruel request

I didn’t sleep that night.

I tossed. Turned. Stared at the cracked ceiling until the plaster patterns began to look like scars. In my chest, a weight pressed harder than anything I’d ever carried. Not the hunger. Not the shame. Not even the labor pains that brought my daughter into this world.

Why now?

Why did he show up, only to disappear again?

Was he cruel or kind? A curse or a delayed punishment?

I hated how his presence had cracked something open inside me again—something I’d long buried in the rubble of survival.

Days passed and I didn’t call. I forced myself to function. For my baby and For what little I still had left of my sanity. As I walked home one night. I got a phone call.

The words came fast. The world spun even faster.

Hit and run. Convenience store. Emergency room.

My daughter.

I dashed to the hospital, there, the stench of antiseptic nearly brought me to my knees. But it was the image of her—bandaged, pale, unmoving-that gutted me.

The doctor didn’t sugarcoat it. “She needs surgery. Fast. Internal bleeding.”

Money. That was all it would take to save her.

Money I didn’t have.

I begged. Pleaded. Called in favors from people who didn’t owe me one.

But I came up empty—until my trembling fingers curled around his card. That stupid black card. I didn’t think. I just moved.

The heat never left this city, not even at midnight. Neon signs blinked lazily over cracked sidewalks, while bass-heavy music bled through the walls of the narrow clubs lining the boulevard.

I hated this place.

Not because it was loud or sinful—

But because it remembered me.

Here, every street corner whispered of him. Every velvet hallway inside those dark-lit clubs reminded me of that night…The one i couldn't forget.

I worked quietly now, far from the chaos of the main floor, stacking wine glasses and brushing off spilled bourbon like it wasn’t someone’s second paycheck. I didn’t speak unless spoken to. Didn’t flinch when men laughed too loud or stared too long.

This city raised predators.I had learned to blend in.

The club had changed since the last time I stood at its doors. “I need to see him,” I told the guy at the entrance.

He looked me up and down with a smirk. But then recognition dawned. His smirk fell. He nodded once and vanished through the curtains.

Minutes later, I was being ushered through a dim hallway, my pulse thumping louder than the bass shaking the walls. I told myself to breathe. I wasn’t here for closure. Or confrontation.

I was here to save a life. Then the door opened.

And I froze.

There he was.

Seated on a leather couch, shirt undone, tattoos licking down his arms like wildfire. And beneath him—two women. On their knees. One moaned. The other gagged. Both lost in pleasing a man who didn’t even flinch at my entrance.

He looked at me like I was part of the décor.

Unbothered. Unashamed. If this was his idea of a reunion, I nearly turned and left. But my daughter’s face flashed in my mind. I stood still. Swallowed bile. and tried to find the steel in my spine.

“Can we talk?” I asked, my voice flat. “Privately.”

He lifted a hand lazily. The women retreated, not even fully dressed, giggling as they passed me. I hated how small I felt.

When it was just the two of us, I stepped forward.

“I need money,” I said, skipping every lie I could’ve told. I choked, then cleared my throat. “I’ll do anything. Just tell me what.”

For a second, he just stared.

Then came that smile. Cold. Sinister. Cruel.

“Be my mistress.”

The words fell like gun fired in a quiet room. My heart stopped. Of all the things he could’ve said, of all the bargains I’d feared—this was his price?

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, “Give me your body and I'll give you money.”

And just like that, the man I once begged the universe to forget… held my daughter’s life in one hand, and my dignity in the other.