8. Claudia

Chapter 8

Claudia

T he hammering club beat mirrors my racing heart. I'm a little winded from dancing for the last half hour, but also from the distinct feeling that I'm being watched.

Which I definitely am. There are more than a few guys staring at me as I shake my ass in the cage, but I'm used to those. It's part of the job, and while I don't love it, I can at least tolerate it.

It's not the clients that bother me. It's the thought of Angelo out there in the crowd somewhere.

I don't know why I keep obsessing about that man. He's not going to materialize from the darkness, walk over here, and sweep me off my feet like I keep dreaming he might. There won't be some romantic kiss, no hot as fuck sneaky sex sessions in some private booth, no secretive messages left taped under bar stools. He's just some gangster that wants to use me for his own selfish purposes, and if I let myself get swept away by how good he looks, I'll end up getting screwed.

Because he doesn't care about what I want.

He'd happily sacrifice my job. I'm just some random girl to him.

But even knowing that, even telling myself a hundred times an hour that Angelo Bianco is absolutely no good, I keep imagining his hands on my body. His mouth on my mouth.

Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money.

And Angelo's right, I could probably get into Tommy's office without any problems. I have to go in there sometimes to fill out paperwork or to grab files for him or whatever. It's not like it would be incredibly unusual if I popped in for a few minutes, say one evening while he's out with my sister getting dinner or whatever, just to update my time-off requests. I could rummage through his desk, flip through his files, and be out of there before anyone suspects a thing.

I'm Tommy's favorite, after all. Nobody would second-guess it.

But if it did go wrong, I'd lose my job, and Tommy might even take it out on my sister.

Ten grand just isn't enough for that much risk.

Still, Angelo's up to something. The guy's supposed to be the owner of this place, but Tommy still acts like he's in charge. There's a power struggle going down and Angelo wants to use me to get at Tommy, which is kind of tempting. I mean, taking Tommy down might help Serena—she might even leave him if he can't provide her with money and clothes and drugs.

That could present me an opportunity to yank her away from this life for good.

All I'd have to do is trust Angelo.

A guy I don't know with motives I can't guess at.

And if I'm honest with myself, the real reason I'm even considering this is how attractive I find him.

Also, because I fucking hate Tommy.

I keep dancing, trying to focus on the task, but my mind's a total mess. I bounce between obsessing over my attraction to Angelo, to wondering if I can really do this job, to imagining shoving white-hot fire pokers into Tommy's eyeballs.

After an hour, I'm genuinely disappointed that I haven't seen Angelo yet. I keep waiting for him to approach my cage, to make some cryptic comments, maybe do a little flirting.

Instead, I watch Tommy step out from the side hall with Serena on his arm. They pause to say something to Rodrigo before the two of them stride over to the exit where Skinny's working. The wiry bouncer gives them a mock salute, which makes Tommy flip him off—only Skinny can get away with that level of disrespect, mostly because Skinny's extremely good at his job and kind of terrifying.

Tommy and Serena sweep out into the night. It's a little after nine, and I'd bet an ovary they're headed out to dinner.

I'm not normally an impulsive person. Sometimes I spend so long trying to pick a place to order food from that I end up getting nothing because it's way too late. I've been working here at Cage for eight long months and I've barely done more than make snide comments and shake my tits at strangers. I can't even tell my abusive prick of an uncle off.

But the moment Tommy and Serena leave the building, I picture Angelo in my head and I can hear his offer of ten thousand dollars, and I start to wonder if maybe that price is negotiable.

If maybe I can get a lot more from him.

I wait through two more songs, sweating and shaking and telling myself that I'm not really going to do this, I already told Angelo no, I don't owe him anything. But after the two songs are up, I shove the latch open and step out onto the dance floor, motioning for one of the tray girls to take my place. "Quick break!" I shout over the music and she just shrugs, looking bored, and I take her tray for her as I hurry over to the bar then down the narrow hall that leads toward the bathrooms and the offices.

Eight months. I've been here for eight months trying to get through to Serena, and I haven't made any progress. Eight months of lurking, hating myself, hating Tommy, boiling over with anger all the damn time, getting hit on, my ass pinched, my tits squeezed, treated like furniture, with nothing to show for it.

Eight months of nothing.

It's time to take a stinking risk.

I'm sweating as I approach Tommy's office. It's in the back corner with a simple MANAGER placard on the front, black on fake gold. It's locked, but there's a number pad above the knob, and I punch in the code with shaking fingers.

This is dumb. This is so dumb.

The lock clunks open and I quickly duck inside, heart racing.

I lean back against the door, still holding the drink tray. It's not too late to turn around and leave. I haven't done anything wrong yet. If someone spots me now, I can make up whatever excuse, and it'll be fine, but once I really head in there and start rummaging?—

I flip on the light and lock the door, feeling like I might throw up.

Tommy's office is relatively small. There's a desk against the far wall. On the left is a bank of small TV screens, most of them hooked up to the CCTV security system, but some of them have DVD players built in. They're currently turned off. On the right are filing cabinets and storage bins plus a huge corkboard with schedules and time-off requests tacked up. Tommy may be a skeevy, pervy asshole, but he really does do a decent job keeping this place running.

I try to calm myself down and close my eyes. For a beat, I picture Serena the way she was before she started swallowing pills: bright-eyed, ready to get her nursing degree, the whole world spread out at her feet.

Then she came to Club Cage, met Tommy, and everything was over.

I open my eyes and get to work.

Lucky for me, I know the filing system pretty well. Tommy sometimes has the girls do paperwork for him, which means I get stuck in this little room with him while he makes lewd comments and watches the monitors, sometimes flipping to the third-floor cameras. One time he pulled up a specific feed that showed a room with a huge bed while six sweaty bodies fucked and sucked each other into oblivion, and he casually made me watch it while I put away payroll slips. I told Serena about that one and she only rolled her eyes like Tommy was just being Tommy.

Angelo hadn't been specific about what he wanted, so I grabbed whatever I could find. Tax stuff, income statements, lists of expenses and expenditures, the most recent inventory reports, crap like that. I grab an empty folder and start shoving it all inside, sweating and biting my lip so hard I'm afraid it might bleed. A minute passes, then another, and I feel like I'm dangling over the edge of a cliff with nothing but a black endless drop beneath me.

I keep going. The folder's stuffed with documents by the time I'm done and I briefly wonder if Tommy's going to notice. That's not my problem though. I start closing drawers and making sure nothing looks like it was disturbed when I hear the worst noise in the entire world.

A thump against the door, then the tell-tale click of numbers getting entered into the keypad.

I freeze. I don't move. I can't think. My mind's an endless black and I'm in total prey mode. There are eight numbers in the code, and after the third, I start looking around for a place to hide.

But there's nowhere. I could go under the desk, but whoever's coming will spot me right away. There's no closet, no corner, nothing to crawl under.

Four numbers. Five numbers.

I grab the tray and use it to cover the folder.

Six numbers. Seven numbers.

This was a mistake. This was such a huge mistake. I start thinking of all those excuses I came up with earlier and suddenly I can't recall a single reason why I might be in here. I'm panicking, and that's going to get me caught.

Eight numbers.

The lock slams open.