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I WRAPPED MY ARMS AROUND myself and waited for him to start talking. The sooner I could get him to agree to this deal for good, the better – the sooner I could get him to admit that he wasn’t going to hunt my father down for money, the sooner I would be able to relax and focus on teaching these girls to dance.
“I’m going to take you up on your offer,” he told me, and I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling a wash of relief hit me all at once. I knew I couldn’t trust everything he said, but this was a start, for certain, and God only knew how much I needed a nudge in the right direction.
“Thank you—”
“Provided you prove to me tonight that you know what you’re doing,” he added. My stomach twisted into a knot. I didn’t like the sound of that. Just what did he think he could convince me to do for him – to him - while he was here?
“Like what?”
“Like dancing,” he replied, grinning widely. There was something shark-like about that smile, something that seemed almost dangerous, but I didn’t let it scare me. Men like that were always trying to make themselves seem more frightening than they already were, and I had no reason to be afraid of him. He wanted me running and hiding from him, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of thinking he’d gotten me where he wanted me.
“I can do that,” I replied, nodding. I could handle a night of dancing, it wasn’t like I’d had any problems doing that lately. And if he was going to hire me to make sure the rest of these dancers were up to the standards that he was looking for, then it was only natural that he was going to want to see me in action. I just had to prove myself to him, show him I was capable of handling myself in the club, even with the new clientele he was clearly trying to bring in.
“Is that all?” I asked.
“I’ll be watching tonight,” he warned me, and that grin spread a little wider over his face. Like he was going to enjoy keeping an eye on me for as long as he had the chance. I nodded, trying my best to keep it professional.
“Yes, that makes sense,” I agreed. I wasn’t going to give away anything in my voice, let alone how shaky I felt in that instant – I just wanted to put all of this behind me, get to the part where I was training the other girls and proving I was more than capable of paying back my father’s debts. I didn’t need Andreas hovering over me this entire time, trying to get me to drop the ball so he could – so he could what? Come down hard on my father and take what he planned to anyway? The thought was enough to send a shiver down my spine, and I did everything I could to ignore it. The last thing I needed was to allow the reality of the situation with my dad and Andreas to get in the way of what I had come here to do.
“Go ahead, get started,” Andreas told me, nodding towards the door. I didn’t need telling twice, and I certainly didn’t need his smarmy grin nudging me in the direction I was headed right now. I went for the door and stepped outside, inhaling the familiar scent of the club, and promised myself that I was going to make tonight the most impressive evening I had ever spent in this place.
It was already crowded with people, so it wasn’t going to be hard to find someone to dance with. My job usually consisted of performing on the stage, but for now, my shift doing that hadn’t come up, so it was my job to go out on to the dancefloor and find some guy who wanted a girl on his arm badly enough to tip me to be seen with him. I plastered a giant smile on my face, shed the big coat I had been wearing to reveal the slim-fit little bandage dress underneath, and ignored the pain in my feet from the heels I was wearing. Nobody wanted to hear some girl whine about how sore her feet were. Best I could do was keep that smile on my face and make sure I made myself look as charming as possible.
It didn’t take long till a guy locked eyes with me, and marched towards me – he offered me a twenty to dance with him, and I took it and tucked it into the hidden pocket I had stitched onto the underside of the dress for me to hide my cash. I took his hand, led him out to the dancefloor, and put my hands on his shoulders, allowing him to rest his on my waist, but no lower or higher. I knew he would be hoping I would let my judgement lapse long enough for him to pay me some more to let him do what he wanted, but there was no way I was going to let that happen. I didn’t want Andreas thinking that was the kind of service I offered - I was never going to be that girl, no matter how much he might have wanted me to be, no matter how much cash he might have been able to make from me if I was a little more friendly to some of the guests.
As the guy pulled me in a little closer, I glanced around, wanting to make sure none of this was in vain and that Andreas could actually see what I was doing here. And finally, I spotted him observing me. He was lingering over by the bar, a drink in his hand, eyes pinned to mine as I moved to the beat of the music with this man hanging off of me. He was already a little drunk, his feet clumsy enough that he stepped on me a couple of times, but I ignored him. All that mattered was that I sold this to Andreas, convinced him that I was the woman to lead the girls here to a higher level of class.
The guy tried to slide his hands down my body, but I managed to re-route them without pissing him off too much – there were guys who tended to throw tantrums if you so much as hinted at the fact that you didn’t want them groping you right there in the middle of the dancefloor, but he seemed too drunk to really care. He just wanted a girl to be seen with, and right now, that girl was me.
I could feel Andreas watching us from across the room, and I stole another glance at him again – his eyes seemed focused on nothing but me, even though the crowd. For the briefest moment, I found myself wishing it was him I was dancing with instead, just like the first night that we met, and I wondered if that was crossing his mind right now as well. If he was imagining just what it might have been like to get his hands on me again. I could still remember the intensity of our chemistry, even as I had tried to deny it, even as I had tried to pretend I hadn’t felt it at all, the way his hands had moved so confidently against my body in time to the music, the way he had taken control like he was the only thing that mattered.
And he still was in control, of course, even now. It just hurt to admit that. I didn’t want to concede that anyone other than me was running the show here, but I knew there was no way for me to deny it – no way for me to pretend anything different than the obvious truth. I wondered if he could feel it, too, that chemistry that first night; if he had just been toying with me or if there had been a part of him that had really enjoyed it. With Andreas, it was always going to be near-impossible to tell, because he played his cards so close to his chest it was like he didn’t want a single person to see them at all.
I wondered what secrets he was hiding. A man in his position, I was sure it was something big – maybe I would be able to get it out of him, use it as leverage to make sure he dropped the case against my father once and for all and let us get on with our lives, but I doubted it. I realized that, even though I was meant to be dancing with this customer, I was still staring at him, my eyes still locked on his like they were the only things that mattered in this damn club.
That smile licked up his face again, a reminder of how much he was enjoying this. He might have tried to pretend otherwise, but I wasn’t stupid, I could tell what was going through his mind in that moment. He liked the power he had over me, liked that he seemed able to pretty much get me to do anything he wanted, and that was enough to make the fury in me rise even more. I pulled the man in front of me close, not caring that I was sliding past a few of my boundaries, just wanting someone to take this all out on, someone who I could pretend wore that same cocky smile as Andreas did right now as he looked at me....
All of a sudden, the song ended, and I pulled back. I wasn’t going to perform for this guy for free.
“Hey, what’s—”
“I need to go to the lady’s room,” I told him sweetly. “I’ll be back, okay?”
“Okay,” he replied, though I could tell he doubted it. I didn’t intend to see him again once I had shaken him off, but honestly, I wasn’t much in the mood to massage his ego into thinking I would be coming back for more because he had just been so much fun to dance with.
I headed to the dressing rooms for a minute or two to check my make-up and spray on some perfume, knowing I needed to get Andreas out of my head if I was going to be able to do my job today. Which was going to be tough, what with him hanging over me at every turn to try and make sure I didn’t shake him off.
But I just had to get through tonight, and I could prove to him I was the person he should hire for this job. I knew he was likely to go back on his word, but there was no way I was going to pass up the chance to try and see it through. I had so much to deal with right now as it was, and if I had to grit my teeth and put in the effort to try and win over this guy on top of everything else, then I would do it.
I headed back out on to the floor again – or at least, that was what I was intending to do, before I got waylaid by someone else.
“Nadia!”
I turned, hearing my name called by a slurring male voice, and I winced when I saw who was bearing down on me. Roger. He had a big, sloppy smile on his face, and his arms spread wide, as though he wanted nothing more than to pull me into a hug.
“It’s so good to see you,” he told me. I could smell the booze coming off of him in waves, and it took everything I had in me not to push him off and tell him to stay the hell away from me.
“Roger, I’m working—”
“Oh, yeah, don’t worry, I can pay you,” he continued. He was hardly getting the words out in the right order. How drunk was he? I looked around for someone who would get him away from me. I didn’t want to dance with him, even if he paid. He was drunk enough that I was certain he would overstep boundaries, and the last thing I wanted Andreas to see me doing was fighting off some guy who was too drunk to know when I was telling him to fuck off.
“We could go to one of the private rooms,” he went on, a filthy smile spreading up his face. I could already tell just how he was imagining me, naked, dancing in front of him. The thought of it made me shudder. I was never going to do that for anyone, let alone someone like Roger, someone who disgusted me on the level that he did. I went to take a step back from him, but before I could, he grabbed my arm.
“Just one dance,” he pleaded with me. “I know you’d look so good with me...”
“Get off,” I told him, firmly, keeping my voice low and praying he would let me out of this mess without causing too much of a scene. You never wanted to be viewed as the kind of girl who caused trouble in a place like this – you might as well have just been asking to be fired, and I needed this job now more than I ever had before in my life. I needed to keep my cool, but I could feel the panic rising up inside of me as he tightened his grip on my arm. He had been following me before, and I doubted he was going to back off quite so easily now that he had me where he wanted me inside this club.
Suddenly, and before I could say another word, I felt someone appear behind me.
“Let go.”
I turned. It was Andreas. He didn’t look angry, but the tone of his voice told me he wasn’t going to put up with whatever was happening here.
“It’s fine, man, I can pay,” Roger protested, but Andreas shook his head.
“Let go of her,” he ordered him once more, giving him the chance to get his hands off of me. I bit my lip. I didn’t want to be seen as the one causing trouble, but Roger was likely not going to give anything up until he had gotten what he wanted from me.
“I’m going to pay,” he snapped back, and this time, he sounded more annoyed than he had before. Like he couldn’t believe he had to defend himself. It was clear he didn’t see me as much more than a piece of furniture, something he could pay for access to and not have to worry about one way or the other, and that pissed me off more than anything else. How could he talk to me like that? I was a human being.
“I don’t care,” Andreas replied. That was what made me stop in my tracks – if there was one thing I was sure Andreas Salieri cared about above all else, it was making money, and hearing him brush Roger off just like that took me by surprise.
“Get out.”
“You don’t have to do that, he’s harmless,” I protested, but it was clear that Andreas had already made his mind up about all of this. Roger finally let go of my arm, and Andreas led him to the door himself.
I watched as the two men walked away from me. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Of everything I had expected Andreas to do for me, this was about the very bottom of the barrel. Even if he had seen me in some sort of trouble with one of the guests, wouldn’t he just have sent a member of security over here to deal with it?
But no – he had come to handle it all himself, and something about that... I liked it. I couldn’t deny it. I liked that he had been so willing to step in and help me, even though he could have easily left it to someone else to handle everything that was going on.
But I wasn’t going to let that change anything. I was still working because of him, not despite him, and I had no intention of allowing this single little act of kindness get in the way of how I really felt about him. I was just a piece of property here to him, one he wasn’t going to let some random punter get in the way of or cause issues with. As much as I wanted to believe there might have been something altruistic to the way he had treated me, I was sure it was nothing more than his attempt to ensure that his wares didn’t wind up damaged.
And maybe that would get rid of Roger for good, now that he had reason to be scared of me. With Andreas Salieri looking out for me, I couldn’t imagine that many people would bother fucking with me.
Except, of course, for Andreas himself. Who seemed intent on spending his whole life screwing with me, if that’s what it took to get me where he wanted me.
