Page 87 of The Dollhouse

I wouldn’t.

So I’d pulled out as much money as I could from various ATMs and ran, leaving my future college education in the dust, along with my family and my cheating ex. Fuck them all.

As if saying it out loud wasn’t enough, I’d dyed my hair a bright pink and gotten a huge tattoo on my side—of which I’d recently added to. Who knew being shot would push me toward another not-so-midlife crisis?

But, anyway, I was getting ahead of myself a bit. Because, you see, I had no idea what I’d do with myself or my life. Not at the time. I’d found a cheap place to rent, moved in, and became friends with a girl named Crystal. She got me a job at her place of work—the Dollhouse, a strip club. That’s where I met Roman and Carter.

They intrigued me from the beginning, and now they were mine. They were mine, and I was theirs. The passion and heat were pure fire, all-consuming, taking hold of everything I was anytime we were together. Roman liked to watch, but you know what? I liked putting on a show.

If Roman was the voyeur, I was the exhibitionist.

And of course, there was Lake, my next-door neighbor at the apartment complex. If Roman and Carter were the wild side in me, Lake represented normalcy. He helped ground me, kept me sane, stopped me from going off the deep end. Lake was not the kind of guy I ever would’ve gone for before—and neither were Roman and Carter—but I’d learned to put the old Zoey Marbella in the ground.

I was a new girl. I had three smoking hot boyfriends. Yes, I’d almost died at the hands of would-be assassins, but I was assured Roman and Carter had taken care of them. And I trusted them; I knew they weren’t lying to me. Those assholes were ten feet underground now. Or floating down the river somewhere, their bodies being eaten by the fish.

The new me didn’t even blink at the violence or the death. Sometimes I still thought of that night, the night where Bryan had found me and tried to bring me back home with him to Hillcrest. The sound of a single bullet after I’d gone into the back room, once Roman and Carter had shown up. Sometimes I caught myself wondering how it had looked, the mess it had made. I’d stayed in the backroom long enough that by the time I came out, Bryan was nowhere to be seen.

I didn’t give a shit if it made me no better than them. Roman and Carter were basically assassins from what I understood, hitmen for a local mafia family, so they did that kind of stuff all the time. I didn’t fear them, nor did I want them to stop doing what they did; I loved them, and they loved me.

The devil himself, Roman Russo, owned the Dollhouse now, and I ran it on the nights he was off, hitting a mark, or whatever you wanted to call it. I didn’t dance; Roman flipped his lid any time I even mentioned it. He was a very possessive man, and he didn’t like the thought of any other man watching me and getting off. Really, it was a wonder I’d gotten him to agree to let me see Lake. Roman only shared with Carter.

Although, I liked to think that was slowly changing, after everything we’d gone through together. The threesome between Carter, me, and Lake in Roman’s house. The shooting, the running away to lick our wounds—even though Lake hadn’t been at the Dollhouse at the time of the shooting, he still came with us to the cabins in the middle of nowhere.

Hell, we were kind of like one big happy family, as long as you didn’t think about it too hard.

But, you know what? I’d been doing a lot of thinking lately, more so than normal. I didn’t know how many months had passed since that fateful day when I’d discovered Bryan with my sister, but it’d been months. Enough time for my sister to have turned eighteen and graduated. She would start college soon, and I knew she’d go to Hillcrest. My parents would’ve given her no choice in her future, just as they’d done to me.

The more I thought about it, the more I imagined the family I’d run from, the more I wanted to do something. I liked being my own woman, running the Dollhouse for Roman, but there was a part of me still back in Hillcrest, like I couldn’t fully put my old life to rest without doing the one thing I’d sworn to myself I never would.

I wanted to go back. I wanted to go back with my new hair, my tattoos, and my sexy as fuck men in tow, and I wanted to stick it to each and every person there. My parents and my sister didn’t deserve to be left alone and forgotten about. No, they deserved some hell, and I wanted to give it to them, maybe give my sister a taste of her own medicine. Destroy her life like she’d destroyed mine. Hurt her in the same way she and Bryan had hurt me.

I didn’t know if Roman and Carter would come with me, if they could take time away from their duty to the Lucianos, but it was worth a shot. Maybe they could come visit me. I didn’t know if Lake would want to come, if he could take any more time away from his job, since he’d already taken time off from both his work and his classes after the whole shooting thing.

But, still, it was worth a shot. I had to try. I needed this, I needed to go back and fuck shit up. It would make me feel better, help me move on and stop looking back at my old life. The old Zoey Marbella was dead, but this would help make it official.

Somehow, someway, I was going back to Hillcrest to see dear old Mommy and Daddy, and my lovely sister, Willow.

Chapter One – Zoey

I stood near the bar, leaning on the counter near Jamie, who was in the process of filling a drink order. My eyes surveyed the Dollhouse, scanning over the patrons and clientele in the booths to the side of the club, along with the men in the leather chairs before the stage. A newer worker swung around on the pole, music pounding the speakers as she sashayed her hips and jiggled her tits. She had long blond hair and a rack most men would kill to get a look at, her most private parts covered in a thin, sparkly pink fabric.

The place wasn’t as packed as it was on the nights when we did topless dancing, but the money was still coming in, and that’s all anyone could ask for. I’d been worried after the shootout in here that no one would want to come back to the Dollhouse, that they’d go to other clubs in the city without having to worry about anyone coming in here and creating some havoc.

No one died, thank God, but Ruby did decide to find a job somewhere else. I couldn’t blame her, not after getting shot in the stomach like that. She was lucky, although she still had to go through some physical therapy to strengthen the muscles that had grown weak after the incident. I kept in touch with her, just because I felt responsible.

Those men had come here for me that night, not any of the other girls. Me, because I was with Roman and Carter, and those assholes worked for the other big family, the DeLucas. Of course, now that other family was gone. I heard that Lola girl had taken over. Good for her.

Jamie finished the drink order, and one of the girls came up to take the tray, sauntering over to the booth, where a group of three guys waited for their alcohol. They grinned and smiled at her when she approached them, and even though I wasn’t close by, I knew their eyes focused on her tight, tiny outfit.

Why? Because men.

“Hey, Jamie,” I spoke above the music, causing the bartender to stop and stare. Her black hair was pulled back tight, her dark skin makeup-free. She wore normal clothes, never one to bear much skin.

“What’s going on, Zoe?” she asked, leaning on the counter near me, wrinkling her nose in anticipation.

“If I went out of town for a while, would you want to run this joint?” Hillcrest had been on my mind so much lately, I just couldn’t shake it. I knew I needed to go back; there was no use in fighting it. Go back, fuck shit up, give everyone the middle finger, and then leave… and then, after that, never once spare another thought for that place or those people again.

Jamie thought on this. “How long we talking?”

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