Page 4 of The Puppetmaster

Maybe I should change fields, I think, as I drag my feet over to the kitchen.

Maybe I should become a bartender, like my friend Melina.

A smile creeps across my face when I think of her, because Melina isn’t just a bartender at a regular downtown hipster bar. She works at The Velvet Rooms, a place that only very few people even know about. Selected people with peculiar tastes.

She always corrects me when I call it a kink club, most likely quoting her boss when she insists that it’s more than that. And, I guess, in a way it is. It’s not a place where just anybody with a taste for kink can show up and play as their heart’s desire. Only a few selected clientele can even gain admittance, and for the first few months it was open, there was absolutely no chance a regular person like me could gain entrance off the street.

It’s only thanks to Melina that I was selected to be one of the first women outside the circles of the super rich to be invited to one of their events.

I was curious. I knew I wanted to experience something new, something challenging—and I wanted a chance to play without the burden of a relationship. The Velvet Rooms seemed to be the perfect place for that. Safe, exclusive, classy—and with a promise of finding something very special.

The club hosts only a few events open to guests like me—single ladies who are not wealthy or paid escorts. I have been there a few times since then, mesmerized by the scenes that were played out on stage during the midnight show. I was intrigued by the atmosphere, the people, the forbidden.

But I never played. I never dared.

There was a time when I thought I wanted to, maybe even needed it. There was a moment when I thought I had found the perfect man to help me figure out who I am and what it is that I need.

But that chance has passed and will never present itself again. Ever since I have come to accept that, I lost interest in visiting the club altogether.

Besides, I couldn’t become his plaything anyway. Because that man is asking for something I couldn’t give.

I decided to be prudent and rational for once in my life. Do the right thing, focus on my career, stop getting off track.

A sinister smirk tugs at the corner of my mouth when I think about it.

You wanted to be the good girl, a grown-up. Look where that fucking got you, Alena.

Jobless, frustrated, and without a purpose.

Nowhere, that’s where it got you. Fucking nowhere.

I fetch my tablet before I sit down at the kitchen table, coffee in hand, and a bitter grimace masks my face as I open the club’s website. I don’t even know why I’m doing it. I can’t expect there to be an upcoming event, especially on such short notice, but my heart still sinks a little when I see that the club is closed for tonight.

And then it almost stops when I check tomorrow’s schedule.

Saturday is blacked out too, but for a different reason.

My breath hikes and my eyes widen with disbelief as they hurriedly scan the few written words, checking the date and information again and again.

It can’t be. This must be a mistake.

Fate wouldn’t toy with me like that. Would it?

I shake my head, my lips moving as they try to form the words that I keep reading again and again, unable to make sense of it all.

Maybe the old sayingisright: when one door closes, another one opens.

But this door is one I’ve knocked at before. A long time ago. It didn’t open for me then, and I thought I would never have another chance.

I finally force myself to speak, because I feel like I have to say it out loud to believe it.

“He’s on the hunt.”

Shit.

I need to call Melina.

Chapter 3

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