Page 41 of Cruel Dreams

Nathalie waves to someone across the room. She doesn’t care we’re leaving and doesn’t offer to come along.

The women’s restroom is located behind our table down a dark hallway, and like the rest of the club, it’s glamorous. The lighting isn’t too bright, and a clean, floral scent floats through the air. A plush lounge area invites women to sit, kick off their heels, and rest their feet. It’s evident the restroom is used for more than simply going to the bathroom—the stalls are located through a door that divides the two rooms. An attendant offers everything from bandages to tampons to painkiller and stomach relief. I bet if I asked she would have condoms and the morning after pill too. Ash deals in sex—all the extras apply.

Several women are standing in front of a long mirror fastened to the wall above a counter touching up their makeup, and a girl who looks younger than me is sitting on a velvet settee holding an ice pack to a bruised cheek, tears running down her face.

There’s nothing more to see, but I don’t want to simply go back to our table. Nathalie seems content to sit there and get drunk. Some of the girls heard she was in the audience and stopped to say hi, but she never asked questions or even hinted at trying to find out information about what was going to go down. All they did was gawk at the ring Zane gave her and chat about the men and women who have come through the club. Who was dating whom, who was working for whom, who had gotten “promoted,” whatever that entails. They talked like it was water cooler gossip, but it wasn’t information we needed to know.

Ash is going to turn over his girls, and I don’t know what that means. Turnover in any other company is defined as unhappy workers leaving and new ones brought on board, and the cyclenever stops because the company isn’t good to work for. But if I apply the term to Ash’s escort service, or even his dancers, they aren’t allowed to leave if they’re unhappy. They’re forced to work until he can’t use them anymore. Once that happens, they have to go somewhere. There are other strip clubs in the city, possibly other escort services, too, but I doubt Ash would let anyone go anywhere else. That’s not the way he does business. If you sign, you belong to him.

He would have no trouble replacing his women in a city the size of King’s Crossing. Everyone needs a paycheck, and a woman would do anything to feed her children. That includes stripping and having sex for money. If Ash treats them well at the beginning, the job would seem like a real opportunity to get ahead.

It would be easier to snoop if Quinn wasn’t with me, but she won’t leave me alone, and after we use the ladies’ room, we wander the back hallways. Women are everywhere, and no one asks what we’re doing or where we’re going. I can see now, how the club looks bigger from the outside. Like Nathalie said, the inside is full of backrooms and narrow stairways that lead to only God knows where.

We roam long enough that my feet start to hurt in my heels, and thankfully, we stumble into the dancers’ dressing room. Music blasts from hidden speakers, and the sweet smell of pot drifts through the air. Mountains of cosmetics are piled onto brightly lit counters, and women play with wigs and bras, some walking around wearing nothing between dances, showing off their spectacular bodies.

When Zarah and I hung out after Ash started blackmailing her, Hector lurking around made me sensitive to the creepers, and I don’t miss the men in black suits and earpieces skulking in the shadows hoping to go unnoticed. Are they here to stop trouble, the drunk men who want a little extra for their covercharge, or are they here to keep the dancers from leaving? I balanced Ash’s books for years. I know the not-so-small fortune he pays in security, and that he writes most of it off as a business expense.

Quinn and I separate, and she approaches a redhead, her boobs spilling out of a black, sparkly corset, and they start to talk. I sit next to a brunette who’s smoking a cigarette and staring at her phone. She looks bored, and she eyes me warily when I sit down.

“Hi, I’m Kendra,” I say, hoping I don’t sound like I want to grill her.

She scoffs. “You and half of King’s Crossing,” she says, uninterested. “You coulda made up something more original. What do you want?”

“I was hoping I could work here. Do you make a lot of money?”

“Don’t strip unless you have to.”

“Yeah, but I heard Ash Black is a good boss.”

“No worse than any other.”

“Is he hiring right now?”

“How the hell should I know? Do I look like his secretary?” she snaps.

I’m going to lose her if I sound like a police detective, and I soften my voice and posture, sinking into the cushion and crossing my legs. “Sorry. This is new to me.”

She curls her upper lip. “Look. You’re a sweet girl, pretty. You got nice tits. Get an office job, and maybe your boss won’t be an asshole and fuck you over his desk, yeah? I dance because I’m dumb, and I know it. A doctor said my mom drank a lot when she was pregnant with me. Did something to my brain nobody can fix. I can’t read, and I dropped out of school in fourth grade. No one gave a shit. If you’ve got a working brain in your head, get out of here.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, my heart breaking. She’s beautiful, and Ash is using that. She’d be on the streets if he hadn’t given her a job, and there’s not a doubt in my mind he pats himself on the back for signing a paycheck that pays her rent.

I stand up and inch my way toward the door. Quinn’s still talking to the redhead and I don’t want to leave without her, but she doesn’t follow me and after a few minutes I wander the back hallways alone. Men dressed in sharp, expensive suits hang around talking to half-naked women. Not like trashy half-naked, but classy half-naked. Earlier, I saw an icy blonde wearing a dress featured in one of Zarah’s fashion magazines that was selling for ten thousand dollars.

I climb a dark set of stairs, having to slip around a couple pressed against the wall, kissing, his tongue in her mouth and his hand up the skirt of her dress. At the top, another dark hallway leads to several rooms, their doors shut, discreet signs indicating they’re occupied. A dancer and a guy in a rumpled suit stumble out of one rooms. He leers at my boobs, but the brunette ignores me, urging him down the stairs now that her job is done.

I’m surprised I can walk around so freely, and I search the rest of the floor. There isn’t anything up here besides the VIP rooms the dancers use to treat their guests to a little extra. So far, the cameras Nathalie and I are wearing haven’t picked up anything of importance, and I feel like the risk we took coming here was a waste. There’s nothing illegal going on, well, there’s plenty of illegal stuff going on, but nothing that will help us.

Quinn’s downstairs and she’s panicking, but she spots me and her expression relaxes. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“I went upstairs, but there isn’t anything up there except rooms for the lap dances and other...things.” I want to ask if she thinks Zane brought Nathalie here to play, but I don’t want him to hear how insecure I am.

“Did you talk to anybody?”

Shaking my head, I say, “No. There wasn’t anyone to talk to. A couple of girls, but they were busy, you know. What about you? Did the redhead tell you anything?”

After the dancer in the dressing room shot me down, I’m afraid to try to talk to anybody else. It’s possible the girls signed a nondisclosure agreement and they’re too scared to say anything—Ash would love to punish anyone who broke it. If that’s the case, we might as well go back to the Crowne. It’s closing in on one in the morning and we’re wasting time.

“Not much. Her sister got her the job here, and her boyfriend is one of the bouncers. That’s it. Come on, maybe Nathalie heard something,” Quinn says. My feet are killing me and I limp back to the main room, Quinn’s fingers tangled with mine so she doesn’t lose me again. Nathalie’s still there, the second pitcher of Cosmos almost gone.

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