Page 32 of The Perfect Betrayal

A brief wave of guilt crossed Samantha’s face as she answered.

“Yeah, we had sex in his cabin bedroom down below deck.”

“You were a willing participant?” Jessie wanted to know.

“Yes,” she answered. “It was kind of rough, but I was generally cool with it.”

“Were you paid?” Riddell asked.

Samantha’s eyes turned to slits and her face went red. Then, without warning, she leapt up and tried to take a swing at the detective.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Riddell stumbled back, just barely avoiding the woman’s open palm, and slammed into a filing cabinet behind him.

“What are you doing?” Jessie demanded, too stunned to physically react.

“I’m not a hooker!” Samantha blurted, looking offended.

“Okay, okay,” Jessie said, stepping between her and Riddell, who had recovered and was moving forward angrily. “Detective Riddell is sorry for the insinuation, but you need to sit back down, Samantha.”

Collins, wincing in discomfort, retreated to the chair. Riddell, clearly still seething, reluctantly stopped his advance. Jessie thought she was going to have to re-set the whole conversation. But before she tried, Collins quietly muttered a response.

“I mean, he was clearly rich, and I guess part of me was hoping that it might become a regular thing and that he’d give me some nice gifts or something. But I never asked for anything, and I wasnotpaid.”

“Okay, Samantha,” Jessie said soothingly, trying to get things back on track. “So how did the situation go from you being generally cool with things to restraining orders and financial settlements?”

Samantha took a cue from Jessie’s demeanor and calmed down a little.

"We hooked up a few times after that, same basic situation," she said. "But other than being pretty free with liquor and drugs, he wasn't very generous. And he was a real jerk. He wanted me to do it with his buddies while he watched. He wanted to tape stuff. And he was just really nasty sometimes. He'd talk down to me. After a while, I thought—why am I hooking up with this guy? He’s not very nice to me. He’s rich but doesn’t spread it around.He like to get rougher than I want in bed. And he keeps asking me to do things I’m not comfortable with. So I ended it.”

"And was that the end of it?" Jessie asked, even though she was sure it wasn't.

"Not by a long shot," Samantha said with a snort. "Taye wasn't happy that I cut him off. He kept coming to the club, asking me to meet up again. Then he started demanding it. He was relentless. At one point I had to ask club security to keep him out because he wouldn't leave me alone. It made it hard to get other guys to do privates or even just sit with me. One time, he got in when there was a new guard at the door. You know what he said to me?"

Both Jessie and Riddell shook their heads.

"He threatened to get me fired," she said. "He said he'd go to the manager and say that I was performing oral sex on customers in the VIP room. He also said he'd anonymously go to the police commission, which regulates adult entertainment clubs, and make the same claims. That was the final straw. I told him that I was going to get a restraining order against him. I had even started looking for a lawyer to help me out when I got served with one of my own. And by the way, even before that happened, the club ended up firing me anyway. They said I was too much of a hassle. So all of a sudden, my finances got tight."

“You didn’t try to go to a different club?” Jessie asked.

She shook her head.

“It wasn’t worth it,” she said. “I knew that he’d find me eventually. And then he’d either start the whole routine again, or if he was feeling extra petty, claim I was in violation of the restraining order and get me arrested whenIwas the one at work. I figured that even though the money wasn’t as good, I’d be better off as a restaurant server, which is what I did before I started dancing. I picked a family style restaurant, because then he’d be the one out of place. Plus, I could always just refuse toserve him. Then he’d have to go out of his way to cause trouble. It’s one thing to come on to someone at a loud strip club where all the girls are in G-strings. But it comes across different when people are having brunch after church.”

“So how did you get things turned around?” Riddell asked warily, apparently sensing that that if he was too aggressive, she might lose it again. For the first time during the questioning, he actually sounded sympathetic to her.

“The lawyer I got was a shark,” Samantha explained, seeming willing to move past their dust-up. “It was kind of an accident. I just took the recommendation of another girl at the club. This guy met with me. When he found out who Taye was, that he had money and worked for some big-time bank or something, he turned the tables. He said he would go to the bank with the allegations of harassment and the stuff about wanting to tape rough sex. He might have even implied that I had video footage of Taye pressuring me, which I didn’t. He thought of all kinds of things that I never would have. After that, Taye caved pretty quick.”

“You got a settlement check?” Jessie confirmed.

"Kind of," Samantha said. "The settlement was for $300,000. But my lawyer took a third right off the top. He got all his money upfront, but Taye's lawyer negotiated it so that my portion was paid out over five years—$40,000 a year. And after taxes, it's even lower than that. And that's not all."

“What else?” Jessie asked, partly because she genuinely wanted to know, but also because she sensed that this was the first time that Samantha Collins had been able to get any of this off her chest.

“There was a non-disclosure clause in the settlement that said I couldn’t mention where I got the money or even that Ihadgotten it, other than to my lawyer and accountant,” she explained. “I think that’s why people would keep showing up andfollowing me. It only started after the settlement agreement. I think Taye was having people check on whether I’d violated the terms so that the money could be snatched back. I think he may have even had these people seem threatening on purpose in the hope that I would tell someone because I was scared and then lose the money.”

“Wow,” Jessie said. “That’s a pretty raw deal all around.”

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