Page 29 of A Brother At My Back

10

Zeb…

She’d been tense on the way home, the regular text message check-ins had been short but taking her into her work today, she’d seemed fine. I kept to myself, let her sort through her head, and had a pretty good night of my own at the bar. No trouble, which was the way I usually liked it, being hired muscle.

Zeke waved me through the velvet rope, on his phone, exchanging a nod with me and I plunged into the heat and pounding music of the neon-lit dark. I threaded my way through mostly empty tables and ran into Cherry, one of the girls that hung around the MC.

“Looking for Francesca?” she asked, snapping her gum and rolling her eyes. Cherry was a nasty piece of work sometimes, and most of us just ignored her. This was no different, at least when it came to me.

“Yeah, where she at?”

“In back,” she said with a smirk.

“Ta,” I thanked her and went that way. I didn’t like what I found.

She was on a counter, her eyes lifeless and empty while a bloke plowed her but good. I stopped in my tracks and her eyes focused on me. Panic flashed in them, then they flooded with such a deep sorrow.

I’d been about to pull the bloke off her and beat his ass to death but I realized that she wasn’t struggling and then it hit me and my stomach nearly dropped out. I put up my hands and shook my head and backed out of the room, the bloke never even realizing I was there.

I went out to the parking lot and pulled the bike around back since she knew I was there, she’d come out when she was ready. I rolled myself a fat one and calmed my nerves some.

I hadn’t reckoned it went beyond dancing for her and I was sort of dumbfounded that she was a whore. It didn’t sit right with me. Something about it bothered me. The disappointment so strong I could taste it, but something else was there, keeping me from being hot-headed about it.

She came out pretty quickly and I couldn’t look at her.

“I’m sorry, I told you –“ I waved her off and straddled my bike, firing it up. I didn’t want to talk to her, not yet. I was afraid I might say something unfortunate. It was best I take her home and go talk to my bros.

She looked taken aback, then angry, then resigned and got on behind me in short order. I took her home, waved off her next attempt to talk to me, and made sure she went up and locked her doors. I rode out to the club next and found a pretty busy common room.

I spied out Dragon and went over, dropping into a seat at his table.

“I know that look,” he declared with a gusty sigh.

“You maybe forgot to mention she was a whore?”

“Didn’t figure her line of employment was all that important to the job at hand. Of course, I also figured it weren’t none of your business.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no. Dragon, you stay in the truck. I think I’ve got this one.”

Shelly dropped into the chair across from Dragon and next to mine, her blue eyes calculating. One of her little ones was under a baby blanket, latched on and having a feed.

“You eavesdropping, Girl?” I asked and she rolled her eyes at me. Dragon’s eyebrows went up.

“Always, and for the most part, I stay out of it, but consider me cashing in a year’s worth of my get-out-of-jail-free cards because I won’t stay quiet about this one. Now you listen here, I want to lay out a story.”

Dragon leaned back in his chair grinning and crossed his arms, I leaned back in my own and folded my hands on the table in front of me real proper and let her know with raised eyebrows that I was listening.

“Picture this, you’re a pretty girl. Hook up with a nice guy who ends up being a total douche and pretty much wrecks the only thing you’ve got going for you which is that you are pretty. Still, you manage to work it. Get the best job that a high school dropout with barely her GED can. You need cash and you need a decent amount of it, what else are you going to do, am I right?”

“I reckon.”

“So you find out there’s even more money to be made and maybe you’re pressured into it, maybe you’re not, but that doesn’t really matter. Sure, it’s illegal, technically, but seriously. What the fuck else did you expect her to do? In this piece-of-shit patriarchal society, what else is there for her to do?” Shelly leaned back in her chair and took a second, trying not to raise her voice.

“She’s pretty much wrecked by our society’s standards as it is and the only thing she’s got to sell is herself. Now, I, of all people, get it. If it weren’t for the club, I might have ended up like her, and to be honest, I respect the bitch. I can’t fucking blame her for having a better business model than me. I was just a slut giving it up for free, she’s way smarter. She’s getting straight up paid.”

“How the hell you know all this?” Dragon asked baffled and Shelly smiled sweetly at him.

“I know everything that goes on around here, that and Cherry works over there. She’s got a big fucking mouth. Probably equal to the size of her cunt by now.” She made a face like she’d smelled something bad and Dragon let out a laugh that started as one of his characteristically booming ones, but he strangled it at the last minute so as not to wake the baby Shelly had in her arms.

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