Page 27 of The Hate We Breathe
“You don’t think so?” I repeat.
“You know that Darrio threatens a lot of business owners, right?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Like Ma-Ri—a lot of other people have to pay Darrio ‘protection fees’ so he doesn’t send people after them.”
“What does that have to do with Morpheus?” I ask.
Margo presses her lips together for a second, glancing down to her lap. When she lifts her head and her eyes meet mine again, “You can’t tellanyoneabout this,” she says, her voice turning desperate.
“I won’t,” I say, “just spit it out.”
Her face scrunches tight and she blows out a breath. “Hosting here doesn’t pay a lot if you’re not willing to sleep with the guests,” she says, voice lowering another octave. “Ma-Ridoesn’t like that and though she says we can do what we want on our own time, if she catches on, she might fire me.”
“You’re sleeping with clients?” I shake my head. “Margo, a host isn’t a prostitute.”
“Iknow,” she huffs out, “but my boyfriend broke his arm last year. He didn’t have the money to pay for the emergency room and his job put him on leave without pay because it didn’t happen while he was on the clock. The bills were piling up and I was desperate. One of the regulars here offered to take me out and said he’d pay me for the time. It was a couple hundred dollars and I figured that meant he just wanted company. I thought it was just a date.”
“It wasn’t,” I guess.
She nods. “He wanted me to sleep with him and he offered to pay me several thousands for one night.” I imagine how Margo must have felt at the time. Desperate and scared—just how I’d felt when my life imploded. “I couldn’t turn down that kind of money, but once it started, I couldn’t stop it.”
“Margo, I’m sorry, but I really don’t know what the hell that has to do with?—”
“Just…” She blows out a breath after interrupting me and starts again. “Just let me get it out.”
My shoulders drop and I gesture for her to continue.
“I’ve been going out with several regulars,” she confesses. “Some do just want company for important dinners and meetings. They want to look good in front of business competitors with a beautiful young woman on their arm.”
At that comment, I press my lips together to keep from smirking. No one can say Margo isn’t confident in her looks.
“About a month ago, I went on a date with a man I met through one of Ma-Ri’s regulars,” she continues. “He took me to the city. I think it was his first time on a… well, a date like that because he didn’t really plan well.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’d never been to that part of the city and was just following the GPS to a restaurant, but it took us to the wrong one and it was kind of run-down. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that I can’t make these men feel bad when I’m… entertaining them. So, I told him it was fine, that it was cute and…quaint.” She shudders at the last word before shaking her head. “It wasn’t. It was old and smelled like mildew, but I just wanted to get to dinner and get it over with and it was going to take longer if we tried to find the right restaurant.”
“Okay, so you convinced him to stay at the restaurant,” I hedge.
She nods. “I saw Darrio Vargas there.”
I sit forward. Now, we’re getting somewhere. “In the city?” I clarify.
“Yes, but he wasn’t alone.” Margo turns and peers back out of the booth opening. The seconds it takes for her to shift her attention back to me stretch into eons. I want to grab her, shake her, and demand she spit it out.
“Who was he with, Margo?”
She swallows. “I don’t know if this has anything to do with his death,” she repeats. “But that night, I saw Darrio Vargas with Morpheus Calloway.”
A sound catches in my ear and I realize a second too late that it’s Margo’s sharply indrawn breath. I glance down to find that I’m gripping her arm right back and I’m squeezing so hard that when I immediately release her, the red prints of my fingers linger behind. “Sorry…” I mutter as the information she just gave me swims through my head.
Darrio Vargas and Morpheus? Why would those two have any reason to meet?
I whip my head up as Margo starts to slide away. “That’s all. I just thought I should—” she’s saying, but I stop her by grabbing ahold of the back of her dress.
“Not so fast,” I say. “Do you know what they said? Did you hear anything?”
Margo pulls herself from my grasp and shakes her head in denial. “I told you that was it—I just saw them together. I figured it was none of my business, but then I heard Morpheus was murdered and… he’s like your uncle or something, right? I know the cops think it was you because you were living with him or something and you were at the same party.”
I stare at her. It’s not a surprise that she knows all of that. Everyone in Silverwood knows my business, why wouldn’t people from the surrounding areas know too?
