Page 14 of Blurred Lines

A pause. “Do you want me to send Dawson back?”

Violet’s offer made my breath hitch. Although she tried to hide how badly the ordeal earlier in the year had affected her, I knew she still relied on Dawson’s strength to keep her steady.

“Don’t do that. I’ll be careful. During the day, I only go to the café, the grocery store, and the gym, and Brax is going to send a driver to pick me up for work and drop me home afterward. He insisted.”

Which was a perk of the boss being a friend as well as the man who signed my paychecks.

“It couldn’t be anyone from work sending the messages, could it? Aren’t they into some weird stuff?”

I’d already considered that. The members of Nyx were carefully vetted, ditto for the staff. And besides, the clients had every kink attended to in the basement sex club. Even though I’d figured it was unlikely one of them was involved, I’d shown Mario’s pictures to a couple of the hostesses, just in case, but none of the girls had recognised his mushroom.

“No, I checked.”

“I don’t like this,” Vi said.

“Neither do I.”

“I’ll text you every hour, okay? I need to know you’re all right. If you don’t reply, I’ll call you, and if you don’t answer, I’ll get ahold of Brax.”

“Do I get time off for sleep?” I asked, but there was a lump in my throat because I appreciated how much she cared.

“You get eight hours. I really wish I wasn’t stuck here.”

Vi was in the Bahamas, a destination that had sounded awesome when she first told me about it. Getting paid to hang out in the sun? I’d been more than a tiny bit jealous. But she’d been filming a murder mystery set around a hurricane for twelve hours a day, and although she made light of the workload, I heard the exhaustion in her voice.

“Why don’t we take a break when you get back?” I asked. “Find an out-of-the-way hotel and spend a weekend drinking cocktails on a beach that isn’t covered in fake broken palm trees?”

“I love that idea. Honestly, I’m counting down the days until I leave this place. Having to pick sand out of everything is driving me crazy.”

I was counting down the days until she left as well.

CHAPTER 6

LAUREN

“Thanks, Hakeem. You don’t need to come inside.”

Hakeem shrugged, but he still climbed out of the car. “Boss’s orders.”

It was night six of Theo’s San Francisco trip, still a month until Vi returned, and secretly, I was glad that Brax was taking his responsibilities seriously. After each shift at Nyx, a car from the service he used took me home, and the driver—usually Hakeem—would wait for me to deactivate the alarm before checking every room in the house, including the closets and the shower stall. The first night, I’d almost died of embarrassment when he’d walked past a radiator full of underwear and a sink stacked with dirty dishes, but now I’d grown used to his vigilance. I’d also spent a whole morning tidying, so at least I’d racked up one achievement this week, even if my word count was non-existent. The constant stress was getting to me. Funny how something as tiny as Mario’s mushroom could knock me off balance for an entire day.

Cristian had started checking in too, and that did nothing for my concentration. Yesterday, I’d been in the gym when Mario’s message arrived, another X-rated photo accompanied by a single word. Soon. I’d stumbled off the side of the treadmill, twisting an ankle as I fell, and Cristian had caught me as I was about to hit the deck. I’d found myself plastered to that hard chest, sweaty and breathing heavily as my heart hammered against my ribcage.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Isn’t that my line?”

“You didn’t hurt your back, did you?”

“My back’s fine. What happened?”

“I tripped, that’s all.”

“Why did you trip?”

“Because…because…” I wanted to brush the problem off, but one look at those dark eyes and I found myself oversharing again. “I got another message.”

“From the mushroom guy?”

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