Page 33 of Filthy Christmas

And as we learned overnight, she’s not innocent. Not even a little bit.

Evan doesn’t have my patience. “Well? Start talking.” He shoves her chair a little like that’ll jumpstart her memory. All it does is make her flinch.

“Calm down, Evan,” I say in warning. “All you’re doing is scaring her more. She is gonna tell us, aren’t you, doll?”

She hangs her head even more, hair falling down like a waterfall on either side of her face. “I thought about it all night, and there’s only one person I can think of, but it still doesn’t make any sense. I mean, I knew he was an asshole, but why would he put a hit on me for something so stupid and small?”

“So you crossed somebody.” I pull up another chair, turning it around and straddling it. Folding my arms over the back, I sigh. “What was it? Did you get a little greedy? Dip into the safe when you thought nobody was paying attention? Somebody’s always watching, sweetheart.”

I can’t believe how disappointed I am that she would do something that stupid. It’s one thing to work for a criminal—we all have to make money and survive. It was obvious this girl lived alone. Even a shithole apartment requires rent payments.

But to cross somebody like that? It takes a special kind of stupidity.

Her head snaps up, eyes narrowed and blazing. “No. I didn’t steal anything. I’ve never stolen a thing in my life, so go to hell with that bullshit.”

“You sure about that?” Evan smirks at me from behind her.

“I’m sure. I earn what I make. I don’t steal it.” She tosses her head back, proud all of a sudden. “I don’t steal people, either. But I guess since you do, you can’t imagine being honest.”

“I’m honestly sick of your holier-than-thou bullshit,” Evan growls. “Just get to it. What did you do?”

Her shoulders sink a little, and some of the fire leaves her eyes. I place my hand on her shoulder and rub calming circles on her skin using my thumb. “Tell us.”

“The only thing I can think of is the fight I had with my boss two nights ago. My ex-boss, I guess. I sort of figured I’d lost my job.”

I exchange another look with my brother because her story is not adding up. Nobody puts a twenty-thousand-dollar hit on an employee because they had an argument. “What started the fight?”

She looks at the floor again, and before her hair covers her face, I catch sight of the way her cheeks flush. “He wanted me to do things I wouldn’t do. I told him I never would, no matter what he offered. But he kept trying.”

Instinct makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Now we’re getting somewhere.

“What did he want?” Evan asks, walking around the chair and coming to a stop next to me. He’s just as curious now as I am.

“It’s disgusting. I don’t even want to say.”

“You’d better tell us,” I warn. “Remember, we’re trying to help you.” All she does is snicker.

“Enough of this.” Evan goes to her, reaching out to take a handful of her hair. He yanks it back, and she gasps. “Talk. Now.”

“He wanted me to sleep with one of his customers.” Her eyes are wide and pained. “Before that, he spent the whole time I worked at his club trying to convince me to take my clothes off. I was only a waitress, but he wanted me to be a stripper.”

“I can see why.” I look her up and down, imagining her onstage. “A body like yours? With those tits and that ass? You could make a fortune.”

“I don’t want to make money that way. Don’t I get to say what I want to do with my own body?” She catches her bottom lip under her teeth, and I know she’s thinking about earlier this morning. About what we’ve done to that body of hers. She didn’t have a say in that even though it was obvious she liked it.

Evan lets go of her hair, grunting. “Fine. He wanted you to strip, and you kept saying no. Then he, what, approached you about fucking one of his customers?”

“Approached?” She snorts, rolling her eyes. “You’re making it sound a lot nicer than it was. He cornered me and told me I had to have sex with a customer or else I’d lose my job.”

“Did he at least offer you a lot of cash for it?” I ask. She shoots me a filthy look that shouldn’t make my cock stir, but it does. “It’s an honest question.”

“Yes. He offered money for it. The customer wanted to pay twenty-five thousand. I’d get ten.”

“Wow. Not bad for a night’s work.”

“Screw you,” she snarls at me. So that was all it took to get her to stop sniveling and trembling. “I’m not a whore. I’ll wait on customers at a sleazy strip joint, but I’m not having sex for money.”

“Okay, okay, fine. You’re too good for sex work.” Evan shrugs. “So for that, he wants you dead?”

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