Page 2 of Corrupted Deception

“What’s wrong?” I pressed, desperation seeping into my words.

My question hung in the air, a lifeline cast into the void between us. More silence followed, a heavy silence that pressed upon me, an unsung requiem of unease.

And then he spoke. “I love you, Charlotte,” he said, his voice stripped of its armor, raw and unfiltered.

The world tilted. My heart froze, a tumult of emotions crashing within me. In all the years since I’d found him, he had never spoken those words. Not once.

My eyes welled with tears, emotions swirling like a storm.

“I—” I began, my voice catching.

Then he severed the connection.

The earpiece went dead.

Three seconds.

Two.

One.

A blinding flash erupted behind me in the rearview mirror, casting a searing glow that bathed the stormy night sky in fiery brilliance. The shock wave reached me, a visceral force that shuddered through the car, rattling its frame.

I clutched the steering wheel, knuckles white against the leather, tears mingling with the rain that streaked down the windshield.

“I love you too, Dad,” I whispered to the empty car.

Chapter One

Charlotte Santoro

Eight days later

Fried onions, that’s what he tasted like. And stale cigarette smoke. God, didn’t this man ever brush his teeth?

“You like that, honey?” he asked as he leaned away.

“Oh, yeah, handsome.”I like having my mouth back to myself again, thank you very much.

He took a step back, his hungry, beady little eyes grazing over me. “Let’s see what you’ve got on under that coat,” he said, licking his thin lips.

Gee, a call girl who showed up in a trench coat; I wonder what could be underneath it. Ugh.

I faked a smile as I started to unbutton the coat.

His nostrils flared, and his little eyes got hungrier as the upper swells of my tits came into view, pushed way up by the black lace corset that was doing its damnedest to cut off my air supply. I had a newfound respect for the women of olden days. How they hadn’t suffocated in these things was a testament to their sheer will to survive.

When I’d finished with the buttons, I slipped the coat off my shoulders, letting it pool at my feet on the hotel room’s carpeted floor—and making my foremothers real proud, no doubt.Eye roll.

The beady-eyed lech glanced from my tits to my stiletto-clad heels and all the way back up again, lingering on the garter around my thigh, my tiny, black lace panties, and the obsidian belly ring from Mount Hekla as he went.

A means to an end,I chanted in my head over and over again as I forced my breaths to come slow and steady, letting him look his fill.

I can do this.

I’d reeled in plenty of marks. Not on my own, of course. There’d always beenhisvoice in my ear, reminding me that if shit went wrong, there were the two of us.

Now, it was just me.

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