1 From The Frying Pan Into The Fire
Annika
This is a stupid idea.
All available evidence points to this new guy being just a different form of torture than dealing with fucking Alvin. Yes, his name is actually Alvin. Not only is Alvin ugly, stupid, mean, and a meth-addicted drug dealer, his name is Alvin. Like that asshole cartoon rodent—and honestly, they’re similar, Alvin and Alvin.
All that and still, here’s me, owing his ugly, stupid, mean, meth-addict-ass twenty-five grand. Therefore, unless I would like to very quickly find myself on the really nasty end of his infamously short temper—and by that I mean dead with a bullet in the skull—I’m obliged to do what he says.
Because I do not have twenty-five thousand dollars, or twenty-five thousand of any currency.
Therefore, here I am, in a swank, exclusive, anything-goes nightclub in Las Fucking Vegas, fetching his slimy tweaker-ass drinks like I’m like his bitch.
I’m not his bitch. I’m no one’s bitch.
Except that’s not true, is it? Because here I am, in this club, covered in spilled beer and vodka-Sprite, humiliated, angry, desperate, hungry, exhausted, and ready to collapse, doing his bidding.
Then, this colossal brute comes to my rescue. He knocked Alvin off his feet with a finger.
Alvin, as previously stated, is stupid. I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean it literally—he’s lacking in IQ, as well as education. He’s the worst kind of stupid—where he’s smart enough to not realize he’s stupid. He thinks he’s a master manipulator, a master businessman, a god among men. He thinks this, truly. He thinks this because he’s managed, so far, to deal drugs and stay alive and accumulate a bit of a reputation for being a slimy, snaky little shit with bad products and worse prices; he’s under the impression that he’s a big, swinging-dick player on the dealer scene.
He’s not. He’s a joke. He’s who the desperate go to when they’ve got nowhere else to turn for their next fix. He’s this because he’ll take payment in non-currency form. You’re a male, he’ll give you drugs if you work for him—transport his product, cook his product, package his product, beat up people who owe him money or haven’t come through on their end of the bargain. You’re a woman, well…I suppose that’s obvious: if you don’t pay him in dollars, you suck or fuck him and his friends, or he’ll shoot you in the face himself, and no one has quite figured out what he does with the corpses.
Such is my fix. I owe him. I refuse to suck or fuck him or his friends. Therefore, here I am, doing his bidding. Which, I realize, is one short step up from the nasty alternative.
Back to Alvin and his idiocy. He gets tweaked, gets high on blow, gets drunk, or gets some combination of the above, and he forgets he’s a tiny pathetic worm of a man. He thinks he can say “fuck off, fatso” to a man the size of this Chance and get away with it. He assumes everyone knows who he is and he thinks he’s Pablo Escobar—untouchable.
This Chance brute hung him over the side of a balcony one-handed and didn’t seem to strain in the slightest. Just lifted him clean off the floor, one-handed, like he was a bad little puppy being grabbed by the scruff.
So the question I have to answer for myself is, leave the club, and know that eventually Alvin will find me? Because he will. He’s slimy like that. Can’t spell his own name, and I’m not entirely certain that’s an exaggeration. But he’s street-smart. He knows people. He knows the power of the dollar and he knows the power of addiction; and somehow, despite his own plethora of addictions, he’s managed to stay alive and carve out a little niche for himself, and therefore he knows people. Bad, dangerous people. Alvin himself couldn’t find the bottom of a pot if he was pissing into it, but he can pay people in drugs or money to find me for him.
If that sounds like a lot of contradictions, that’s because Alvin is exactly that—a walking contradiction. Smart yet stupid, dangerous yet pathetic.
I’m fully aware that very, very soon he’s going to quit accepting my refusal to perform sexually for him. He’ll put a gun to my skull and tell me to start sucking his dirty little cock or he’ll pull the trigger. That, or give him twenty-five thousand dollars he knows damn well I don’t have. I know this is what he’ll do, because I’ve watched him do it. I’ve made myself useful, so far, but useful only goes so far with a worm like Alvin. Eventually, he’ll get tired of me being useful and decide he just wants me for the fact that I’m a female and will take what he wants.
That’s the known.
Then, there’s the unknown.
Chance.
A man who must be at least five or six inches taller than me, and I’m six-three. Taller than most men, it’s rare to find a man I literally have to tilt my head to look up at. Making him rarer still, he’s as brutishly muscular as he is tall. Those arms are the size of my thighs, and I’m no skinny waif myself, which means they’re thick. Having seen him lift Alvin’s 120 pounds with one of those giant arms, it’s obvious it isn’t just fat making them big. His shoulders are as dense, hard, and massive as the cliffs along the Pacific Coast Highway.
He’s far from ugly. His skin is brown and smooth, his face is handsome, with a hard jawline enhanced by a short beard that’s more stubble gone long, deep brown eyes that are almost black, and long thick black hair bound back at his nape in a loose ponytail. He’s just a damned good-looking man, on top of being an absolute unit.
It’s trouble, him looking the way he does and thinking he’s got some mission to protect damsels in distress or whatever his issue is. Trouble for me, and trouble for him. Because sure he’s big. Sure, he can squash little Alvin with a thumb. But it doesn’t matter how big you are, someone rolls past with an automatic and fills you with holes, you’re now just big and dead.
And I can guarantee you, he’s made a mortal enemy of Alvin Robertson.
I have a decision to make. Because Chance has made me an offer—one he’s disguised as a command: Go with him.
Go where? I don’t know.
Do what for him, in exchange for his protection? I can only assume, and I assume he wants what Alvin wants. What every man wants, the moment he knows I’m desperate.
I can leave. I can tell Chance will allow me to walk out, if I insist. But if I do, I’m right back where I started—under Alvin’s thumb, waiting for him to get sick of wanting and not having me. And since I am, as mentioned, flat broke, that leaves only the second option. And as also mentioned, it’s not far from the truth to say I’m strongly considering just letting him kill me—because there’s no way in hell I’m touching him or letting him touch me.
Which leaves me with one real choice—go with Chance.
If only because he’s good-looking and if I’m going to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire, it may as well be in the company of a gigantic, handsome, damsel-rescuing sort. If I’m going to have to use my body to get out of trouble, I’d rather it be with a man I find attractive.
He’s staring down at me with those big, deep, brown eyes—they’re hard eyes. He’s a man who’s seen and done some shit. “Come with me.” His voice is equally deep, and equally hard as his eyes.