Page 56 of The Complete Truth Duet
“Penn,” I breathed, hooking my arms under his and turning into him. “Neither of us has to suffer. You know that, right?”
He pecked my nose, grinned, and then he was gone. “Tonight, we do. Because I want to hear what you got to say.”
He tossed me my tank top, which I’d thrown nearly halfway across the room the second his lips had met mine. It’d made him laugh. Putting it back on made me want to cry. “Ah, the curse of a good storyteller.”
“Precisely.” He winked, something so beautiful that I released a breathy schoolgirl sigh.
This again made him laugh, but he did it shaking his head. And then he got back to work, prying up the tack boards that had once secured my carpet.
He’d ripped that up a few nights before. He’d cussed the whole time. But when he’d thrown it over the railing and into the parking lot, his whole body had sagged like it had taken every ounce of his strength with it.
Truth be told, I’d hated that carpet too. It was an ugly brown that had made the whole room feel dark and dreary. Seeing Penn’s reaction had made me hate it that much more.
I was still using my old mattress, but according to him, it was only until he got the new wood floors down. I wasn’t sure how big this savings account Penn had squirrelled away was—or how I felt about him spending it on me—but I wasn’t about to tap into my Freedom Account. I’d been siphoning that off the Guerreros for the last five years. So, if he was adamant about getting me a new bed, then who was I to argue?
I flipped to my stomach, put my elbows to the bed and my chin in my hands, and watched the muscles in his back ripple beneath his plain white tee.
“Stop creeping and start talking,” he ordered without looking at me. He tossed another strip of wood into the small pile in the center of the room.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. None of the girls would ever rat us out.”
“You positive about that? Because I gotta be honest: I don’t give a damn what anyone has to say about us, but I can’t imagine Marcos or Dante would be real happy to find out we have something going on. I don’t want one of the girls running their mouth about how much time I spend over here, giving the Guerreros an excuse to pop up unannounced when I could be out at the hardware store or chauffeuring Drew’s ass home from a bar.”
I crossed my legs at the ankle, bent at the knee, and rocked them back and forth above me like a true coed. “Yeah. Trust me. They hate Marcos and Dante.”
“Then why do they work for them?”
Now wasn’t that the million-dollar question. “Different reasons, I guess.” I shifted uncomfortably. “The first floor is here because they love the job.”
He quirked an incredulous eyebrow like anyone who wasn’t in the business would.
“Yeah. I know. It’s a hard concept to understand. But some like the attention. Some like the money. Some just don’t believe they can do any better. But trust me, Penn. If they weren’t here, they’d be working somewhere else.”
He scoffed. “You’re telling me they’re here by choice?”
“I guess, in one way or another, we’re all here by choice.”
His eyes flashed dark. “Including you?”
I shot him a tight smile. “Lie. And yes.”
“Jesus,” he muttered. “So, what about the girls on the second floor?”
“They’re the new ones or those who haven’t made up their mind yet. Most have been assaulted by Dante in some form and are still confused about how they ended up here and haven’t really decided if they want to stay. I keep a special eye on them.”
He threw another tack board into the pile. “And what if they want to leave? Can they?”
I lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “Physically? Yes. With the right support system, they could get out. Dante would probably go after them, but it’s been done before. It could be done again. But it’s mental sometimes. The abuse before they get here. Women don’t find themselves in this life because they seek it out. They find themselves here because the world has beaten them down to the point that even the darkest knight looks like a hero.”
Kneeling in the corner, he stopped what he was doing and gave me his undivided attention. “Is that what happened to you after Nic? Dante start looking like a hero?”
My stomach rolled. “No,” I answered firmly.
He arched a dark brow. “Lie?”
“God’s honest truth. Dante has always been the villain in my story.”
“You want to elaborate on that?”
I held his gaze. “Truth. No.”
His face flashed hard, dozens of follow-up questions dancing in his eyes. But I wouldn’t answer any of them—at least not with the truth.
