Page 16 of Secret (Chicago Underground 6)
He had requested another girl for his hour.
I’d felt triumphant for all of five minutes. Then I heard the banging against the wall and deflated. There was a certain amount of suffering in the world. I could take it upon myself or leave it for others to endure. Standing up for myself was supposed to make me stronger, but this felt cowardly.
Still, I was surprised I hadn’t gotten any shit about it. In the old days, Henri would have beaten down my door within the hour, made an example of me. Now nothing? Even if he was on his way, the delay was a sign of problems, a symptom of his strange decline.
Certainly, the location of this apartment building left much to be desired, supporting the idea that his business was in trouble, that he was in a downward slide. That would have been comforting if I weren’t currently tethered to him. If he drowned in the criminal mire, so would I.
The neighborhood wasn’t completely abandoned, though the armed men who loitered outside the building tended to scare off most pedestrians. Every now and then, cars passed by on the street, probably keeping their doors locked and eyes straight ahead as they passed through the seedier part of town.
I imagined myself Rapunzel, sending down my long, flowing, now brown locks. Of course, for that escape plan to work, I needed a prince and—
Don’t think about that.
Besides, there were burglar bars on my window and a garbage dump beneath it. Hardly the stuff of fairy tales.
A sound at the door drew my attention. Jade poked her head in, perhaps checking to see if I was going to brain her with a chair. When I had first seen her here, working for Henri, I was surprised. And then I wasn’t. The sex industry was an incestuous lot. I didn’t know the extent of the history between Henri and Jade, but I knew that favors were strewn like pickup sticks. And no one said no to Henri.
I didn’t move from my seat at the window as she came in and set the tray down. She opened a package of saltines and put them in the canned tomato soup, stirring them around with the spoon. It was sort of sweet, aside from the whole kidnapping-and-forced-prostitution thing. She hadn’t been the one to do them, but she was helping. Or maybe she was just as much a pawn in this as I was, unwilling, unthinking. Sometimes it was easier to pretend not to care. They couldn’t subjugate a carved piece of marble.
“You eat,” she said.
I looked out the window. A familiar rhythmic sound started up against the wall behind me. Thump, thump, thump—the sound of a bed frame hitting the wall, the impact of flesh hitting flesh. Henri’s business may be in trouble, but there were still clients who came here to visit with the girls. I watched the men enter the building, heads down. I heard them through the walls. Even in the shitty part of town, hooking was good business. Maybe especially here.
“Now,” Jade demanded.
I was a little worried about her. She looked tired, desperate—coming apart at the seams. No matter their collusion, she hated Henri. Working for him must be wearing on her.
“Come eat,” she said, pleading now. “You look sick.”
Hmm, maybe that would keep the clients away, if my threats and my vehemence weren’t enough.
Thump, thump, thump.
Staring out the window, I spoke softly. “Why, Jade?”
Agitation rolled off her in waves. “You understand this. Business.”
“You were the one who sent me after him.”
“And you failed,” she cried. “You were supposed to save us.”
A throaty groan came from the other side of the wall, then fell silent.
“No.” My whole life I had been saving people. I didn’t expect gratitude—they were my sins as much as my accomplishments. But I was done with that. “I can’t save anyone.”
“You change mind.”
Jade frowned at me one last time, the wrinkles in her face crowding out her eyes.
“Henri come today. Don’t give him more reasons to punish you.”
She turned and left.
So he was finally coming to deal with the problem child. I continued to stare outside as a car rolled by. A flash of green eyes caught my eye in the window. I started in my seat before realizing they were the eyes of a kid, his nose pressed to the glass.
A black Escalade pulled into the parking lot across the street. Two men in suits emerged from the front seats, then one, slightly shorter, from the back, his gold-scrolled vest glinting off the sun. Henri.
I remained in my seat by the window, though I could no longer pretend to be unaffected. My heart raced; my teeth clenched. It was facing down an army, naked and bound. Not a question of pain but how much. No doubt of failure but how far.
