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KAIA TEN YEARS LATER
"He's never going to leave his wife for you, you know that right?"
The woman who spits these words isn't anything like the woman who took me under her wing two years ago and acted like more of a mother to me than my biological one. She isn't warm and empathetic in the slightest. No, this woman across from me is cold and calculated. She's shooting daggers into my soul, yet her lips are curled into a smile that doesn't quite reach her icy, blue eyes. I'm pretty sure that if looks could kill, I'd be as good as dead, because I've managed to do the one thing so many people say to never do: I've pissed off Antonia Bianchi.
She isn't angry that I've found myself entangled in an affair with a married man. She isn't mad that I want to continue the affair. Antonia is furious at the fact that I'm telling her I won't continue to work for her because of said married man. I'm messing with her cash flow and that is what's making her wish I would drop dead right in the middle of her home.
The thing about Antonia is that she refers to herself as many things: a business woman, an entrepreneur, head mistress even, but everyone who knows Antonia, knows what she truly is—a fucking pimp.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I'd be working for her as an escort, but two years ago the unthinkable happened. Mom died.
I had just woken up from a long weekend of clubbing in Brooklyn when I got the call from our landlord that he found Mom dead. I was told she had passed away from alcohol related asphyxiation—in non-medical terms, she got so pissy drunk she passed out, threw up, and choked to death on her own vomit. It was a horrible way to go, but as her daughter I knew it was only a matter of time before she'd succumb to her alcohol addiction.
Mom didn't have any life insurance, nor did she have a "just-in-case-I-die-because-I'm-an-irresponsible-bitch" stash set away for her funeral costs. When I called Kira to break the news, she suggested we split the costs right down the middle, five-thousand dollars each. I wanted to ask her if she was fucking insane because there was no way in hell I could just cough up five-thousand dollars in a day, but I quickly remembered we didn't live the same lives. While I may have had no contact with my father for years, Kira was still his princess. He'd probably empty out his whole bank account for her if she had asked. So instead, I just begrudgingly agreed.
My plan was to get a loan from the bank. I knew my credit score was shit, but with a few tears, convincing sob story, and a whole lot of cleavage, there would be some poor bankman who would give me some type of money. When I had walked into the bank and found out the person who would be helping me was an older woman who seemed to have a permanent scowl etched into her face, I knew I was completely fucked. No matter how much I tried to pull up my low-cut dress, my boobs still spilled out of it and my tears didn't phase her in the slightest. She was a cunt if you asked me.
