Caged Temptress | 18+

| 16 |

substantiate (verb): to provide evidence or support for a claim or argument.

EVA PETROV

I've thought about it more times than I care to admit.

If I could just get someone to send that video to the police. Maybe a higher level of law enforcement. Then maybe Damian would end up in jail and I would be free.

Even if I could never be a lawyer, I would sit next to a judge and swear on everything I saw during my time with him.

If the video wasn't enough, I am the witness to his crimes.

If it was too dark or too blurry from my shaking hands, I was enough.

Right?

That's what I always thought, but that tiny piece of doubt also lingered in me. That no matter what I did or if I tried to escape, Damian would be there.

Damian could track me down and trap me again.

He would shoot me full of drugs. Kill my family. Place me in one of those shipping containers or houses to sell me off.

Week after week of my initial kidnapping, the hope I had slowly began to disappear in to almost nothing.

The tiniest bit of hope that one day there would be an ambush in Damian's apartment. Sirens and gunshots would fill to the quiet. Damian would be shoved to the ground and handcuffed. A cruel part of me hoped that maybe he would be shot.

But none of that ever happened.

And now I had a lunch appointment with the devil himself.

The past few days I had been working harder than usual. Learning the security schedule from their quiet movements, listening for the smallest bits information, cozying up to the other VIP girls, and memorizing the access codes.

With that, I was able to steal a card from one of the bouncers.

He's a slimy piece of shit that would discreetly harass the new girls, so I honestly don't care if he's sacked from this.

The card and the security shifts will be useless to Damian without safe locations, blueprints of the club, and access to the cameras. But that's the trick to doing what he wants.

If I gave him everything he wanted up front, then I would have nothing to leverage for myself. It's selfish and stupid but it's a minuscule victory for me compared to what he gained at the end of my betrayals.

And there was something more to this job that he wasn't telling me.

As soon as I step out of the club, I feel an overpowering presence behind me.

I've been caught.

I turn around, ready to lie myself out of this situation but become frozen when I see Nick there. Or the fake Elias.

His long hair falls over his eyes as he looks down at me. He's wearing the same thing I've always seen him wear. Black button down and black pants. The sleeves of his shirt are rolled up his forearms, revealing jutting out veins, muscles, and deep scars.

"You've been ignoring me," he states. Straight to the point.

I break my stare on his hands to scoff at his narcissism and roll my eyes, "I'm not ignoring you. I just clocked out."

I had been ignoring him.

If this is who Damian wanted me to sleep with, I couldn't do it. I won't do it.

Watching his jaw, I see it tense as he struggles to say anything looking around at the crowded sidewalk. His dark eyes are calculating as he scans each unaware passerby.

I wouldn't exactly call them unaware because he catches their eyes.

All of their eyes.

The young women with lingering gazes, older women blush, and the teenage girls giggle as they walk past. The men seem to pick up their pace a bit after attempting to size him up.

It was the middle of the day in the city. Lunch time.

"If that's all, I have to go," I move to leave and he positions himself in front of me. He blocks people rushing by and they run into him as a result. When they go to start an argument, he just glares at them and they scurry along without a second thought.

"I'll take you to lunch," he says it as if it's an order. The audacity built into every atom of this man is astounding. First, he shoots his own employee and now he orders me to eat with him.

"No thanks," I side step him and start walking towards where Damian's corvette was parked.

The car I had picked out for the week.

Today was the deadline for our 'agreement'

I look back at the club before I get in the driver's seat and see Nick standing in the same spot.

Looking straight back at me.