Inescapable

Prologue

Izzie Knight - December - Glasgow

'IZZIE, YOU SEEN THAT guy checking you out?' Shaz shouted over the thumping bass of the music, as she flicked her unruly red mane in the direction of the bar.

'Yeah, I've seen him,' I chuckled as I lifted my arms and swayed, letting my body move rhythmically, sexily, to the beat.

'What you gonna do about it?' A huge pink balloon expanded from her clear-glossed lips, before it popped and she sucked the gum back into her mouth.

'Nothing,' I shrugged. 'He'll come to me if he's that interested.'

'Well, look whose confidence is at an all-time high,' she laughed. 'Playing dress up in big sister's clothes suits you.'

I grinned at her, before flashing him a seductive smile as I slowly gyrated my hips. His eyes were glued to the strip of exposed stomach above my leather mini, pale flesh that contrasted with the black and purple corset I was wearing. Both borrowed off Shaz, of course. I didn't own anything nearly as daring.

This guy wasn't the usual type of sleazebag this club attracted. He could have been plucked straight out of the pages of Vogue. Hot businessman advertising an expensive watch. Yeah, that was what he looked like, with his probing brown eyes, dark good looks, and fancy three-piece suit. Definitely a few cuts above average for these parts. Why the hell he couldn't take his focus off me was the confusing part of it all. He looked like the kind of guy that would be better suited with a twinset and pearls kind of girl. With my rock-chick look, ripped tights, and long dark hair, that I wasn't. Even when I didn't let Shaz dress me up, I was still pretty far removed from the type of woman I imagined he'd ever go for. That said, I was never one to back down from a challenge, so I held his gaze, taking in his well-dressed and muscular body.

'Bet you a fiver he don't come over, he's too good for the likes of us,' my best friend said as she bounced her eyes between the two of us eye fucking each other.

'I'll take that bet and raise it to a tenner.'

'I don't have a tenner. I'm skint. We're skint. We're down to our last fiver and don't even have money for food for the weekend. If I wasn't screwing Tommy the doorman, we wouldn't even have been able to get into this dive.'

'Thank God for Tommy, as I think this guy at the bar is looking for a bit of rough tonight,' I giggled as I spun around to face her, breaking the stranger's intense gaze.

'Nah, he might be looking for a bit of rough, but try as hard as you can to be like me, you're not, Izzie Knight. And one-night-stand gal you certainly ain't, with your fairy-tale dreams of handsome princes, castles, babies, and happy ever afters.'

'Who says he might not be my happy ever after?' I asked as I stopped dancing and cast a look back over my shoulder at him. He smiled and tipped his drink in my direction as he winked.

'Girls like us, from the wrong side of the tracks, we don't get the dream,' she reminded me.

'No, we don't, do we.' I sighed, full of frustration at the thought that this was going to be my life story, as I ran a hand through my hair.

Shaz had been put into St. Catherine's children's home when she was nine. Her drug-addled, deadbeat mum had found it too much of an inconvenience to look after a kid between shooting up. Shaz had grown up on the roughest estate in Glasgow, the same estate where we now shared a pretty grim, ground-floor flat together.

I'd been more fortunate. For a time anyway. My parents had doted on me, and I'd been spoiled, growing up in the nicer part of town, with the added bonus of a boarding school education. My life had been pretty perfect, until my dad was arrested for pension fund fraud and died in a prison brawl, and my distraught mum, an art teacher, committed suicide. Quicker than you could snap your fingers, I went from having it all, to having nothing. And that, I thought, was even worse than never having had it in the first place.