Jillian Rose

Chapter 2

The pounding of my heart was deafening. Thump thum thump. Thump thum thump. My chest threatened to rip the seams of my dress as I breathed in slow deep breaths, trying not to hyperventilate. I had spent the better part of 6 months trying to avoid habitually being seen in the same spot. I tried not to be noticed. No one is going to notice when I don't show up. The slumlord will be packing my stuff into the dumpster by tomorrow to make room for a new girl.

"How old were you?"

He was watching me. Closely. The sparkle in his eye had disappeared, but that grin. That fucking grin was still there. He was enjoying himself. I prayed to a God I no longer believed in that he was toying with me. That this was all part of his "game".

"How old was I?' I asked softly afraid to move.

"When your daddy raped you."

If I could shoot fire out of my eyes he would have been toast. I could feel the muscles in my jaw tightening. "My father did NOT rape me," I hissed.

"step-daddy, brother, uncle, priest?"

I swallowed hard. I quickly downed my glass of wine and got up. Twenty minutes had to be over. I'd gladly take a taxi back to the Neon District.

"Good-bye Mister....you know what, I don't want to know. Please, don't come back."

My eyes followed the flick of his wrist as another Benjamin protruded out of his slender fingers.

"I told you, all I wanted to do was talk."

Boss John's lips were pressed into a fine line. I preferred the grin. Boss John scared me. I wasn't afraid to admit it.

I shook my head slowly. My eyes fixed on his fingers pointing the money towards me. I inhaled deeply as he withdrew two 50 dollar bills from his wallet and placed it alongside the Benjamin. Two Hundred Dollars...for a story. If he was going to kill me, he was going to kill me. There was nothing I could do about that. If he wasn't I could make $300 in one night. The decision should not have been that difficult to make.

I watched Boss John as he poured more wine into my glass. I slowly took the money off the table.

"I want to know everything."

"Why?" I breathed.

"Relax, if I wanted to kill you I would have done it already."

My eyes locked with his. He read my mind. The thought unnerved me. The naive part of me skipped out of my subconscious and started playing hopscotch on the coffee table. Boss John had a point. I was safe. For now.

"I want to know why you're 17 and living in the Neon District alone."

"You're going to need more than $200 for that story."

"$200 gets me what? 40 minutes?" Boss John's grin returned as he set his Iphone on the coffee table and pressed start on the stop watch app.

I sat back down and downed the second glass of wine. It really just tasted like old grape juice, but I didn't like grape juice either. I closed my eyes as the alcohol warmed up my courage.

"So how old were you?"

"You're serious? You giving me $200 for a story about how I was...you're fucking sick!" My voice rose. The wine did give me courage. That sparkle was back in his eye. He really was sick, a sick twisted fuck job. He didn't want to touch me; he just wanted me to tell him stories about how I was touched?

"Sweetheart, you have no idea."

There it was again. The Sweetheart. The verbal knife twisted in my chest.