Fractures in Ink Read online

  Sarah

  I measured the quality of my night by comparing total tips to the number of times some jerkoff put his hands on me. Tonight had been relatively mauling free, and the money was decent—decent enough to blow a regular waitressing job out of the water, though nothing like what I could be making if I’d taken a page from my mother’s book.

  But I was trying hard not to do that.

  I had no interest in being totally dependent on someone else for my financial well-being. Strip club waitressing, while often degrading, was far less reprehensible than being a serial mistress like my mom, as long as I could stay on the floor and off the pole.

  So far I had managed to avoid that scenario, even with Xander’s constant nagging. But it wasn’t easy. Having grown up in a situation where men rotated through my mother’s life almost as regularly as the seasons, I had to remind myself that not all males were assholes—just pretty much every one of them who came through the doors of the club. I’d believed no one could ever be faithful to one person. Then for a while, Chris had made me believe it was possible to love someone and be only theirs, until I screwed that up, too.

  Anyway, I hated that the job I was now forced to keep was the very thing I’d been trying to escape. More than my loathing for The Sanctuary, I wished I’d never taken the job at The Dollhouse when I first moved to Chicago. My mother had been the one to give me the contact there, and I should’ve recognized her help for what it was—another attempt to get me to follow her path. If I hadn’t, the allure of the tips and the flow of money wouldn’t have been something I was now afraid to be without. Part of that came from the constant roller coaster I’d been on as a kid; the temporary excess, followed by a plunge into poverty, wasn’t something I wanted to contend with ever again.

  I sat on the bench in the changing room, cash and receipts spread out in front of me. I never did my count at the tables with the other girls, and I quickly shoved my tips into my bra—except for two hundred dollars, which I shoved in my pocket—before anyone had a chance to see what I’d pulled in on a relatively not-so-great night. Sometimes I made a lot more than even the girls serving center stage.

  I had no idea why my brand of sex appeal sold so well. Regardless, this was the money I needed to pay down school debt. And while the girls who worked left stage made a good two to three times as much as I did, the level of touching expected to be tolerated there made my usual section seem positively chaste. The one time I’d served there had been a colossal clusterfuck and had opened my eyes to more reality than I would’ve liked. The money I could make on that side of the club wasn’t worth the price, but I’d learned that lesson the hard way.

  Candy sat at her station, peeling off her fake eyelashes. She’d been giving me dirty looks all night, more than was typical for her, anyway. Her hair was almost the same shade of white-blond as mine, except hers was artificial. Her narrow waist was courtesy of her coke habit—and whatever other illegal substances she managed to score through favors.

  Candy and I didn’t have much use for each other, seeing as our one common interest was the same man. I’d broken it off with Chris a couple of weeks ago. Not because I wanted to, but because I’d been put in a position where I felt I had to. I hated how this job impacted my life, and that it had cost me someone so important.

  I’d wanted out pretty much as soon as I’d taken the job. But Xander had kiboshed any attempt at quitting when he mentioned how difficult it must be to juggle work with such an exclusive master's program at Northwestern. He’d discovered I had a partial scholarship, and that there was a propriety clause because of the donors—something I hadn’t paid much attention to until he’d pointed it out.

  I’d stupidly assumed it pertained only to in-school and internship behavior. The message was simple: Don’t screw your teachers, don’t screw the boss at your internship, that kind of thing. I hadn’t taken into account how my job at The Sanctuary might factor in, but Xander assured me he thought they’d be very interested, should they have reason to find out. If I violated the propriety clause, the donors could take back what they’d given me.

  At first I thought maybe he was just trying to scare me. Then one of the girls at my internship got caught blowing an account manager in the copy room. I’d expected her to get some kind of reprimand, but that wasn’t what happened. I was shocked when she was expelled from the program, losing her degree. Plus she had to pay back the entire cost of her tuition because her scholarship was revoked.

  If that happened to me, I’d also owe the whole six-figure cost of my graduate degree, not just half, on top of my undergrad loans.

  During our chat, Xander had shown me a still shot from one of the video cameras. He’d captured me screwing around on one of the poles at the end of a night. Taken out of context, it looked bad. Xander, being the asshole he was, mentioned how natural I looked up there on the stage. He’d gone on to suggest that there were plenty of ways to make my school loans go away faster, and he’d ensure no one ever found out about this job. I declined his offer, but the threat had been clear. He’d bound me to him and the club for as long as I was in school and my scholarship was at risk.

  I’d thought that leverage was bad. It was nothing in comparison to what happened two weeks ago.

  My car had died on my way to work. I’d known it needed some work, but I’d been waiting until I had enough money set aside to pay for repairs before I took it into a garage. It wasn’t going to be cheap to fix. My car troubles had made me late, and Xander had been pissed. He’d been ready to send me home. But rent was due, along with my tuition payment, and I couldn’t afford to lose a shift.

  So instead he’d offered a proposal. He’d loan me the cost of car repairs, and I’d serve left stage that night. There was no other option because I was late, he’d explained. And I’d also owe him a favor. He called it interest on the loan.

  I’d considered, for a moment, asking Chris if he could help me out, but he’d just bought his mom a new furnace. I didn’t want to put my financial troubles on him, too.

  In hindsight, that would’ve been the better choice. I should’ve known owing Xander wouldn’t end well, especially combined with the leverage he already had. But I’d been backed into a corner, so I’d made the deal.

  All the suited-up men with their wandering hands and vulgar requests that night should’ve sent me straight into a scalding shower to burn away their unwelcome advances. It had reminded me far too much of the things my mother tolerated from the men she “dated.”

  Chris’s bed was the last place I should’ve gone, but I’d wanted the comfort being with him always brought. I needed his gentleness to wash away what the shower couldn’t. And I knew I wasn’t going to have it much longer with the way things were going now.

  The sex was amazing, as it always was, but the emotions tied to it, for me at least, weren’t something I could compartmentalize any more. In the morning, as I lay there beside him, tracing the ink he refused to put on me, I knew I’d ruined what we had by making a deal with Xander.

  While Chris didn’t talk to me much about his family or past girlfriends, he’d been honest about why his relationship with Candy had ended. When they’d gotten together, she’d been like me: a waitress, not a stripper. He’d managed her transition from serving drinks to taking her clothes off for a while, until he couldn’t any more.

  If the favor Xander called in was serving left stage again, or something worse, I wasn’t sure I could live with myself. Whispers of his predilection for humiliation fluttered like nervous hummingbirds in the dressing room. Some of the girls seemed intrigued by him, but a thick undercurrent of fear permeated my interactions with him. His constant reminders about how easy it would be for me to lose my grad school placement spiked my anxiety every time I came to work. I hated that he had such control over my life.

  Additionally, if the favor was anything more than left stage, I wouldn’t be able to go to Chris after, leaving me with no real support system. Not that I’d had m
uch of one anyway. If he ever found out about any of this, it would make things so much worse. Chris had made it clear that if I ever made the move from waitress to pole, he was done.

  So I’d broken it off, thinking it would make the situation easier on me.

  It hadn’t. I was miserable without him.

  I took a deep breath, pushing away the sadness that came with thinking about Chris, and how I’d ruined what we’d had with one bad choice. Maybe I was destined to be like my mother. Maybe I’d never figure out how to love someone without being hurt.

  I focused on the stack of twenties, flipping the bills so they all faced the same direction. Xander liked things organized, and I liked to be in and out of his office in as little time as possible. He made me nervous. Especially now that he had so much to hold over my head. The car repairs had cost more than twenty-five hundred dollars. Compared to my school loans, it was nothing. Juggling bills to back the loan was the easy part. But waiting for him to collect on the favor made me anxious, which was likely purposeful.

  For all the time and energy I’d put into not becoming my mother, one decision had shifted me far too close. Money had always been her motivation. She’d done horrible, degrading, desperate things for the illusion of luxury. I’d made it my goal never to have to ask someone else for something I needed. I never wanted to be indebted to someone who could turn that on me for personal gain—and now I was.

  “Guess who I had breakfast with this morning.” Candy was loud-talking across the room.

  “Is it that guy you were talking about last week? The one who drives the Mercedes?” someone asked.

  “Nope. That guy’s a jerk, and that car is leased. You’ll never guess.”

  I went back to counting, uninterested in who Candy was screwing. She reminded me of my mother, but with none of the finesse. Then I heard her say, “Chris.”

  My stomach dropped, along with the wad of cash. I got down on my hands and knees and gathered the bills back into a pile. Chris was a common name. It didn’t have to be my Chris. It could be anyone, really.

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think? Chris Zelter.”

  I caught Candy’s reflection in her vanity mirror. She was staring right at me, a smug smile plastered on her makeup-caked face.

  One of the other girls started to comment, “But I thought—”

  Someone shushed her with a whisper, and she checked over her shoulder, looking in my direction. I focused on the money in my hands, not wanting Candy to see my reaction.

  I hurriedly restacked the bills, desperate to get away from her before I said or did something I’d regret more than breaking it off with Chris. I was ready to punch her in her stupid, coke-blown nose, except I’d seen her fight one of the other girls. She was a hair-puller and a scratcher. Dark circles were enough of a problem to hide without claw marks on my face and bald patches on my head.

  My stomach turned at the thought of Candy in Chris’s bed, at the idea of his hands on her, or hers on him. Why would he get involved with her again? It wasn’t like she’d become a better person since they’d last dated.

  As I gathered the money, I was thankful I’d changed out of my slutwear and into street clothes before I counted my tips. Clutching the money and receipts, I left the dressing room, Candy’s high-pitched laugh following me down the hall. I took a deep breath as soon as I was away from her. I could get emotional about this later. Right now I needed to be angry—Chris had to know she’d say something. Or maybe that was the point. Maybe he was getting me back for the way I’d dealt with us.

  Which was not dealing at all.

  I couched all the feelings and made the trek to Xander’s office, anxiety creating a roll in my stomach. I’d cried in front of him once and given him a weakness to exploit. I understood now what Chris had always been so worried about. One step down the wrong path had already created more problems than I could fix.

  I was almost relieved to find Trixie sitting on the edge of Xander’s desk. She was still dressed in her last on-stage outfit, a short skirt and a bra. Trixie had only been working at The Sanctuary for a few weeks, and she was Xander’s pet.

  She tossed her hair over her shoulder, barely glancing my way, though I knew she saw me. She spent most of her time in the protective cover of Xander’s office when she wasn’t on the stage. It was a smart move on her part. Many of the girls weren’t happy with the shift in dynamics since she’d started working here. She got the best shifts, the most lucrative dance spots, the nicest leased car—whatever the best perks were, she had them. The rest of the girls had banded together, starting rumors, causing drama, and making Trixie generally miserable when they could.

  Coked-out dancers—high on E and whatever uppers Xander and his goons provided—were irrational and volatile. My friend Tenley thought it would make an interesting research paper. I would’ve agreed if that wouldn’t have made me one of the lab rats. This life wasn’t anything she understood, apart from second-hand accounts and witnessing the drama from the outside. She couldn’t fully appreciate what it was like from the inside.

  More than anything else, I wanted to be free of this.

  Xander leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled under his chin. “How was your night, Sarah?” he asked in his thick, European accent. I wasn’t sure exactly where he was from since Xander didn’t like chitchat or questions unless he was doing the talking.

  “Fine.” I passed over the envelope and waited, like always, for him to count it in front of me. I wasn’t stupid enough to walk away without confirmation the numbers matched.

  “Trixie, be a good girl and go get me a soda water. Two lemons. No fucking limes this time.”

  “Two lemons, no limes.” A flush crept into her cheeks as she slid off the desk, her skirt flipping up to reveal a lack of underwear.

  “And close the door behind you.” Xander didn’t look away from his computer screen as she flounced to the exit.

  My heart rate sped as the door clicked shut. It wasn’t locked, though. That was good. I didn’t like the idea of being locked in a room with Xander.

  He gestured to the chair across from his desk. “Have a seat.”

  “I’m good standing.”

  His smile was sinister as he stared me down. “Sit.”

  His power trips, which had increased in frequency, were infuriating, but I wasn’t about to push him. I was certain he enjoyed how tense he made me these days. Before I dropped into the chair I pulled the two hundred dollars out of my pocket, smoothed it out, and passed it to him.

  “You sure you want to hand over this much?”

  “The faster I pay it down the better, right?”

  One side of his mouth lifted in a leer. “Soon you’ll be all paid up, except for the interest, of course.” He nodded to the chair behind me.

  I hated his constant reminders that money wasn’t the only thing I owed him. I tried not think about the bodily fluids the fabric might hold as I took a seat. Everything I wore would go directly into the laundry when I got home anyway.

  “I trust your internship is going well? You’re at Media Mogul aren’t you? Specializing in marketing management?”

  The small talk wasn’t innocuous. It was Xander’s way of reminding me of his hold on me.

  “It’s fine, and yes.”

  He continued to stare in that unnerving way of his. “Just fine? That’s a very renowned company. I’d think someone with a background like yours would be an exceptional asset to them. What was your undergrad again? You double majored in programming and marketing?”

  None of this was information I’d ever shared with Xander. He’d done all the digging on his own to prove he could find out whatever he wanted about me.

  I tried not to let derision seep into my tone. “It’s a good placement. I worked hard to get there.”

  “Yes, well, I imagine you have a vast array of talents that extend far beyond serving drinks, don’t you?” His smile was lecherous. “You look tired tonight, though.”


  “It was a busy one.” I kept my hands clasped in my lap to prevent myself from fidgeting.

  “Yes, I see that. You pulled in five grand in sales on a Tuesday? Impressive.”

  “Men like slutty librarians.”

  His eyes shifted to me. “Men like the idea of fucking someone they think is untouchable.”

  I tried not to let my anxiety seep through into my words, because showing weakness, especially fear, wasn’t going to help me. “Until it isn’t untouchable any more. Then it’s just another body everyone gets to see naked, right?”

  Xander chuckled. The sound was dark, like an unfilled grave. “Aren’t you even the slightest bit curious what I’ve been offered for an hour with you?”

  A shiver forced its way down my spine, real fear settling under my skin. Head still bowed, his eyes lifted, making him look as demonic as he was turning out to be. Xander’s blond hair, icy blue eyes, high cheekbones, and white smile might’ve made him beautiful to look at, but under that stunning exterior I could see a terrible, terrifying man. He wasn’t a wolf in sheep’s clothing, he was a viper, and he was going to taunt me with this for as long as he could. Draw it out and make me sweat over it. In the meantime, while I waited for the ball to finally drop, Candy would taunt me with Chris. Unless I did something about it.

  I didn’t have an opportunity to hear Xander’s next veiled threat. Trixie burst through the door, glass in hand. He turned his hard glare on her, and the simpering smile melted off her face.

  His usually calm veneer slipped as he slammed his palm on his desk, sending sheets of paper fluttering to the floor. “How many fucking times do I need to tell you to knock before you come into my goddamn office?”

  Her drawn-on eyebrows came down as she looked from him, to me, to the glass in her hand. “But you asked me—”

  He pushed up out of his chair, all six feet four inches of him rising in a tower of menace. He rivaled Chris in height and breadth. “I asked you to get me a soda water, and I asked you to close the door. What does that mean, Trixie?”