being silently eviscerated across the room by a man who once swore he'd never hurt me and is now apparently

even though I barely register half the words leaving this elderly man's mouth, because my brain is too busy replaying t

Vale is somewhere in this hotel waiting like a debt collector with a personal vendetta. Mr. Sutton moves from yacht explosions to stories about the neatly framed tragedies of his life, tapping his teaspoon

that's my job tonight-professional sympathy, premium empathy, hire-by-the-hour warmth that looks good in a cocktail dress and laughs on cue. I let my face do the practice

play he's seen a hundred times. "Yes, well. Life happens fast. Would you like soufflé? The raspberry here is divine." Divine. Sure. My dignity is dying publicly, why not a

hat doesn't stop my mind from imagining him lurking somewhere behind a marble pillar, sharpening knives with his eyeballs, waiting for the perfect moment to come down from his penthouse throne and deliver whatever sadistic epilogue he's been composing in his head.

he price per humiliation. In his head, I'm sure the numbers looked neat and clean: fifteen thousand imagined from the old man, twenty more thrown on top like seasoning from himself, a tidy twenty-five thousand total for the girl he deci

ds on it, because it kind of does-rent, bills, debt, survival-all the glamorous bullet points of a life gone sideways. Every time Mr. Sutton mentions a number, a percentage, a loss, my brain quietly overlays my

his words dissolving into a soft, sleepy mumble. Then, right on cue, his driver appears as if summoned by magic-tall, polite, wearing a perfectly ironed suit and pushing an empty wheelcha

ted emotional support animal. "I'll take him from here." He lifts Mr. Sutton with practiced gentleness, settles him into the chair with the

ing close to the amount Adrian assumed I pocketed from across the room with that smug, murderous brain of his. But still... nice. A thousand dollars is groceries and electricity and a week or two of not drowning. "Thank you," I mur

is a tip, pure and simple. Meanwhile, Adrian must have decided I pocketed thousands tonight-and all of that came from nothing but the picture he saw before he stormed out: me at a table with an old ma

I was forced into at the last second. I watch them go and let my shoulders sag for the first time all eve