only sparing us a terrified glance as she ran to hush the child. In her haste she didn’t pull the door closed properly and it bounced open again, revealing two cribs inside and a toddler sleeping on a mattress on the floor in the corner. The girl picked up the crying babe and hurried back to close the door between us again with a murmured apology and fear in her eyes.
I frowned deeply, looking back to Elsa as she wrung her hands together.
“I have the name of the hotel and his room number. There was enough of his shit around the place to let me know he wasn’t going anywhere today at least,” she said hastily, handing over a piece of paper with the information on it.
I took it slowly, exchanging a look with my brother. “Did he do that to you?” I asked her, indicating her bruises and she exhaled slowly before nodding once.
“Some men are that way,” she said with a shrug, eyeing us like she was deciding whether or not we were those kinds of men before seeming to decide we weren’t and relaxing a little.
My muscles bunched with the desire to punch something and a furious noise left my throat.
“I’m going to kill him,” I said in a low voice, not giving a shit that it wasn’t a great idea to admit that to some random girl, but I wanted her to know he wouldn’t be getting away with this shit. “For hurting the girl I love and for hurting you too. He’ll beg for death before I’m done with him.”
Her eyes widened but it wasn’t with fear, just surprise and gratitude as she realised I meant it. And that it was the reason for me wanting him dead. I purely wanted to remove the piece of shit predator from the face of the earth and make sure that he couldn’t hurt a single soul ever again.
“You live here with that other girl?” Frankie asked, drawing my attention to him and away from the rage burning inside of me.
“She’s my sister,” Elsa muttered. “We take it in turns to watch the kids and work the streets.
My gaze slid to the closed door where the baby had stopped crying and the low sound of her sister singing just made it to us.
“You’re attractive,” Frankie commented, assessing her with a clinical kind of gaze. “You could fetch a higher price with a better standard of clientele. What are you working with?”
She glanced between the two of us for a moment then tugged her hoodie off, standing before us in her bra with a shrug. Frankie bobbed his chin at her sweatpants and she dropped them too, turning around as he twisted a finger so that he could inspect her ass as well. But he wasn’t looking at her like he wanted to fuck her. More like he was assessing her the way he would something he had an interest in from a business perspective.
“You can get dressed again,” he said, picking up a pen and a piece of paper from the kitchen worktop and scribbling a phone number on it. “This is the number for a woman called Christy. If you and your sister want to start working with clients who pay better and don’t treat women the way you were treated tonight unless they want to take a beating themselves then call her. She’ll set you up with an apartment in the centre of the city and approve all of your clients. It means attending dinners and parties and shit like that with them too, but the money is a shit ton better than you get here. She’ll set you both up with suitable child care when you’re working as well and she’ll teach you how to play the role of a socialite so that you can fool everyone into believing it. It’s still whoring but it’s a lot better than this.”
He held out the piece of paper with the number and Elsa gaped at him, like she thought this was some kind of prank.
“Unless you were hoping to leave the sex trade altogether?” he asked curiously, like they were discussing her leaving an office job.
She shook her head, her gaze darting to me for a moment before she snatched the piece of paper from him. “Whoring pays better than anything else we can do for money. But I’m already working for someone and I don’t know how I’m supposed to get out of that-”
“Christy will sort