actually do something about it if I did. In the meantime, I look forward to more verbal abuse and your lack of response to it.
Locke didn’t respond. Of course he didn’t. Wasn’t even the least bit curious how abusive his latest client was. No wonder I liked to go on these texting tangents. I often said what I wanted without being called out for it. He never did text back unless he demanded shit from me. Ungrateful jerk. He was a bad boss with a seriously bad temper, but I was an equally bad employee, coming and going as I pleased. He allowed me to work around my own hours, but I slaved hard for that privilege when I did clock in, doing his dirty work. Our dirty work. Locke had me twisted up in his mess. I was part of his web, practically in the centre of it, and yet…Locke was still a giant question mark.
I knew him better than most. He even admitted so on numerous occasions. I’d seen things behind the curtain no other person had. Max Locke frightened me. He was peculiar and savage. I watched him rip businesses apart, destroy livelihoods and careers, tear apart families and jail fathers and husbands and sons, and he never bat a fucking eye.
He lost no sleep being wicked.
And me? I lost sleep every single night. I tossed and turned, wondering when the house of cards was going to collapse. Wondering how many enemies he had accumulated and how many would end him and thus end me and all I’d built with him.
Seven years of this crap. Of seeing his cold and callous face, of hearing his spine-tingling voice bark orders at me. Seven years of weird as fuck encounters. Years of…
I need you, Charlotte.
I saw unspeakable things.
The clock was winding down now. I had reached financial stability with the help of Locke. I may have hated him at times, but I owed him everything because he found me in my ruin and gave me an opportunity at my lowest point.
And yet, despite the pleasant paychecks, despite the pretty roof over my head, despite the life I’d built in this black hearted town, I still craved something beyond it.
I stared down at a spot on the floor, chasing after those lost moments in the past. I was happy once, truly happy for a brief moment. But I blinked and it was over, and I was so cold.
These days I lived solely for Penny. I even looked forward to those awkward as fuck encounters with Locke because he breathed a bit of life into me. Jem was my rock, Laura my long-distance best friend, and Locke the guilt on my conscience.
The door opened a crack. “Charlotte?”
I blinked, snapping out of my void. “Yeah, hon?”
The door opened even more now, and Tanya poked her dark head in. “Annika says you have a client in the next room.”
Annoyance flared through me. “Annika is setting up surprise appointments now? Why am I doubtful?”
“She says the guy asked for you directly by name.”
“And she just acquiesced?”
Tanya’s eyes widened. “I guess?”
Annika had a serious problem obeying orders in the club. She covered up more than she was supposed to show. She let guys touch her provocatively in the open, which was forbidden in the rulebook. And now she was putting guys in rooms for me to meet with?
She was hanging by a thread as far as I was concerned.
Not that I would fire her or anything.
She was a sweetheart, goddammit, and she hadn’t been in town very long. I suspected she was running from a bad past.
Okay, so she wasn’t hanging by a thread because I was weak over other people’s plights. It was a flaw I knew I had. No wonder people like Crane abused me. I just took that shit, didn’t I?
“Has he been searched?” I asked the obvious.
“Well, he’s been through security and Jim’s on shift.”
Jim was very thorough in his searches. Then again, you had to be with the sort of men that frequented this place.
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
Checking the time on my watch, I let out a long breath. The day was never going to end. What did another meeting matter? Penny was already in bed. I could pick up a quick dinner at a drive-thru and spend the rest of the night in my office going over the shady documents Locke unleashed on me just the other day.
Maybe I could arrange more discreet meetings in