A week later, Momma and I were instructed to pack our bags. Big Daddy Pimp was setting us up. Only, he wasn’t.
He “set us up” in an upscale condo just outside the Strip, then handed Momma a wad of bills before he turned and walked away. He never looked back, not that either of us expected him to. We weren’t in the place twenty-four hours before a courier service delivered a parcel addressed to Hailey “Hard Knocks” Poe.
My heart sank. Seeing that name, I should have packed Momma up right then and taken off with the little bit of money Big Daddy had left her. Did I do that? Nope.
How the hell did he find me?
Opening the envelope, my heart pounded, my breathing hitched, and my palms sweat.
Inside was a contract, one that sealed my fate against any future I had ever hoped for.
We weren’t released by Big Daddy Douchebag. We were bought and paid for. He gave Big Daddy enough to release Momma. He set us up.
Sean “Monte” Timmons owns me. He owns us. How the hell did this keep happening to me? The cycle of misery—wash, rinse, repeat. From one man’s property to another.
The glitz, the glam, the lights, and the action of Vegas are all a fa?ade. It’s a black hole of manipulation. Life here is a game. Day in and day out, it’s all a gamble to survive and to thrive. The winner takes all.
Monte didn’t waste time in moving himself into the place with us. More so, with me. My age didn’t matter. He had me in a position where I couldn’t deny him. If word got around about my counterfeit bills at the table, my age would be nothing more than a number on my death certificate.
Monte used that to his advantage.
The situation didn’t seem bad to my mother, who had spent her entire life working the corners. To me, it was hell. Monte didn’t put me on a street or in a hotel bed to repay my debt. No, he made me his wife in a ceremony at a chapel on the Strip, which my mother stupidly signed her agreement to.
Over the last seven years, nothing has changed. Monte wheels and deals and lives for the next thrill. Lucky seven is a cruel bitch. I have accumulated seven years of debt to him.
Every meal I have eaten, every shower I have taken, everything I have ever had, done, or been forced to endure is a penny added to the red line. The black marks are for good behavior when I play my part.
I’m his trophy, his armpiece, and I’m also his whore. The balance gets renegotiated with every pound he gets inside my *, but the scales never tip in my favor, no matter how good I suck his dick.
Seven years and few things have changed, none of those for the better.
Funny how history repeats itself, even if you don’t want it to.
Momma is gone from a brain-stem stroke. It happened fast. One night she went to bed, and the next morning, she was unresponsive. One call to emergency services and an ambulance ride to the hospital later, she lay in a bed on life support with a prune for a brain. Decisions had to be made, and the chances of her waking up and ever being normal were slim; as a result, the plug was pulled, and my life crashed around me.
More bills. More debt paid by Monte.
Stress consumes and mistakes happen, like missing a birth control pill or two. To keep an eye on costs, I cremated Momma. Two months later, I was allowed a trip to Santa Barbara to release her ashes. Feeling sick, I peed on one of those godforsaken sticks, and the two pink lines sealed my fate.
I am a statistic. The sins of the mother were passed on to the daughter.
Regardless of how this baby came to be, I will hold on to hope and give my daughter better than I had. Somehow, some way, the cycle will be broken.
I shouldn’t complain. Really, Monte allows me friends. His friends, of course, but I’m not nearly as tied down as my mother was. I have a nice car, a nice house, and a closetful of clothes. From the outside looking in, I have it made.
If only people knew I live in a loveless marriage of manipulation and corruption. I’m not the only one who owes Monte. Everyone in his life is in debt to him for some amount.
The hustler who refuses to be hustled, always in control, always making sure he has the upper hand, Monte has people who handle his other people. The ones who don’t pay up or have a service plan like me deal with those people as Monte keeps up the pressure until the debt is repaid, or someone suffers the consequences. As Monte says, “It’s a world of checks and balances, Hailey.”
And he keeps the checks and balances in his favor at all times and in all ways.
If I don’t walk the line, I will pay the price…with my life. My debt to him is beyond anything I could repay with a regular job. Hell, I don’t know if the bastard would ever actually allow me to leave, even if I tried.