These people.
This place.
As fake as the designer fingernails on a debutante.
As fake as a housewife’s orgasm, thirty seconds into her husband’s rooting.
I fucking hate fake.
People who pretend everything is perfect make my skin crawl.
This can’t be real. This can’t be the paradise they all try to convince me it is.
Yet, when the women look at their men, I don’t see that familiar fear I’ve learned to read when I’m working.
They don’t flinch when one of the guys hoots and hollers.
I don’t catch them with contemplative looks, as if they’re dreaming of a better life when they think no one is watching.
Even Cara, who was one of the trafficking victims I helped rescue a few years ago in El Salvador, leans against former FBI agent turned Cerberus member, Thumper.
She thought the man raped me the night she and I were pulled from the back of a truck and sold.
Maybe he told her the truth. Maybe she knows I came hard on his dick that night, overcome with pleasure at his violence.
Is that why they pity me?
They think I’m damaged, broken somehow for enjoying the things I do.
I chuckle as I look around the room. Maybe they are as happy as they try to make people think they are.
Maybe vanilla is the only fucking flavor they can stomach.
They’d look at me with more than just pity if they knew the things I’ve done, knew of the things I seek while working.
Pain, degradation, humiliation. I feed off of it. Welcome it. Yearn for it.
Mommy issues? Daddy issues? Sister issues? Hell, Grandmother issues. I’ve got it all, not that I would ever speak of them out loud.
I know I’m different. I know most people would read my full story and use it to commit me to a mental ward. The women would want to help me get better. No sane person would seek such things out, right?
The men, on the other hand? They know more. Hell, I provided the video when I showed up on their doorstep years ago, in a bid to help Thumper after the FBI refused to help him because it would compromise another case.
They thought he was the villain, a man who infiltrated their sanctuary. They were actively searching for him so they could end him for the betrayal.
The video showcased the second time I met Thumper that night I arrived with Cara. It was more graphic, more violent than I’m sure many of them had seen before. It also had my voice begging for more.
I explained my prior relationship with Javier Sosa, aka Thumper, along with providing the video evidence. It didn’t take long to believe what they had wanted to all along, which was that Thumper wasn’t the epitome of what they despised. He was undercover, in need of their help, not the monster they were led to believe.
Fucking do-gooders.
Movement across the room catches my eye, and I give one of the wives a quick smile before moving on.
Spade somehow looks irritated and happy all at the same time as he watches a woman standing across the room. They may not be together yet, but I know he’ll end up attached to the first woman who doesn’t bend to his will. The man thinks he needs a little push back to be happy.
He puts on a good front, wants everyone to believe he’s a tomcat on the prowl when deep down he’s a teddy bear needing his head scratched. That’s why he ended up tied to a chair the night he wanted to hook up with me.
He thought he was a badass. I had to prove that I was worse.