“My favorite memory of my mother happened when I was about twelve. We were very poor, and it got a lot worse in winter. That November, my brother and I tried to save up money to get her a Mother’s Day present. There was this little locket she had been eyeing in the department store. It was fake silver and fake rhinestones, but it was still too much for her to buy for herself.
My brother and I made a pact to not eat lunch at school and save up our lunch money for it. The problem was that we were growing boys, and we ended up caving and eating every day. My brother and I would sit on the bus going home and show each other how much money we had saved. It was never more than what would equal a dollar, but we kept at it. We ate some scraps from our friends and shoveled a few driveways.
“I wish we had had a camera to capture the look on my mother’s face. She cycled through emotions faster than anyone I had ever seen. She was shocked, then delighted, then angry. She thought we had stolen it. She was furious, demanding we go back and apologize to the manager. Through tears, my brother and I explained that we had not been eating, and she cried. We got the biggest hug I have ever seen, and one swat on the bum for not eating.” He ran a pale slim finger around the rim of his glass while he spoke. “She wore it everyday from then on. When I video chat with her, she is always wearing it. It has been repaired so many times that the repair cost far outweighs the cost of just getting her a new necklace, but she won’t have it.”
“Could I meet her?” Jalisa asked. “On video chat, of course.”
“She doesn’t speak English.” He rubbed his chin. “But I suppose I could translate for you two.”
Jalisa was just about to ask her question about the possibility of a Russian wife or lover when Marie and Stone butted in. The two stood too close for comfort and glared rather aggressively at the two. Marie gave them a sickly sweet smile.
“Hey, guys.” Her voice was being more and more annoying each time Jalisa heard it. “I’m so glad you guys are getting along so well. Having friends is sure to help Jalisa settle in easier.”
“Don’t worry, Marie, you’ll still be my best friend.” Jalisa was just as fake as Marie. The two girls laughed together.
“Hey, Erik, I got something I want to discuss with you. In the other room.” Stone grunted. Everyone present looked around at each other, gauging each other's reaction to the loaded situation they were in.
“All right.” Erik pushed his almost empty glass toward Marie. “Will you keep this safe? Jalisa made it special with cherries.”
“Sure.” Marie set it behind the bar. A new bruise wrapped around her wrist showed Jalisa that she had been fighting with Stone some more.
Jalisa watched with a heavy heart as Stone and Erik disappeared into the break room. The same room that Erik and Jalisa had become intimate in not very long ago. She had no idea what they were going to talk about, but she didn’t have a good feeling about it. Marie placed one manicured hand on her shoulder.
“Want to go shopping later?” Marie always wanted to go out with Jalisa. Jalisa kept a neutral face while she weighed the options. On one hand, she wanted to be as far away from Marie as possible. On the other hand, Marie had to think positively of Jalisa so she would not get suspicious.
“So long as we aren’t out too late,” Jalisa said. Marie started chatting about new winter fashions and who was wearing what on the red carpet. Jalisa picked up a rag and started wiping down the bar, occasionally giving an ‘uh-huh’ or an ‘oh, really?’
The crash was barely audible over the sound of the music. Jalisa and a few customers sitting about looked in the direction of the break room. Erik threw open the door and stormed out of the building without a word. He wiped at something on his face and didn’t even glance at Jalisa. She walked a few steps toward him before she halted. Marie’s eyes burned holes into the back of her head.
“You seem awfully interested in Erik.” Marie’s voice was low. “What’s the reason for that?”
“I mean...wouldn’t you be worried is someone ran out of the room?” Jalisa tried to play it off coolly while her heart beat out of her chest. “I’m mostly ‘interested’ in him because he’s Stone’s boss and what happens to him falls down the chain of command and lands on my lap.”
“I could see that.” Marie drummed her nails on the hard wood of the bar counter, fingers moving so quickly they blurred into a single harsh noise. “He’s cute, isn’t he?”
“I guess.” Jalisa returned back to scrubbing down the already spotless bar. “So, what were you telling me about flannels?”
“Oh, flannels are the worst and they always get popular near winter. I don’t get it, especially for girls. Why would you want to look like a lumberjack? Not that lumberjacks aren’t sexy, but I wouldn’t marry one. I’d sleep with one, like, once. That’s enough lumberjack for me, thank you very much. Oh, that reminds me: Did you read the latest issue of Women’s Journal? There was this article called ‘Ten Signs You Know He’s a Leo’ that I thought was spot fucking on.” Marie continued to talk at Jalisa rather than talking with her. It kept on in much the same fashion until Jalisa asked if she could be let off work early for a stomachache.
She sat upstairs on the couch and watched Nikita play video games. Now, she was playing something about dragons that was a little too violent for Jalisa’s taste. A towel in front of her had scissors, a spray bottle, and a pile of discarded hair. Her long fingers worked in her hair, carefully undoing her twists.
Messing with her hair was her nervous habit. Seeing Erik run out like that had made her so upset she was completely redoing her hair. Section by section, her hair bounced out into its natural state. She pulled it down and held it straight against her body and found it laid all the way down to her breasts. Her twists had gone all the way down to mid back. After being kept in one protective style after another, it was getting a bit too long for Jalisa’s liking.
“I'm gonna cut my hair,” she murmured to Nikita.
“I think you look the best with it long, but it's your body.” Nikita laughed as her character back flipped off of a mountain.
“Erik ran off today. Just ran out of the bar. He still hasn't come back. Didn't even look at me.” Jalisa sent up a silent prayer for him, wherever he was. God would know.
“That explains it.” Nikita frowned. “I'm sure he'll be fine.”
Erik didn't return to the bar in the morning. After lunch, Jalisa put her hair into a couple Afro puffs and went shopping with Marie. Although she wanted to get lingerie, she didn't want Marie to catch on. In the end, she settled for some new jeans and couple tops that were deep blue and vivid green to accentuate the jewel tones in her skin. They stopped by a salon and Jalisa got her hair cut in her favorite natural shape: a deep part to the side with coils filling out her crown.
He didn't return the next day or the next or the next. A week passed by with no sign of Erik. Jalisa’s worry settled into a deep sadness that rested in the pit of her stomach. A mean part of her brain whispered to her that he had run off to be with his Russian wife. Her mind conjured up images of a stunning skinny white girl with glowing blue eyes.
After nine days and a couple of dodged questions from Marie, she became worried again. He had promised her that he would help her find a way out of this mess. He said she had at least two weeks to get out before Stone really started to trap her into sex work. If he wanted to break up, fine, but he could at least warn her that she would have to find a way out on her own.
Her meager savings under her bed totaled around two thousand. It was enough to get them a down payment on an apartment and start up a few utilities. It was not nearly enough to start a whole new life. Marie had put her in contact with a man who made fake paperwork for people in a bad situation, and he wanted at least a thousand to do all the paperwork – driver’s license, birth certificate, Social Security card, the whole shabang - for Nikita and her.
“Hey, Stone.” She approached him tentatively. “I was wondering if I could get an advancement on my next few
paychecks.”
“Maybe.” He raised an eyebrow, his face giving away nothing. “May I ask why?”
“I want to send Nikita to the orthodontist,” she lied. It was a good lie, well thought out and practiced. Originally, it was for Nikita to go to private school, but she was afraid Stone would want to know where. Orthodontists were expensive and hardly no one remembered their names.
“Oh.” His face softened. “Are her teeth not okay?”
“They look pretty, but they're painful.” Jalisa forced her facial features to look sad. “Her teeth look fine from the front, but in the back they are really bad. Crowded up and twisted around.”
“Hmmm…” Stone gave her a look of deep concentration. Jalisa bit the inside of her lip and figured she needed to lie better.
“When she was younger, it was worse. There were days when she couldn't eat solid foods. I still remember my dad running out to get more soup at all hours of the night when she would wake up hungry and hurting from her teeth.” Jalisa felt bad for lying like this, and even worse for involving her sister and father, but it was necessary.
Chapter 8
Church was the only thing that kept Jalisa rooted in reality. Nikita and she went every chance they got. Being surrounded by people and being uplifted by faith made the loneliness from Erik’s disappearance a little easier to bear. Stone had lent them the money, another thousand dollars. Jalisa immediately sent it off to the man who would forge their documents for them. Nikita had been sneaking and using Stone’s laptop to look up apartments in the area.
“There was one that was not too far from here for only five hundred down and three hundred a month,” Nikita whispered to Jalisa as the two laid side by side in bed.
“There are two problems with that one. One: we should probably move further away. Two: anything that cheap is probably not that safe.” Though Stone and Marie probably could not hear them, the two girls kept their voices low.
“Should we go to a new city?” Nikita reached over and grabbed her sister’s hand. “Is that an option?”
“Probably not.” Jalisa squeezed the comforting weight in her palm. “I don’t have to tell you how hard it was to start over. We don’t have enough money to make another trip like the one from home to Los Angeles.”
“How are we going to get out of this mess? Erik said we had about two weeks to get out before Stone started lining up customers for you, right? It’s been two weeks!” Nikita’s voice hitched, and Jalisa’s stomach dropped. She hated seeing her sister cry.
It has took a lot of deliberation, but Jalisa finally decided to tell Nikita the whole truth, every little bit. From Stone’s plan to make her into a prostitute to Marie’s betrayal to Stone and Erik’s fight, Nikita knew about it all. She had even told her little sister that she had given her virginity to Erik and planned to stay with him for a long time.
“Maybe we can stay at a homeless shelter? They’re run by the government, right? They can protect us,” Nikita said naively.
“That’s going to be the first place they check. Plus, Los Angeles has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the United States. I doubt that we would be able to just walk in and get a place to stay. Not to mention that anything government funded requires for us to have a Social Security number. One that won’t be tracked back home and land us in deep trouble.” Jalisa sighed.
“All right, how long will the guy take to make our papers? They are ‘real,’ aren’t they? They can be used to do things like get help at the homeless shelter or sign up for free lunch right?” Nikita said. The mention of free and reduced lunch at school made Jalisa feel guilty. It was winter; Nikita should be learning and playing with her friends, not worrying about whether or not her sister would choose rape or homelessness.
“We won’t really know until we try.” Jalisa was scared that they wouldn’t work, but, then again, what part of her life wasn’t scary?
They took a few twenties out of their savings to take a taxi to church and back and also have some to put in the offering plate. The preacher spoke on being fulfilled in the Lord and about never losing sight of what was important. Everything on this earth and in this lifetime was temporary and the kingdom of God is what was really important.
She exited the church feeling refreshed and renewed. Once again, her determination to do anything to get Nikita and herself out of this situation was aflame. In the distance, a broad shouldered, dark-haired man stood in the parking lot next to a car that looked a lot like Erik’s. He turned around and made eye contact with Jalisa. Bright blue eyes teeming with curiosity.
It was him. Oh, her beating heart be still. It was him.
Jalisa ran to him and embraced him with all she had, onlookers be damned. He stiffened for a moment, then relaxed into her hug. Her arms thrown around his neck and his wrapped around her waist, they had a moment right there in the church parking lot.
“Where were you?” she cried. “I was starting to think you had abandoned me.”
“I’m so sorry, beautiful.” He squeezed her. “It wasn’t me; it was Stone. He threatened to kill us both if I didn’t leave you alone. I was struggling so hard with what to do that I decided to stop by my old church. I didn’t go in because I was afraid I wouldn’t be welcome,” he murmured in her ear.
“I can’t stand it anymore!” She held him close. “We have to escape.”
“You were going to take a taxi back? Yes?” He waited until she nodded to continue. “Get in my car. I lied earlier when I said I didn’t have a home. It’s kind of a hub for mafia activity, so I didn’t want you to be a part of it. I will take you and Nikita there and we can plan your escape.”
Jalisa wanted to be offended because of his lie, but she understood he was just trying to protect her. The two girls got in his car and drove about twenty minutes to his home. It was unassuming, just another basic home with two stories and four windows. A tiny yard with a chain link fence stretched around the perimeter housed two dogs, one chocolate lab and one Rottweiler. They jumped up, tails wagging a million miles per minute, at the sight of their owner returning.
Erik had three security systems and a guard disguised as an old man sitting on the porch. Erik addressed him in Russian, and the man took his hand out of his blanket. It settled back over his legs and Jalisa could just barely make out the shape of a large firearm. Jalisa held Nikita close as they walked inside. This mafia business was testing her trust in Erik, but the Lord would protect her and her sister.
“These are my men, and you have nothing to fear.” Erik could feel the tension in the room. “If any of them bothers you, you let me know and he will be dealt with.”
“I will not be the cause of another human being’s death. Absolutely not. I refuse to take part in such a horrid thing,” Jalisa said.
“I didn’t mean that. This isn’t the movies. I would fire him.” Erik opened the door to a room that was filled with lights. A vintage Pac-Man machine sat blinking in the corner. Various mini-fridges decorated with famous drink brands collected next to it. The main attraction was the giant TV and the set of consoles and games underneath it.
“Oh, wow,” Nikita gasped. She ran and started pressing buttons on the gaming consoles.
“Nikita,” Jalisa scolded. “Did you ask permission to do that?”
“No, ma’am.” Nikita lowered her eyes and spoke to Erik. “May I play with your toys?”
“Yes, you may, Nikita. Your sister and I are going to my room to discuss some business.” Erik turned to Jalisa. “If your sister is okay with that?”
“You give me your word that these men will not harm my sister?” Jalisa asked.
“Of course. I have a few female employees who can come and sit with Nikita if that would make you feel better.” Erik smiled at her.
“That would make me more comfortable.” She bit her lip. He was becoming more and more handsome by the second and she was going up to his bedroom. Erik snapped his fingers and said something in Russian. Two men standing at the door got up
and left. Jalisa waited until three women entered the room and took their seats near Nikita. One of the women was black and dressed casually in a sports t-shirt. If it wasn’t for her age and the gun strapped to her hip, Jalisa would assume she was one of Nikita friends from back home.
As they walked up the stairs, Jalisa was not under any false impressions. She knew exactly what was going to happen once she was in his room, and it wasn’t making plans. That would happen, of course, but much later. Right now she needed him to claim her over and over, to burn his name into her lips once again. He opened the door and let her inside the brightly lit room. She glanced around only to locate the plush bed topped with velvet blankets.
“What I was thinking was-” Erik began.
“Hush. We both know that you’re going to be deep inside of me in a few minutes.” She fell to her knees in front of him and started undoing his belt. His hands reached out and gently stopped hers.
“You don’t have to. I know I messed up big time by disappearing. I would understand if you didn’t want to be around me for a while.” Erik’s voice shook at the end, giving away his fear that Jalisa might want exactly that.
She gave no response other than shaking his hands off and resuming her work. Soon his pants and blue silk boxers were pooled around his ankles. She took his soft cock in her hand and brought it up to her lips. Softly, her tongue worked to coax him into her mouth. The heavy taste of a man saturated her tongue.
“Really...I would - oh, fuck - I would be okay with you stopping right now and telling me you needed some more time.” Erik hissed in pleasure as his body started to harden in response to Jalisa’s ministrations. In between her own legs, her clit throbbed.
Her Russian Millionaire (BWWM Romance Book 1) Page 8
