Sinful Palace: Ruthless Rulers Book 2

by Hart, Stella

  I smiled weakly and nodded. “That’d be great. Thanks.”

  “Sure. I’m Myla, by the way.”

  “I’m Willow.”

  When my new companion had filled her plate with crab puffs and salad, she led me out of the cafeteria and over to the far side of the seventeenth floor. Instead of extending all the way to the main wall on that side, it ended several yards before it with a carved stone balcony overlooking the floor below.

  “That’s one of the club’s party rooms,” Myla explained, motioning downward. “We’re high enough that the sound doesn’t really travel up here, but we can see everything. I don’t know why, but I find it kind of relaxing to sit here and watch.”

  Butterflies filled my stomach as I glanced over the gilded balustrade. The floor beneath us was filled with writhing bodies and dim red lights. It reminded me of the party room at the Order Hall, only it was darker and absolutely everyone was stark naked, engaging in all sorts of sexual acts.

  Myla was right. Even though it was directly below us, the sounds of music and pleasure barely reached the balcony at all. It was surreal.

  “See what I mean?” Myla said, turning to me.

  “Yeah. It’s like we’re watching an old silent film.”

  “A silent porno, you mean.”

  I smiled. “Yeah.”

  She leaned over the edge again, raising her brows. “It’s so ugly but so beautiful at the same time, isn’t it? All those bodies. All that sweat and hair and skin.”

  I nodded. “It sort of reminds me of one of those Renaissance paintings with all the naked people sprawled everywhere.”

  She laughed. “Me too,” she said. “Anyway, let’s eat. Unless you’d rather be alone?”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s fine. Please stay.”

  We sat on a long velvet lounge a few feet from the balustrade. As Myla stuck her fork in her salad, my eyes were drawn to the scars on her right arm. I knew it was rude to stare, but I couldn’t help it.

  “It’s okay. You can look if you want,” she said, giving me a side-eyed glance.

  My face flushed hot. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t trying to—”

  She waved her free hand, cutting me off. “It’s fine. These scars are part of the reason I’m here,” she said with a shrug.

  My jaw dropped. Was she saying what I thought she was saying?

  “Does that mean it’s true?” I asked in a low whisper.

  She frowned. “Huh?”

  I leaned closer. “The things people say about this place.”

  Her forehead wrinkled with confusion. Then she laughed. “Oh! I get it. You’ve heard all the torture and trafficking rumors, huh?”

  “Everyone has.”

  She smiled and lifted a brow. “Just because I have an accent doesn’t mean I was trafficked to America by a bunch of hardened criminals. I moved here with my family when I was a teenager.”

  My blush deepened. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Like you said, everyone’s heard the rumors, so I can’t blame you for wondering. But don’t worry. They’re not true at all.”

  “Oh.” I looked away, feeling like a complete idiot.

  “Trust me,” Myla went on. “Chuck Thorne doesn’t have much respect for women, and he’s kind of a sadist when it comes to his sexual preferences, but he’s not evil, and he doesn’t deal with traffickers. Every single girl in this place is here willingly. We’re all treated well, and we make bank.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I made two hundred grand last year before tax.”

  “Wow.”

  Myla shot me a curious look. “Why would you even think those rumors might be true? Isn’t Chuck your future father-in-law?” she asked. Before I could respond, she lifted one palm. “Sorry. I don’t live under a rock. I knew who you were as soon as I saw you earlier.”

  I chose my next words carefully. “Let’s just say I have an interesting relationship with my future in-laws.”

  She raised her brows. “Ah. Got it. I think most women know that struggle.”

  “Yeah.” I flashed her a rueful smile. Then I dipped my brows in a curious expression. “So what did you mean when you said you’re here because of your scars?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” she replied, waving a hand. “Forget I said it. I’m sure you don’t want to listen to my sob story.”

  “No, it’s fine. I could really use a distraction right now, sob story or not.”

  “All right.” She quickly ate a mouthful of food, and then she put her fork down and leaned back. “Would you believe me if I told you I used to be a psychotherapist in New York?”

  My eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Yup. Had a brownstone in Brooklyn and everything.”

  “Oh. Why did you make such a drastic change?”

  She looked down at her plate, drawing her brows into a frown. “Are you sure you want to hear this? I don’t want to wreck your appetite.”

  “You won’t.” Not after what I’ve already seen tonight, I silently added, guilt stabbing at my guts as I pictured the hole in Teddy’s forehead.

  “Okay. Well, like I said, things used to be a lot different for me. I had a good education and a great job, a ton of friends, and an awesome boyfriend. But then it turned out the boyfriend wasn’t so awesome after all.”

  “Uh-huh.” I nodded for her to go on.

  “He was normal for the first year or so. Sweetest guy I’d ever met. Then we moved in together and he started acting totally different.”

  “How so?”

  She looked away. “He was controlling and manipulative. He made me cut off my friends and family, but he did it in a way where he slowly convinced me it was actually my decision. Like it was for the best.” She paused to let out a heavy sigh. “You’d think a therapist would know better, right?” she went on, shaking her head. “If one of my patients ever told me her boyfriend was acting like that, I would’ve told her to run for the hills. Red flags everywhere.”

  “I guess you were too close to the situation to realize what was happening,” I said gently.

  She nodded. “That’s exactly it. Anyway, things got worse. He started hitting me. He also threatened to kill my family if I ever tried to tell anyone what he was doing.”

  My stomach flipped. This story was hitting way too close to home. “That’s awful,” I murmured.

  “Yeah. I finally realized how bad things had gotten, and I decided to leave him. Unfortunately, abusers really don’t like it when you try to leave them.”

  “That’s true.”

  “I thought I was being smart about it. I didn’t tell him I was going, and I didn’t give him any way to find my new address. I just packed my stuff and left one day while he was at work. But then I realized I forgot a few important things, and I had to go back.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’d reconnected with a couple of my friends by then, and I took one of them with me for protection. He was a big, beefy guy, so I thought I’d be safe, as long as we went while my ex was at work.” She looked down and sighed again.

  “That’s when it happened?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yup. My ex wasn’t at work. I don’t know how he guessed we were coming, but he was waiting for us. He hid somewhere upstairs so we didn’t even know he was there. I went and grabbed some of the things I needed from my old bedroom, and my friend loaded it into a box and took it out to the car while I grabbed some stuff from another room. He said he’d only be gone for a minute.”

  “I’m guessing that’s all the time your ex needed.”

  “Uh-huh. He grabbed me from behind, put something around my neck, and started strangling me. It was like a garotte. Cut me right open.”

  “Oh my god.” I shook my head and stared at her, eyes wide. “That’s horrible.”

  “Yeah. It was. I couldn’t scream. All I could do was try to kick back at him and claw at his hands. Somehow I managed to free myself. Then I tried to run, and he grabbed me again and at
tacked me with a knife. He stabbed me twelve times.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “My friend came back and managed to stop him, and now the fucker is in prison,” Myla said. “But the damage was already done by then, obviously.”

  My chest tightened. “I can’t even imagine going through that.”

  She swallowed thickly. “It wasn’t just the attack that got to me. It was everything. By that point, I’d started doing badly at my job because of all the mental effects of the shit he put me through, and I’d lost most of my friends. I also hated everything about the city, even though I used to love it so much. I just didn’t feel safe there anymore. I felt lost.”

  “So you came here?” I furrowed my brows. It seemed like a massive leap, even for a woman who’d gone through something as harrowing and life-altering as what Myla had described to me.

  She shook her head. “Not right away. I decided to quit my job and travel to see if that helped. It did for a while. I met a lot of new people and had a lot of good experiences, but I always knew I had to settle somewhere eventually. Then I came to Wonderland with some new friends, just to visit. One of those friends was a member of the Wonderland Club, and he brought us up here.”

  “And you liked it?”

  “I liked the idea of it, yeah,” she said with a nod. “I know that sounds pretty weird, considering my old job was worlds apart, but it made sense to me at the time. Before I was with that guy, I was confident. Happy with myself. I was never weak. He changed me. But then I saw some of the girls here and I got this idea in my head that I could be happy doing what they do.”

  “How?”

  “I guess it was like… a way to reclaim who I used to be and prove I didn’t have to let men control me. At the same time, though, I never thought they’d be interested in a thirty-seven-year-old woman covered in scars.”

  “So what happened?”

  She smiled. “I was wrong. They were very interested. Apparently they don’t get a lot of dommes applying to work at the club, so a woman like me was in high demand.”

  My brows shot up. “That’s what you do? You’re a dominatrix?”

  Her smile widened, and she fingered the pendant on her choker. “Yes. This M doesn’t stand for Myla. It stands for Mistress,” she said. “I don’t have sex with the men. I just dominate the ones who are into that sort of stuff.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “Anyway, the guys that come to see me love how I look, scars included. They think it makes me seem tough. Like I can survive anything. That makes them think they better damn well listen to what I tell them to do, or else they’re in serious trouble. So in a way, they’ve actually helped me.”

  My brows rose. “Wow. That’s great.”

  “Yeah. It’s really worked for me. I feel good again, I get paid twice my old salary to order guys around, and they all think I’m amazing,” she said. “It doesn’t matter that I have these marks all over me. It just makes me even better in their eyes.”

  I nodded slowly. “So do you think you’ll keep doing this stuff forever?”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t say forever. Just as long as I enjoy it. It’s the same with most of the other girls here. They like what they do, and they make a ton, so as long as they’re happy to do it, they’ll stay.”

  “I had no idea you were all so satisfied,” I said, looking toward the edge of the balcony again. “I guess I’ve always had a skewed idea about places like this, like it’s all dark and seedy with violent guys and pimps. Nothing like what you’re describing.”

  Myla gave me a tight smile. “Trust me, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Some of the girls have bad experiences and get messed up. Some are hooked on drugs, too. But overall, it’s a good place. Like I said, we get treated well here. Plus we get free food, drinks, and premium healthcare.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “It is.” She nodded and grinned. “God, I can’t believe I’m sitting here telling my life story to the first daughter.”

  I groaned. “Please don’t call me that.”

  She laughed. “Oh, come on. You’re the closest thing America has to a princess! You should embrace it. Fuck all this scandal bullshit going around.”

  I stiffened at her usage of Logan’s nickname for me. Princess.

  “Sorry, did I say something wrong?” she asked.

  I shook my head and forced a smile. “No. I’m just a little shaken up from earlier, that’s all.”

  She pressed a palm into her forehead. “Oh my god. I’m so rude, blabbing on about my past trauma when you just escaped a freaking house fire!”

  I shook my head again. “No, it’s fine. It’s actually been really nice to talk to someone apart from Logan. I don’t get a lot of opportunities to do that these days.”

  She nodded slowly. “I guess it gets pretty lonely in your corner of the world.”

  I was about to respond when a deep, masculine voice spoke up from behind us. “I’ve been looking for you, princess.”

  I whipped my head around to see Logan standing there, looking down at us with a tight smile on his handsome face. He was holding a large takeout coffee cup in one hand.

  Myla jumped up. “Sorry, Mr. Thorne. I didn’t mean to steal your girl. We’ve just been chatting while we have a snack.”

  Don’t worry, I thought bitterly. He already knows. He could’ve been listening to every word if he wanted to, and he probably did.

  Logan turned his gaze to her. “You can call me Logan,” he said, stretching his free hand out to shake hers. “Sorry to cut your conversation short, but our new room is ready. I think Willow could use some rest after the long night she’s had.”

  Myla nodded. “I heard about the fire at your house. I’m so sorry,” she said. “I have to see a client in fifteen minutes anyway, so I better head off. Nice to meet you, Willow. You too, Logan.”

  We both smiled as she headed off. When she turned the corner, Logan’s face instantly darkened. “I thought I told you not to talk to anyone.”

  “You told me to try not to,” I said, clasping my hands in front of me. “Myla went out of her way to be friendly. It would’ve been rude to ignore her or tell her to leave me alone, and you don’t want your fiancée to start getting a reputation for rudeness, do you? Not when you insist on us having this so-called perfect relationship on the outside.”

  He kept his lips pressed into a thin line as I spoke. “That’s fair,” he replied in a grudging tone. “But I was listening to you via the collar, and your conversation bordered on inappropriate. It would be nice if you could go five minutes without accusing someone in my family of sex trafficking.”

  “We were just discussing the rumors, that’s all,” I mumbled, cheeks flushing hot.

  “Right.” He held out the coffee cup. “This is for you.”

  Surprised at the sudden change of topic, I furrowed my brows. “I thought you said you wanted me to get some rest.”

  “It’s not coffee. It’s hot chocolate from the Belgian café on the ground floor. The warm milk should help you sleep.”

  “Oh.” I accepted the cup and took a sip. It was delicious. “Thanks.”

  “Let’s go,” he said curtly, taking my left arm.

  He led me back to the elevator. This time, he pressed the button for the top floor before entering a long code into the small keypad on the console.

  “Is your family coming?” I asked between sips of the hot chocolate.

  Logan nodded. “Yes. That’s one of the things I was sorting out,” he said. “Chloe needs certain medical equipment in her new suite. It’s all been arranged now.”

  “You work fast.”

  He tapped a foot on the carpeted floor as the elevator hummed upward. “No. The people that work for my family work fast. We pay them a lot to ensure that.”

  “Must be nice to have hundreds of people at your beck and call, willing to do absolutely anything at any time,” I muttered.

  “Don’t act like you grew up in poverty, Wi
llow,” Logan said with a slight shake of his head. “Your family is wealthy.”

  “I’m not denying that,” I said, frowning. “I’m just saying there’s a difference between being wealthy like my family and being wealthy like yours. We’re in the sky, but you’re in the stratosphere.”

  I thought he would scold me again for pointing out the truth, but he chuckled instead and held out a hand to motion me forward as the elevator doors opened. “After you.”

  Two smiling maids were waiting for us in the floor’s main hall. It had high ceilings with white plaster moldings, wainscoting on the walls, marble flooring and soft lights in golden wall sconces. Pure luxury, just like the rest of the place.

  One of the maids stepped forward. “Welcome. We hope you find your suite to your liking, even though we didn’t have much time to prepare.”

  “I’m sure you did your best for me and my beautiful fiancée,” Logan said, putting one hand on the small of my back. The maid who hadn’t spoken practically swooned at the protective gesture.

  Oh, how I wished I could roll my eyes…

  I gritted my teeth instead, thinking of my little brother and all the near misses he didn’t even know he’d had over the last couple of months, all because of me. No more fuck-ups.

  The maids led us down the hall and stopped at a set of double doors. “Here we are, sir,” the swoony one said, smiling sycophantically at Logan.

  “Thanks. You can go now.”

  Logan ushered me forward, and I stepped into my new room with wide eyes. It was laid out in a similar style to my room at Thorne House, only the general color scheme was darker with shades of burgundy, black and silver instead of white and gold.

  “This is nice,” I said, stretching my arms out as a yawn escaped my mouth. “Sir,” I quickly added, bowing my head in a deferential manner. Now that we had total privacy again, I figured I better stop running my mouth and refusing to use the title Logan had bestowed upon himself.

  “Take a quick shower,” he said. “There’s a robe and pajamas in the bathroom for you, next to all the towels. Tomorrow, I’ll have someone bring you a new wardrobe.”