AVERY (The Corbin Brothers Book 2)

by Lexie Ray

  “I’m going to try,” I said. “I love my baby too much not to.”

  “Shimmy. Let him go.”

  I turned to see Ben. He was dressed so nicely, a dark suit tailored perfectly to his tall frame. He was a man through and through.

  “Ben,” I said, my voice choking in my throat. “Look at our son, Ben.”

  “The best thing is to let him go,” Ben said, holding his arms out. “You know that we can give him everything he needs and then some.”

  “I will be back for him,” I vowed, tears prickling my eyes as I handed Trevor over to his father. The baby set up an immediate wail, holding his chubby little arms out to me.

  It was all I could do not to wail back and snatch him from Ben’s arms, but I restrained myself, wrapping my arms around my own torso and gritting my teeth. This was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? Why did it feel so wrong?

  “I want to make this easy on everyone, Shimmy,” Ben said. “Why don’t you write Trevor letters? We’ll send you pictures of him back, let you know how he’s doing.”

  “I want you to tell him about me,” I said, not taking my eyes off my baby. “I want him growing up to know his mother.”

  “He will,” Ben vowed. “This is what’s best for him. Maybe, once you get it together, we can talk about custody arrangements. But don’t come back until you have a good job, a safe place to live, and money to fall back on. I won’t let you try to take care of our son unless you have the resources to do it. You know I’m right.”

  I knew, but I couldn’t form the words to confirm it. I was losing too much. I couldn’t do this. I had to do this.

  “It’s time for you to go,” Mrs. Paxton said, her voice syrupy sweet.

  “I will be back for him,” I said again.

  “You might try,” Mr. Paxton reasoned. “But you probably won’t.”

  “Goodbye, Shimmy,” Ben said, looking me in my eyes. “And good luck.”

  Those eyes weren’t the eyes of the boy I’d fallen in love with. They were the eyes of a man I didn’t know. And he was holding my baby.

  “Let me hold my treasure one more time,” I begged, opening my arms, but Ben turned away.

  “Enough,” Mrs. Paxton said. “Miles, escort her out.”

  My sobs were silent until I was outside, then I wailed to the sky, not caring who saw as long as it wasn’t my baby. I’d never felt so alone in my life. There was a hole in my heart.

  I grieved long enough to lose the apartment, and then I was on the streets. I swallowed my pride one day and went inside a soup kitchen when my hunger had made me dizzy and light-headed. The food sustained me and gave me the strength I needed to clean myself up and find a job.

  I pounded the pavement, going in to each and every business along the street I chanced upon. Many of them didn’t have openings or didn’t think I had the right kind of skills to succeed. Several others simply weren’t open. I pressed my face against the glass of one building, trying to see inside. It looked like it was a restaurant or club of some kind, chairs stacked on top of tables. That seemed like a place I could get a good start at. Tips were how you earned enough money to get by on.

  I stepped back, intent on finding other restaurants to apply at, but the door opened.

  “Can I help you, sweet pea?”

  I walked closer and saw a large black woman holding open the door. She was in a dressing gown, her makeup half done.

  “I’m sorry for disturbing you,” I said. “Is this a restaurant?”

  “Restaurant and nightclub,” the woman said. “And it’s mine. You can call me Mama, and this is Mama’s nightclub.”

  It was bigger than it looked from the window and nicer, too, paintings of bands performing decorating the wall. There was a dance floor in the middle that I could visualize full.

  “This place is amazing,” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to be hiring, would you?”

  Mama beamed. “It just so happens that I am,” she said. “This is a special place, you know.”

  “Is it?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

  “Before we go any further, what’s your name?”

  “It’s Shonda,” I said. “But everyone calls me Shimmy.”

  “Then Shimmy you’ll be,” Mama said. “This is our workplace and our home, Shimmy. The hours you work in the nightclub are your room and board for living here as well.”

  “Really?” I asked. “That’s just what I need. I—I just got kicked out of my apartment for missing rent. I really need a place to live and a way to start saving money.”

  Mama’s grin was so wide I thought it’d tear her face.

  “Honey, you’re the reason I opened this place,” she said. “I have a business to run, but I still like to help people. This was just meant to be. We’ll be opening in a couple hours, but I’ll see about getting you in a uniform and shadowing one of my girls for the night. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds great, Mama,” I said, smiling. “I won’t let you down.”

  Life at Mama’s nightclub started out just fine. I was clear from the get go on what needed to happen for me to make money—real money, not just the tips we got for waiting the tables—after I saw girl after girl lead customers to a curtained stairwell behind the bar. I was ready and willing to sell my sex in order to earn money. I’d do whatever it took to make a life for my son and me.

  It also made sense to me that Mama would keep all of our money in her safe. I trusted her from the very beginning. I could see something in her that reminded me of myself. The same resignation, maybe. The same drive to keep going forward no matter what.

  I got myself a P.O. box and wrote my first letter to Trevor. I knew that the Paxton’s would read it, and Ben would, too, probably. But I poured my heart into it, imagining that I was writing it for my son and my son alone.

  “My treasure,” it read. “Your mommy loves you and she misses you every day. Grandma is looking down on you from heaven, so you’ll always have a guardian angel, baby.

  “Life has it so that right now we’re not together, Trevor, but we will be soon. I’m making lots of money for us and I’m saving every dime. When I get a good job, one that’ll let me see you and spend time with you, I’ll come and get you. We’ll be together again, I promise.

  “I hope that you are growing big and strong and learning everything that you possibly can. I love you from the bottom of my heart, and I’ll see you soon.

  “Love, Mommy.”

  The envelope that returned to my P.O. box was small, but I treasured what was inside. It was a single photo of Trevor, looking directly at the camera and absolutely darling. He was more me than he was Ben, my same big eyes and full lips, and pretty curls instead of kinks. He was my baby through and through, and I resolved to make as much money as I possibly could while working at Mama’s nightclub.

  It soon became clear to me that Mama and I were very, very different.

  I started living and working in the nightclub not too long after another girl named Jazz. Jazz was a beautiful girl, and I heard rumors that she was earning top dollar—more, even, than the more experienced girls.

  I heard lots of shit and had trouble figuring out what was true and what simply wasn’t. Jazz was a virgin when she first started working, I heard, or that she was a mob don’s favorite lay. She was angling to take over the nightclub from Mama and Mama was trying to break her with clients. She was a prisoner here.

  The truest thing became more and more evident as time went on: Jazz didn’t want to be here. She was a ghost, an empty shell, never smiling while we worked, and rarely leaving the room she shared with Cocoa when we weren’t working.

  I was young and new to the game, but I watched Cocoa watch Jazz and wondered.

  “I don’t get it,” I told Cocoa one day when we happened to be washing our faces in adjacent sinks.

  “Get what?” Cocoa’s voice was muffled behind her washcloth.

  “If Jazz is so unhappy, why doesn’t she just leave?” I ask
ed, splashing water on my face.

  Cocoa’s eyes met mine in the mirror, holding them for a few long moments until she dropped the gaze.

  “She doesn’t have anywhere to go,” she said simply, and left.

  That chilled me to the bone. It was a good thing, then, that I was taking to this life. Because I didn’t have anywhere to go, either. All I had was a goal to work toward, a life that I wanted for myself and Trevor.

  Then, something really terrible happened.

  One night, while we were working the nightclub floor, I saw Jazz sneak upstairs with a customer without going through Mama. That, I understood, was a big no-no. Mama did all the negotiations for that side of the business. You didn’t take a customer upstairs without the go-ahead from Mama.

  Cocoa saw, too, and was puzzled, following at a distance. I got busy with my own customers, not thinking anything else of it until Cocoa came rocketing down the stairs. She sprinted to Mama and told her something. Mama was a big woman, but I didn’t know she was a fast woman, too. Mama, her face dark and terrifying, blew across the nightclub floor, Cocoa and a bouncer and another customer in her wake. Most of the customers either didn’t notice or didn’t care, but every single one of Mama’s girls had taken note of that madness.

  After about fifteen minutes, Mama, Cocoa, and the bouncer came back down, Cocoa shaking visibly even though she was clear across the nightclub.

  Seeing Cocoa so upset, so unable to control her emotions, shook all of us up. I waited for Jazz to reappear, to try to put the pieces of the puzzle together, but she never did.

  After the last customer left and Mama locked the front door, Cocoa snagged me and another girl, Daisy.

  “I need your help with something,” Cocoa said, “but I also need your discretion.”

  “I can keep a secret,” Daisy said, blinking her wide, innocent eyes.

  “Shimmy?”

  “You can count on me,” I said.

  We followed Cocoa up the stairs and to one of the rooms. When she opened the door and flicked on the lights, turning them up to their full brightness, I first thought what we were seeing was a joke. Someone had splattered red paint or something everywhere, and now it was our bitch job to clean it up.

  “Jazz?” Cocoa called, looking around the room. “Jazz?” She poked her head in the bathroom, but didn’t seem to like what she didn’t find.

  “We gotta get this room cleaned up,” Cocoa said. “Please get started. I’ll be right back.”

  We heard Cocoa’s calls echo down the hallway, but I figured if Jazz had trashed this room so thoroughly, she was long gone. Maybe she’d exacted her revenge on Mama forcing her into trysts with customers by defacing this room.

  Daisy gave a sharp gasp and I turned to her, questioning.

  “It’s blood,” she said, her face white.

  “No way,” I scoffed, but I looked again. There was what looked like a belt curled onto that wet, red bed, the edges as red as the liquid coating the wall and carpet.

  Cocoa came in, breathless and looking sick.

  “It’s blood,” Daisy said, staring at her.

  “Yes,” Cocoa confirmed grimly.

  “It’s Jazz’s blood?” I asked.

  Cocoa only nodded.

  “Where’s Jazz?”

  Cocoa shook her head. “I can’t find her,” she said. “She was hurt bad. I think she left.”

  “But what happened?” Daisy whispered.

  Cocoa shook her head again. “We need to clean this up.”

  Perhaps Cocoa was only trying to spare us the gory details, but it was only too easy to let my imagination run away with all the gruesome possibilities of what exactly had taken place. We even found blood spatter on the ceiling, Daisy having to run downstairs to fetch a ladder so we could mop it up.

  “Cocoa …” I began, but my voice trailed off. I summoned my courage and tried again. “I need to know what happened. My brain was just too good at concocting nightmarish scenarios.

  “All you need to know is to always go through Mama when you want to take a customer upstairs,” Cocoa said sternly. “That’s it, Shimmy. Jazz didn’t and she got hurt by a guy Mama had banned from the nightclub. Listen to Mama, and everything will be okay.”

  But nothing was okay after that. I couldn’t help but feel that, in one way or another, Mama had been responsible for Jazz sneaking that guy upstairs. Mama had been pimping Jazz hard since the time I’d arrived. Maybe Jazz was just looking for a way out.

  I tried to keep my head down and my nose to the grindstone. I was here to earn money, to get my family back together. I didn’t need anything distracting me from that goal.

  Letters from the Paxton’s—meaning news about my baby—were getting fewer and fewer. My letters to my son were becoming so pointed that I hated writing them.

  “My treasure,” one such correspondence read. “Mommy misses you very, very much. Please tell daddy or your grandparents to send me a picture of you, or a couple of sentences telling me that you’re doing okay.”

  The last picture that I’d received was on Trevor’s third birthday, which had been more than a year ago. The photo was creased on the corners because I couldn’t stop touching it and looking at it. My little man. He was wearing a tiny suit that had to have been specially tailored to fit him, as well as a matching bow tie. He was grinning cheekily at the camera and seemed to be a handful. It made me wonder who was raising him and how. I craved to hold my baby, yearned for even a couple of words of news about him.

  The news—or lack thereof—about my baby, coupled with Jazz’s disappearance, made me extremely jumpy. Was I safe at the nightclub? Was I really doing the right thing? Maybe I should ask for my money and leave, telling the Paxton’s to go to hell and let me have my treasure.

  But Mama was acting stranger, more on edge. Cocoa seemed distinctly uncomfortable, and that put the rest of us on alert. I got distinctly fearful whenever I had to ask Mama for money, and she became obviously suspicious of each and every transaction.

  Things got so tense that I started taking comfort in my customers, enjoying the relative peace in the bedrooms better than the constant alertness on the nightclub floor.

  I took as many customers as I could each night, earning tips upon tips. I was serious about my promise. I was going to get my son back even if it had been more than a year since I’d heard any word about him.

  What did it matter that the money I was making came from selling my body? I could make men feel good, and they made me feel good, too, dragging the tips of their tongues from my collar bone to my ear, sampling the taste of my throat and lips with kisses, probing my mouth deeply, each kiss leaving me more and more breathless, pulling my hair until I screamed from the sweet edge the pain gave my pleasure, tweaking my nipples until they were utterly tender.

  Who cared if I was taking pleasure in this? It was all going to be for my son, anyways. Couldn’t I have a little fun in earning the money that would bring us together again?

  My clients blurred into one long night, me riding out over all my insecurities, all of my fears, all of my desperation. I just wanted to feel good for a while, and this was the perfect way to do that at the time.

  When Cocoa left the nightclub, leaving behind bullet holes and a Mama none of us knew anymore, I took on even more clients. I was upstairs in the bedrooms more often than I was waiting tables, and I didn’t care. Anything to stay away from the drama of the nightclub and the horror it was becoming.

  I sucked cock with gusto, moaned luxuriantly as customers paid to eat me out, rubbed scented oil into well-muscled backs, performed provocative strip teases for clients who remained fully clothed throughout the entire encounter. There was nothing that was too weird for me. It was all a big distraction from bigger problems—namely, Mama’s downward spiral and the growing idea that I wasn’t going to be able to earn enough money to get Trevor back before everything I had up in the air hit the ground.

  It was the beginning of the end when Blue left. It was com
pletely possible that it was the beginning of the end all the way back to the incident with Jazz. Either way, Mama stayed drunk and all of us girls stayed away. There were more than a few who’d started stashing their tips away, not trusting Mama to keep the funds safe in her nearly constant drunken stupor. I was too scared, not wanting her to be suspicious of me. Now was not the time to be on Mama’s bad side.

  And so when the NYPD busted down the front doors of Mama’s nightclub, it was simply what came next. We’d been flying under the radar for far too long, servicing way too many city leaders, and getting out of control. Maybe if Mama hadn’t tried to drown her problems in the bottle … no. It was pointless to think like that.

  The truth of the matter was that all good things had to come to an end—especially if the good things were bad things.

  The worst thing of all was that I left the nightclub without a penny to my name after years of earning thousands. All that work to try to get my baby back for nothing.

  Chapter Four

  “That’s quite a story, Ms. Crosby.”

  I lifted my eyes to the suits sitting across the table from me and lowered them again. I’d been clutching an empty water bottle, squeezing it and straightening it for the duration of my story. It was now a twisted lump of plastic, unrecognizable from its original form.

  “Every word of it is true,” I said. “And I think you guys are from vice, not internal investigations.”

  Bash looked amused. “How do you figure?”

  “You never asked me about the clientele,” I said. Mama had entertained quite a few of New York City’s elite, and I had personally serviced the chief of police on several occasions. I bet internal investigations would love to get a hold of me.

  Bash and Snyder exchanged one of their special glances.

  “Very astute, Ms. Crosby,” Snyder said. “Your story answered a lot of our questions, so that’ll be all from us.”

  They both stood.

  “So, that’s it?” I asked, standing too.

  “From us it is,” Bash said.

  “What happens now?” I asked. “Are you—are you going to take me into custody?”