“Your eyes are amazingly blue and beautiful,” George said, staring at me while we ate our scrambled eggs.
“Thank you.”
“And your hair, it’s like the perfect shade of brown, and so soft,” he said as he reached up and ran his fingers through my hair.
I knew exactly where he was trying to lead things, and I needed to put a stop to it if I wanted to get to work on time. My day job, as a waitress, was essential to meeting high-quality guys, and I couldn’t lose it. The last two real boyfriends in my life I had met while waitressing. I needed to be on time to that job.
“Thanks so much for last night George. You were such a gentleman. Not too many guys are out there like you. I truly appreciate your sweet and genuine caring about my wellbeing.”
“Oh, you’re welcome,” he said, pulling his hand away from my hair. “I always make sure to treat women with the utmost respect.”
It was a classic move; tell a guy he was a gentleman, and he suddenly felt like a giant ass if he started to act less than gentlemanly. I had used it plenty of times. The only problem with my move was that it only worked on men that were generally well behaved. If I misjudged a man and he wasn’t respectable, then things sometimes got a little more difficult.
“Can I call you?” I said with a sweet smile.
“Oh, of course.” He grabbed a pen and started to write down his number. “You call me anytime. I’d love to take you out on a real date.”
“Thank you so much, George. I’ve got to run to work now. I’ll text you,” I moved in to kiss his cheek, but he turned and his lips touched mine.
I gave him a long, hard kiss in the hope that it paid off down the road, and maybe I could make something work with George. His place was plenty big enough to share, and it sounded like he worked a lot. It had been a long time since I had a regular boyfriend, but George seemed like a sweet guy and I definitely was considering him as a possibility.
As I left his apartment, I looked back and wrote down the number, just in case I ever needed to drop by or something. It was December in New York, and there was no way I was ever sleeping in a shelter. George seemed like the kind of guy that would let Isabella and I crash on his couch if we were in desperate need of a place. The nice guys were the best ones to keep around.
“Isabella, answer your damn phone,” I said to her voicemail as I walked toward the subway.
She had left with some jerk from the club, and I was worried sick about her. Isabella never made wise choices in the men she hung around with. Instead of looking at their financials and their ability to be sweet, she looked at their abs. I tried to explain to her that the hot guys were the ones she should stay away from, but she never listened.
Two minutes later, I got a text from her:
“Can’t talk. I’m with the sexy rocker. See you later at Glance; remember we are doing the peep show together tonight.”
“OK,” I replied.
Glance GoGo Club was our fun place. We both worked real jobs during the day and at Glance in the evenings. It was fun, and we got to party and get paid for it. Glance wasn’t a strip club, and both of us were highly against becoming strippers. Glance was a dancing club, and we got paid to dance on stage or in fun scenes. It wasn’t Broadway, but it was something better than my boring waitressing job.
I finished buttoning up my plain white top and tucked it into my tight black skirt. I worked the morning shift at Henderson’s on the Green. It was a restaurant in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton and located on the south edge of Central Park. The breakfast crowd was my favorite, they tipped the most and there were often families. Rich families were much more generous than rich men alone. It seemed counter-intuitive, but I paid special attention to the wives and the children and always ignored the men. The wives appreciated that and tipped me well for it.
“You’re late Abigail,” my boss said as he wrote a note in his little notebook.
“Yes, I’m sorry Mr. Walden; I will stay late to make it up,” I said with a smile.
“OK. Thank you. Let’s try to be on time tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Walden was actually a really decent man. He had a wife and twin girls and worked his ass off at the restaurant. He was firm but fair, and I wanted to keep my job. Mr. Walden was the best boss I had ever had. He never tried anything with his waitresses and was extremely understanding with our outside lives. But his one sticking point was, he wanted us there on time. He couldn’t make the guests happy if he were understaffed, so most girls were eventually fired because they didn’t show up on time enough. I didn’t want to be one of those girls.
“Table two is the Gioacchino family. Be especially attentive to them,” Mr. Walden said.
“Who is he?”
“He’s bad news. Not quite the mob level, but bad news. Just be prompt and smile,” he said, returning to his office.
Mr. Gioacchino was handsome. He was older, maybe early fifties, but he dressed extremely hip. He had tattoos on his arms, with a short buttoned up shirt and loafers. His graying hair was styled long on top and shorter on the sides, and he had a perfectly manicured beard. I had never been one of those girls that chased after older men, but I would have chased after him for sure. Except he was married, and I didn’t go after married men.
“Good morning, can I get you some coffee?” I said, looking right at Mrs. Gioacchino.
I smiled and kept eye contact with her. She was beautiful, at least, ten years younger than her husband. Mrs. Gioacchino was dressed much more conservatively in a suit and had her blonde hair pulled up in a bun.
“I’ll take a black coffee,” Mr. Gioacchino said.
I briefly turned to him and smiled, but then quickly turned back to his wife. Even that quick glance into his eyes had sent an enticing shock through my body. He was even more handsome up close.
“I’m not really sure what I want,” his wife remarked.
“I’d suggest the cappuccino and a grapefruit, you look like you have business to do today, and they will give you energy without the drop later in the morning.”
I smiled, and maintaining my posture, turned toward Mrs. Gioacchino. She was my primary client, and I needed to make her happy. No flirting with her husband. No side glances at him. Only continued eye contact and helpfulness to her.
“Oh, yes darling. Thank you, that sounds delicious.”
“And anything else for you sir,” I said as I looked at my notepad and tried to avoid eye contact.
“I’d like the house special, thank you.”
“That girl is absolutely delicious, Aldo,” I heard Mrs. Gioacchino say as I walked away.
I couldn’t help smiling at her words. It wasn’t very often that other women were kind to me. Even if it was in a weird, flirting sort of way. It was nice to hear kindness from another woman. Most of the women I was around were intimidated by me. They thought I was going to steal their man or that I was some sort of bitch that wouldn’t be nice to them. I was always nice to the women I served at my tables, having learned that they were almost always the real ones in charge.
I wrote his order down on the move and then hurried to the back to give it to the cook. My co-workers stood there and stared at me as I returned to the back room. The look on their faces was ominous.
“You know who that is right?” Rob asked me.
“Yeah, Mr. Gioacchino.”
“Wow, was he scary? Do you think he has a gun with him?”
“What are you talking about Rob?”
“He was charged with eight murders back in 2005. Eight, not seven, not six … eight murders. He did them, but no one could prove it. Now he’s apparently gone legit, but no way I’d ever want to be face to face with the man.”
My blood went cold at the idea I had just served a murderer. He didn’t look like a murderer, but then again, I didn’t really know what one looked like. He certainly looked like a tough guy, and I would bet with him on any fight. Despite his
age, he looked to be in excellent shape. But why would a murderer be eating at a fancy restaurant like ours?
“He seems like a normal family man to me,” I said, trying to ignore Rob.
“Yeah, normal like … hey, let me chop your head off …”
I finished serving the Gioacchinos and made a special point to compliment the wife; I wasn’t above flirting with a woman if it would get me a bigger tip. They gave me a hundred dollar tip for their breakfast and seemed rather nice. Except for the whole past murdering thing, Mr. Gioacchino seemed like a good guy.
Chapter 2
THEO
“Get up!” I screamed at the man as he bled on the ground.
“She’s a rotten whore,” the man yelled up at me.
I grabbed him by his arm and yanked him into a standing position. Did he really think it was alright to talk about one of my girls that way? Did he really think I was going to be alright with it?
“You apologize to her right now,” I said. “Kimberly, come over here so this man can apologize to you.”
I watched Kimberly as she tried to stand up; her face was battered and bloodied. She looked about to fall over at almost any moment, but she was a good girl and struggled over to me.
“I swear to God, you better apologize to her or you’re going to feel pain like you have never felt before.”
I pressed my hand around his neck and held it tightly as I waited for him to come to his senses and decide he wanted to apologize to Kimberly. If my punches had not swayed him, though, I wasn’t certain that the threat of strangling him would be much better. But sometimes the lack of oxygen was just the right fear for a man, and he would suddenly become remorseful for what he had done.
Violence wasn’t something I enjoyed. In fact, I spent most of my life avoiding any sort of violence altogether. I was a businessman, though, and if word got out that I was alright with men roughing up my girls, then I wouldn’t be known as the owner of a high-class VIP escort service any longer. Instead, people would think of me as a lowly pimp, and I couldn’t have that.
I had worked far too hard and too long for the reputation that I had and wasn’t about to piss it away on some jerk who didn’t get what he wanted from a girl. My girls were not required to sleep with the men that hired them. I made that perfectly clear to the men who paid for their services. They were not paying thousands of dollars for a high prices whore, they were paying for a high-class woman to be by their side for the evening.
Certainly, many of the men who hired my girls ended up getting lucky at the end of the night. But that wasn’t any different than any other girl who went out on a date with a guy. If he were kind to her, polite and looked out for her best interest, the women would often reward their man. But if a guy was a jerk, or expected to get laid at the end of the night, well that just didn’t work out very well for them.
Kimberly leaned up against the wall, but she refused to fall back on the ground. She was a tough girl; all my girls were tough. They had been beaten up before, they had seen some horrible things in their life. There was no way Kimberly was going to let a guy like Rocco Stevens get the best of her.
Many of the girls that came to work for me had worked as prostitutes before, some of them hadn’t. But all the girls that I hired had a strength that I found appealing, and I knew the men that I worked with did too. Strong, confident women were sexy, and that’s what guys paid thousands of dollars for. They didn’t want the hassle of trying to find a woman for one evening with their boss, and they didn’t want to worry about if she was going to cause a scene at a party they needed to go to for work; the guys that hired escorts were looking for simplicity. These men wanted smart, no-nonsense women that could hold a decent conversation and make them look good while out with their friends or co-workers.
Of course, all the women I hired were absolutely beautiful, each of them in their own way. Men had specific tastes, and I catered to all of those tastes. I had tall girls and short girls. I had blondes, redheads and brunettes; I even had a few girls that liked to color their hair in wild random colors. I had girls with big breasts and small ones, big asses, and tiny asses; I had a girl for any man and prided myself on the variety of women I had working for me.
I loved women. I admired them and worked with them to help them have the best life possible. When accidents like what happened to Kimberly occurred though, I always felt guilty. It was my job to keep them safe, and I had not done my job correctly if one of my girls ended up hurt.
Rocco just stared at me without the slightest bit of emotion; I knew I was going to have to strangle him. I really didn’t like hurting people, but there was no other choice. He had left me with no other choice at all.
My hand tightened around his neck and I looked at him as he stayed unusually calm. Something was wrong; why wasn’t he afraid of me? I squeezed harder. Normally, it was about this point when a man gave in and would apologize. Oh, it hadn’t happened very often that I had to hurt someone, but when I did, I always got the apology my girl deserved. This guy was different, though, he didn’t seem afraid of me at all. In fact, he seemed pretty cocky for a man who was being strangled.
His eyes bulged out of his head as he continued to stand still and not fight me at all. So I squeezed even harder. My hand pressed against his windpipe and I knew I was only moments away from taking his life.
“Stop Theo, you’re going to kill him,” Kimberly said as she grabbed onto my arm.
“Maybe he deserves to die for what he did to you?”
“He’s Aldo’s guy. Stop.”
I looked at Kimberly and loosened my grip on Rocco. Aldo and I had worked together for many years; I didn’t want to ruin that relationship. Aldo was the one who had gotten me into the business. He was a tough motherfucker though, and I knew he would have done the same thing to any guy who hurt one of his girls, and he knew better than to let any of his guys hurt my women.
“He wouldn’t allow this behavior either,” I said, still unwilling to totally release Rocco from my grip.
“It’s alright Theo. He knows better now.”
Rocco looked at Kimberly and then me. He nodded his head in affirmation that he did indeed know better now. I pushed him to the ground and gave him one swift kick to the gut.
“No more of my girls ever Rocco. You’re done. And don’t think because you work with Aldo that you’re safe. He’s just as much against hurting women as I am. When he hears about this, you’ll be lucky if he lets you live.”
I grabbed Kimberly and let her lean on me as we left the hotel room. She was hurt real bad, and I needed to switch my attention to her. It looked like she needed to get to a hospital right away, but I knew she wouldn’t go.
It didn’t often happen that one of my girls was hurt so bad that I was willing to take them to a hospital, but in this instance, I would have taken Kimberly. I was a businessman, and although I hated to admit it, Kimberly was a commodity that helped make me money. I certainly wasn’t going to let her suffer and not take care of her. If she felt good, then she was helping me make money. The quicker she felt better, the better for business.
“Do you need a doctor?” I asked as we made our way out the back of the hotel to the hired SUV I had waiting.
“Yes,” she said as her knees buckled and I grabbed her.
Kimberly was tough, and I knew she wouldn’t agree to see a doctor if she wasn’t genuinely hurting.
“Hospital or at my house?” I asked.
“Your house, I’ve got a warrant for stealing, remember,” she said in a weak voice.
“I’ll have the doctor meet us there; you’re safe now. I’m going to take care of you,” I said as her body went limp and she passed out.
I felt her weight in my arms, and the color drained out of her body. She was exhausted. She needed help and I was going to be the one to assist her. Never in a million years would I have guessed that I would end up as a father figure to dozens of women. But that’s exactly w
hat I was; many of these women didn’t have a single person who cared what happened to them. It was my job to be that person.
It was a fine line that I walked between boss, friend and lover sometimes, but it was my life and I did the best I could. Many people would think that a guy like me didn’t really like women at all. How could I help men buy time with them and still value a woman? But the truth was, I cared deeply about the women who worked for me. I only wanted success for them, and whenever any one of them decided to get out of the business, I was happy for them.
I had watched girls go off to college, get jobs on Broadway, and even become television newscasters. I was happy for every single one of them. I treated my girls with respect and expected all the men who spent time with them to do the same.
“Mario, call Jack. Tell him we need a doctor at the house right away.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mario was the best driver I’d had in many years. He was reliable and kept to himself. Mario always did exactly as I said and never questioned me. His ability to keep things confidential had moved him up from just driving the girls to their dates to now driving me. I even had him work as my private security guard when situations got a little out of control.
It was hard to find good help, and Mario was definitely that. I planned to keep him around as long as he wanted to work with me.
“It’s alright Kim, just rest. I’ll take care of you,” I said as I laid her in my lap and we sped off to my penthouse.
I hated to bring the girls back to my place but couldn’t let the other women see Kimberly and what had happened to her. If they understood the level of danger that was involved in the escort business, many of them would leave. The whole reason I had convinced them to work for me was that being an escort was safe. ‘Being an escort isn’t like being a prostitute,’ I told them. ‘Escorts are just girlfriends who don’t cause emotional chaos.’
The Deal Page 23
