Amara shrugged. “What it says,” she said.
Courtney looked down at the paper again, wide eyed. “Why is he even here? When did he come back? Why now? And why would he request you?” she whispered the words reverently.
“Do you want to go somewhere?” Amara asked. “Like, outside of here... I still haven’t been to the Louvre.”
Courtney nodded in agreement, catching her drift. “Sure. Let’s go.”
The Louvre was walking distance from the house, but Naveen still insisted that he would drop them off. Courtney told him she’d call him for a pick up, even though he insisted he would stay and walk around outside. Courtney let Amara walk around the crystal pyramid one time before she began to laugh.
“You know we’re going in there, right?” Courtney asked.
“Yeah,” Amara said.
As they walked into the pyramid, Amara turned around and looked outside.
“Why is there a castle around it though?” she asked.
Courtney’s eyes followed her gaze. “It used to be a royal palace until Louis XIV moved everything to Versailles in the 1600s. What? You’d be amazed at the things I have in here,” Courtney said, pointing at her head when Amara gave her a surprised look.
“No kidding.”
They walked around for a long time, stopping every time Amara wanted to look at a painting close up.
“Okay, Mara, spill,” Courtney said finally.
Amara looked over her shoulder to make sure Naveen wasn’t around. “Philip called me the other day to tell me I had a date with someone. He said something about only two people being able to get me out of my predicament and Samuel being one of them. I got dressed and met him at some fancy restaurant—”
“La Tour d’ Argent,” Courtney said.
“Yeah,” Amara said. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised that Courtney would even know that. It was obvious she and Samuel had been serious at some point.
“And?”
“And he wants you to get out of Méchant. He wants to know what hold Philip has over you that won’t let you leave.”
Courtney shivered and began to rub her arms, even though the temperature hadn’t changed inside the museum. “What makes him think Philip has some hold over me?”
Amara shrugged. “I guess because you’ve been here all this time and wouldn’t leave when he asked you to? I mean, it’s clear the guy isn’t lacking the means to support you.”
“I like having my own means, thank you very much. The last time I let somebody support me in a relationship, I ended up in a whorehouse. Not by choice. I’m never, ever letting myself go through that again.” Courtney said.
“Makes sense... do you think Samuel would do that to you though?”
“What? Take me to live and work at a whorehouse?”
Amara shrugged in response.
Courtney smiled, looking away from Amara. “Samuel hated the thought of sharing me with anybody. He bought out my contract for six months without even telling me, just so that nobody else could have me. Not even Philip.”
She seemed to be lost in remembrance, a small smile touching her lips as she looked off into the distance.
“And now? I mean, Philip...”
“Oh, no. I already told you, he’s not into me. I do owe him a lot though. If it weren’t for Philip... besides, he’s a dangerous man. I’ve seen him give orders, specific orders, and” Courtney shook her head at the thought. “Let’s just say, I don’t want to mess with him.”
“Order like what?” Amara asked, narrowing her eyes as she stood directly in front of Courtney.
“One time we were at a dinner party for a man I’d gotten him information for. I didn’t know why he’d ordered me to ask this guy all these personal questions, but I did it. I reported back to Philip while we were at the dinner party. He was less than pleased. So we’re in the middle of a conversation with this guy, right?” Amara nodded quickly for her to get to the point. “And Philip says to me, ‘I wonder what the world would do without Harry in it?’ He said it in a joking manner, I even laughed. Harry did not. At all. He looked panicked. I didn’t understand why, but then they found Harry’s body floating down by the river a couple of days later. Drowned.”
Amara’s mouth dropped, as all the breath in her body left her. “Holy shit.”
“It was crazy, Mara. And that wasn’t the last time similar things happened. Harry George drowned. Bettina Adams, strangled. Finnegan Boutros, shot,” Courtney said.
“Are you scared for your life? Does Samuel know any of this?” Amara whispered.
“No, I’m not. I wouldn’t wrong Philip like that anyway. As for Sam, I couldn’t imagine he doesn’t. They were friends for a long time. They still are, even if neither one of them trusts the other.”
“Why’s that?”
Courtney shrugged. “I don’t know. They had a business-related falling out a while back, but beyond that, I have no idea. I just know Sam still pays Philip to keep me from screwing other guys.”
“I assumed you did.”
“I used to. I still see them, but only the ones I tie up and stuff... they’re not allowed to touch me. Boss’s orders.” Courtney laughed ruefully.
“He must really love you,” Amara said.
Courtney looked at her straight in the eyes. “He does. And I love him. I’ll leave this when I’m ready to. I don’t expect him to understand why I’m still here, and if I told him, he would drag me out in a heartbeat. But I need to stick around for a little while longer.”
Amara nodded. “Okay. Let’s go see the Mona Lisa.”
“Oh God, clearly you’ve never been here.”
Amara laughed. “Is it that bad?”
“The worst.”
They walked over to the exhibit and Amara had to stand on the balls of her feet to try to catch a glimpse of the masterpiece encased in massive, thick glass. She blinked at it a couple of times when she finally saw it. Amara shook her head in disbelief. It was much smaller than she’d thought it to be. She didn’t see anything spectacular about it at all. Amara looked at the painting and then at her friend beside her. She realized that sometimes the most ordinary things hold more power than you might think.
MENTAL PREPARATION CAN be as exhausting as physical training, Amara realized, as the day progressed. She checked her email account, remembering that she had forgotten to write back to Francis, the married, forty-something who had been emailing her. Francis was also known as the “panty creeper.” Amara shot him a quick email, telling him that her panties were on their way to him. After the third joke he’d made about them, she’d decided to give in and just send them. What the hell did she care that he wanted used women’s panties? He was obviously paying more for them. Money that Amara would never see, but that counted toward her balance, nonetheless.
She didn’t know why she felt such a surge of disappointment at not seeing any new emails from Nolan. She berated herself for a) caring, and b) caring! Méchant was obviously driving her to the brink of insanity if she felt disappointed over a stranger not communicating with her. Amara pushed her computer away and stood up to change her clothes. She decided that she would go to PB Marketing and catch up on work, especially since not many people would be in the offices.
Amara called her mother on her way to work and almost wished she hadn’t. Her voice sounded hoarse and dry, and she kept repeating that she missed her. Amara sat down in the clear cubicle she’d been assigned when she’d first started at PB, and turned on her computer. She was still thinking about the conversation with her mother, when Philip’s words replayed in Amara’s head. He’d told her there were two people who could get her out of her contract, and one of them was Samuel. Amara wondered who the other was. She’d asked, of course. He’d declined to answer, as expected.
She was in a daze, absently drawing up whimsical dresses. At the sound of footsteps approaching, her pencil stilled on the paper, and Amara turned in her seat. She hadn’t been expecting to see any coworkers, not that it mattered. Most
of them ignored her anyway. It wasn’t a coworker though, she realized; it was the devil himself, in an expensive, dark suit.
“Working on a day off?” Philip asked, leaning against the frame of the cubicle.
“Trying to catch up on some things,” she responded, turning back to her desk.
“Samuel wants to meet with you again. Tomorrow night. Will you do me a favor... yourself a favor... and find out what he’s up to? Also, you have a date with Francis tonight at nine o’clock.”
Amara turned quickly in her seat. She looked at him with wide eyes, mouth agape. “Francis Dudley?”
Please say no. Please let it be another Francis.
“That’s the only one you’ve been speaking to, correct?”
She cringed. “What does he want to do on this date?”
Philip smiled. “Not have sex, if that’s what you’re asking. He needs a date to a dinner he’s attending.”
“What about his wife?”
He shrugged. “What about her?”
“Won’t she mind? If she finds out?”
Philip laughed. “Don’t you think she would mind if she found out you sent him photos of your breasts?”
She felt her face heat up and was glad for the way her long, dark hair hid it when she looked down at her lap. “He’ll want to have sex with me.”
“He will.”
She let out a breath. “Okay.”
“But he won’t have sex with you.”
Amara raised her face. “Why not?”
Philip tilted his head a fraction. “Because he’s not willing to pay what I’m asking. And because he’s not the person I’m using you to lure.”
He studied her face as he said the words, waiting for a sign of her surprise. He got it.
Her heart stopped beating. “Wait... what?”
“You do realize,” Philip said, changing the subject. “If Courtney gets out, you will not.”
She shook her head rapidly. “Who are you trying to lure? What are you talking about?”
Philip looked at her, smiling. “You didn’t think you were here because you’re the only beautiful woman I could get to work for me, did you?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I’m here because my father owes you a lot of money and my mom needs her treatments paid...”
“And that’s all?” he asked. Philip had a way of asking things in such a way that let you know he had information that you thought only you knew. Amara couldn’t let him read her though. She tried hard to stay as stoic as she could. She didn’t want him to see the doubt clouding her head.
“What do you need me for?” she asked in a whisper.
“A lot of things,” he said.
“Stop being so vague!”
“I will when you do.”
She growled. “I’m not being vague! I’m being used!”
Philip turned his head side to side as if mulling it over. “I suppose you are.”
She narrowed her eyes at him as she clutched the sides of her chair. “What. Do. You. Need. From. Me?”
Philip pushed off of the wall and walked over to her, slowing as he stood directly in front of her chair. He pinched her chin with his fingers and tilted her face up to look at his angry eyes. “I need you to get me every single fucking ounce of information from every single person I set you up with. If you need to give them a fucking blowjob to get it, you do that. My women are my spies, Miss Maloof, not the other way around. I’m not some rescuer of yours, and you’re not a damsel in distress. Stop acting like it. You’re as big of a liar as everybody else here. Stop playing the innocent card and get me what I need, and maybe I’ll let you see your little boyfriend before he marries.”
Amara blinked rapidly and gasped, jerking her face away from him. “You’re a monster.”
“I’m glad you’re catching on. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had enough fun for one day.”
He left without another word, and Amara sat, rooted to her chair, her mind reeling with questions.
As Joshua drove her home to get ready for dinner with Francis, she decided to tell Courtney about her impending dinner with Samuel. Amara always hated playing monkey in the middle as a child, and her life it seemed, had become the grown-up version of that frustrating game.
“Hot date with my man again?” Courtney asked, as she barged in Amara’s room.
“Tomorrow night, yeah.”
“He’s going to want to fuck you once you tell him I’m not getting out.”
Amara stopped curling her hair and turned to look at Courtney. “What?”
“I know him. If he wants to fuck you, he’ll have to take you back to Méchant, which would mean he would see me again. If he asks for specifics, he knows I’ll be in the room while you fuck. Philip will get off on it as well, because for Philip, it would be a win-win situation—he can jerk off to the group fuck while he watches Sam suffer because he’d be fucking you but not me.” Courtney stopped and gave Amara an apologetic look. “No offense or anything.”
Amara shook her head. “What’s in it for Samuel then?”
Courtney shrugged. “He sees me again.”
The scenario Courtney painted for her was like a Picasso —messy and distasteful.
“What if I say no?”
“Why would you do that?” Courtney asked. She seemed genuinely confused.
“Because I don’t want to have sex with the man you love!”
Courtney rolled her eyes. “Mara, you’re so hung up on the feelings of sex, that you probably never even enjoy it. You’d be doing us both a favor by saying yes. Trust me. We used to have threesomes all the time.”
“You won’t even be able to participate. Philip wouldn’t let you.”
“Like hell I won’t. Fuck Philip. I haven’t seen Sam in way too long. God, I miss him,” Courtney said. Her voice went from sure determination to a quaint whisper, her longing was showing, and the scenario hadn’t even played out.
“Let’s pretend you’re right,” Amara said.
“I am.”
“We don’t know that.”
Courtney huffed. “You’ll go to dinner with him and tell him nothing he doesn’t already know. You’ll tell him I’m not leaving Philip’s side; he’ll ask why—you don’t know so you can’t say. Sam will be livid at me, at Philip, at you, for being such a bad spy, that he’ll lash out and demand a fuck from you. He’ll know Philip will put me in that room to watch, because he thinks that’ll make us both suffer... but Philip, of course, would be wrong.”
Courtney seemed almost giddy as she finished talking, and Amara found herself smiling along with her lunatic friend.
“You’re absolutely crazy.”
“Completely mad, I know,” Courtney said, smiling widely.
Amara shook her head slowly; her mouth agape.
“Let me help you get ready for this creepy Francis guy then,” Courtney said, ushering Amara back over to her vanity, where she sat in front of her and helped her put on her make-up. “You have the most beautiful eyes, you know? They’re like golden almonds.”
Amara nodded her head.
“Don’t move! I’ll get mascara everywhere.”
Amara sat still as her friend played up the asset that was part of what got her into this mess.
FRANCIS LOOKED EXACTLY as Amara had pictured: old, fat and rich. He had a white beard that covered his equally colorless face, save for the red in his cheeks when he would laugh at his own jokes. His grubby hand inched up Amara’s thighs more than a few times throughout the night, but she smiled at him as she placed her own hand over his and squeezed it when it reached the leather garter she wore. It housed a pocket knife, and she hoped it served its purpose as a warning and that she never had to actually use it, because she didn’t know if she had it in her. It was Courtney’s idea to wear it. She said you could never be too careful around some of the people Philip dealt with, and even though Josh and Naveen were just steps away most of the time, it was better to be safe than sorry.
In th
is case, sitting in the small, exclusive, French restaurant with Francis and his friends, Amara knew a warning was exactly what she needed to give. There were ten other couples in the room. She realized quickly, as she scanned the room of old men and their much, much younger mistresses, that this wasn’t just an ordinary dinner. This was a man-meeting, where they brought their dumb arm candy to entertain them. Her eyes swept over the table after they finished their first course, and she noticed a lot of the girl’s heads were in their date’s laps. The men’s faces were content, their eyes covered in lust, as they pushed their dicks further into their escort’s mouths. Some of them kicked the table, making the plates clatter. Others moaned quietly. The remaining men, Francis included, were happy to watch, at least for a while, as their own hands began to find their pants.
Amara was confused by it all. The dinner started out with the men talking about safe houses, and ended up with blowjobs. She wasn’t sure if she got lost in the conversation along the way, or if this was just the natural progression of these kinds of meetings. She hadn’t caught any innuendos from anyone. Her eyes found those of a young girl sitting across from her. She couldn’t have been older than eighteen, and her wide, panicked eyes told Amara that this was her first time in this situation. They looked at each other for long moments, clinging on to the only sanity they’d have all night,. each hoping that they could leave the private room before they found their heads submersed under the table.
Francis’s hand found hers as she looked at the girl with the big blue eyes, and Amara nearly jumped out of her seat. He settled it between his legs.
“I know Philip has rules, and I agreed I would abide by them,” Francis said, leaning toward her ear. “But this, I did pay bonus for...” his words trailed off as he unzipped his pants and took his stiff cock out, placing her open hand on it. “Start jerking.”
Amara closed her eyes as her hand began to move, cradling his stub in it. She’d never imagined one so short before. She didn’t dare look at it, but focused on the strokes, trying to find a good rhythm—one that would have her finishing him off soon, which, from the way his breath was picking up, she figured it would be. Opening her eyes, she wasn’t surprised to see that the young girl across from her had met the same fate. She was also pumping under the table. They each looked around the room and realized they were two of three lucky enough to be using their hands. They smiled when their eyes met again, and increased their hand movements. Amara was glad to see that women could overcome even the stickiest situations together. Pun intended.
The Devil's Contract Page 13
