Page 25 of The Game
CHAPTER14
Alice
Dick is…well, being a huge dick, as usual. As soon as I’d arrived at work, Teddy ensuring to come in fifteen minutes after me, he’d absconded me into his Tower, his decrepit office with its dust motes and layers of dirt upon what were once shiny wood floors. The space is haunting and beautiful in its own way, but the man who inhabits it tarnishes that beauty, banishing all good thoughts from my mind as soon as the door clicks closed.
He seats himself at his ramshackle desk, crossing his hands over his pot belly as he smiles sickeningly up at me. When will his yellowed teeth finally fall out? Can’t that cause heart problems? God, I hope so, but a death by natural causes seems way too good for him. He deserves a day alone with Tristan and Jameson, and apparently Teddy, for his chilling words have sunk deep into my soul and latched on. He’s just as dangerous, and I seem to have only scratched the surface with him.
“I’m going to tell you a little story, dear, and then you’re going to train with Teddy before you train a new girl.”
I inwardly groan; his stories are long-winded, winding and scampering like rabbits. He gets lost as though in a maze, so I seat myself and nod curtly, preparing myself to be bored out of my fucking mind for at least a half an hour. Time is wasting, too; before coming here, Teddy was doing some surveillance on my step-brothers. Now I’ll have to wait to find out what he saw, if anything.
“I began teaching in the 70’s. Middle school at first, then high school, and eventually received my doctorate. All while raising my two sons. Their mother was always a rogue, never home, never caring about us men.”
Already, the urge to gag at his misogynistic words is hitting me full-force.
“She became a cracked out whore. I’d find her in places like this,” he says, pausing to raise a hand from his belly and motion around the dim, ill-lit room. The setting sun casts stained glass patterns on the floor. “I’d be driven insane, wandering all over town with the boys in the back of our family car. They’d follow me in, see her strung out on a pole. She put my boys through hell.”
His story elicits no sympathy from me, not after what his son did to me, my mother. Just because you’ve had a tough past does not mean you’re excused to project that onto others. So I mask my face and nod solemnly, playing into his little twisted mind games. The remaining rays of the rare Seattle sun glint off the red and ochre chessboard to my right, and angst grips me; after work tonight, I have a feeling I’ll be up here no matter what. My small reprieve is over, and even Teddy cannot rescue me from that fate if we want our scheming to go unnoticed. It’s an unspoken knowledge passed between the two of us; I’ll still have to play the obedient whore until we have definitive plans of action, but with an end in sight—with hope in my veins—I can endure a little longer.
“She died, found in a gutter in an alley. We never discovered who murdered her…”
His admission astonishes me; a grandmother I never met was murdered, was married to this piece of shit. No wonder she ran off, used drugs to soothe her. He heaves a sigh, bespectacled eyes falling to his grainy, grimy desk. There had been so many times in high school where I stood before his desk as his eyes roamed over my chest and he’d smile like the Cheshire cat, like he’d won a prize. It all makes sense, now.
“Is that why you run this place?” I question softly, infusing empathy in my voice. Teddy—having been here the longest of anyone—understands the inner workings of these two dipshits. I wish I had seen it earlier, but I’d been too depressed, too focused on keeping my twins safe that I never stopped to consider I could outsmart them if I really wanted to.
A heavy, phlegmy sigh exits his lips as he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. His old tweed suit is a farce; I know he has more scummy money than most of the wealthiest in Seattle combined, but he dresses down, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“I run this place because I take women like my dead wife and give them a purpose, dear.”
My eyes narrow the smallest bit as anger leeches into my bloodstream and pulses hotly through me.Keep it together, Alice.Curling my hands into fists, I allow my nails to bite into my palms, the pain keeping me grounded.
“A purpose?” I whisper. His watery blue eyes trace my face, and his gaze simmers.
“I see the low, the destitute, the young girls who will not make it far past schooling, and I offer them a job. What is so deplorable about that?” he asks, venom seeping into his words. My stomach churns.
“How many students of yours have filtered through here?” I whisper, needing to know.
His answering smile is flat.
“You should look at things from a broader perspective, dear. Your step-brothers groomed you into their little whore. You were…so young, so impressionable. I’m sorry they did that to you, that I didn’t step in sooner.”
It takes all my strength not to launch across his desk and throttle his wrinkly turkey neck. The biting words I wish to spit at him are quelled when a knock sounds on the door, and his eyes linger on mine, testing me, waiting for me to spew, and when I don’t, he deflates.
“Come in,” he calls. It’s one of the show girls, the newer one, Rebecca, I think. Her eyes stay glued to the floor.
“Daniel wanted me to…to tell you the new trainee is here.”
My eyes lock onto her face, onto the smudge of lipstick at the corner of her mouth, the way tears still shine in her eyes. My insides ache to see another victim of Daniel’s; if I could shoulder it all, bear the brunt of his advances so these other girls didn’t have to, I would. I am not so naive anymore to think that I am capable of that.
“Thank you, dear. Alice, you’re excused. I will see you promptly at the end of your night, and I will personally escort you back to campus.”
Hiding my face—and my fury—behind my hair as I stand, I nod and stalk off. Teddy can just pick me up when Dick leaves. The thought of sleeping in that damn room makes my skin crawl now. My nightmares can find me there, but not when Teddy is on the other side of his door, not when his scent of pepper and leather and bike exhaust surrounds me just as softly as his sheets and plush mattress do. I’ve even grown accustomed to the Chinese restaurant around the block from his apartment, and sometimes I stop to buy us fresh egg rolls with my measly few bucks as repayment.
Down the steep stairs I go, following Rebecca’s phantom-like form. As the days drag on, she becomes more and more hopeless, the hunch of her shoulders a clear indication she sees no way out and has finally allowed that notion to sink in. I have to push aside my emotions, though, if I ever want a chance at getting myself out of here and getting the rest of the girls any help.
We have to find the fucking rat.
My feet hit the landing, my eyes automatically swishing to the circular floor in the middle of the dome-like space. There Teddy is, playing with fire, shirtless, those lean, lethal muscles so alluring. Tipping his head back, he exposes his pale throat encircled by those skeletal fingers, raising the flaming end of a pole. Without an ounce of fear, he opens his mouth wide and consumes the flame, dousing the room into sinister darkness as heavy metal music blasts from the speakers. The girls all know not to interrupt his pre-gaming, we call it, the few hours before shows where he is so focused on practicing that he’s in his own little world. Rattling, deep screams issue from the speakers, and I can’t help but smirk as I walk by, knowing that on Sunday I’ll be hearing very similar music in a live setting.