Chapter2

I knew the type all too well. The Sapphire Club was crawling with them every day—deranged, infected desperados. They weren't afraid of dying because they were already halfway to the grave. And when a man is about to die, there is absolutely nothing he won't do.

"Sleep with him, and you get two hundred grand."

I did the math in my head. It was the exact amount I needed.

It was enough to buy my mother a new kidney to replace her cancerous ones. She had been lying in the dialysis ward for three months, her arms bruised purple and punctured with a sickening cluster of track marks. The doctors said if they didn’t operate soon, it would be too late.

It was also enough to buy a bouquet of daisies—my father’s favorite—for his upcoming death anniversary. I never bought him flowers when he was alive, and I hadn't visited his grave since he died. It wasn't that I didn't want to go. I just didn't have the courage.

I didn't hesitate. I went in raw, completely unprotected.

Smack!

Without a single word, Julian slapped me across the face.

The force of it snapped my head to the side. My lip smashed against my teeth, and a metallic taste flooded my mouth as blood seeped out. The weight behind that hand was something I was intimately familiar with, yet deeply alien—five years ago, he had never laid a finger on me. Now, five years later, this was how he chose to say hello.

"Are you out of your fucking mind? Couldn't you tell he has AIDS?!" he roared. "How could you let yourself sink this low?!"

I laughed. It was a cruel, hollow sound.

"Mr. Reed, isn't this exactly what you made me?"

Julian caught the glimmer of tears forming in the corners of my eyes. He froze. For a split second, I saw a flash of heartache in his gaze, but it hardened just as quickly into ice.

"After everything you people did to destroy my life, what the hell do you have to cry about?"

He instinctively reached out, as if to wipe the tears away, but before his fingers could graze my skin, a woman barged into the room and latched onto his arm.

"Julian! You're supposed to be helping me try on wedding dresses. What are you doing in a place like this?"

Wedding dresses?

So, he was getting married.

I stood rooted to the spot, a deafening ringing echoing in my ears. He was sharply dressed in a tailored suit; she wore a flawless designer dress. They looked beautiful together. A perfect match. A match made in heaven.

And there I was, wrapped in a cheap bathrobe, my skin littered with the bruises and bite marks left by other men.

Taking advantage of my distraction, the dying man seemed to lose the last shred of his patience. He ripped at his pants and lunged at me.

His body was a tapestry of rotting flesh, radiating a nauseating, sour stench of decay.

"I'm a dead man walking anyway!" he grunted, pinning me down. "I've been craving you for five fucking years, and I'm gonna get my piece before I go!"

I thrashed with everything I had beneath his crushing weight.

"Get off! Don't fucking touch me! Get away!!"

But he was too strong. Five years working at the Sapphire Club had taught me every trick in the book for handling aggressive men, but this guy wasn't looking for a good time—he was looking for a way out. And he wanted to drag someone down to hell with him.

Catching Julian's conflicted stare in my peripheral vision, I strained my neck and screamed frantically.

"Julian! Julian!! Help me! Please, I'm begging you! Please!"

Just like five years ago. I was desperate, begging him to save me.

Julian grabbed a heavy whiskey bottle from the table, raising it high to smash it against the sick man's skull.

But his fiancée intervened, gripping his forearm tightly.

"Julian, we're getting married. Don't do something stupid!" she pleaded, throwing a disgusted look my way. "I remember this woman. A friend of mine tried to help her once, offered her two hundred grand out of pity. But she's a whore. She rejected the charity just so she could keep throwing herself at men."

Something snapped in Julian's eyes. With a swift twist of his wrist, he didn't hit the man. Instead, the thick glass bottle shattered violently against the back of my head.

"Slut! You love playing these games? Filthy men for a filthy woman. It’s a perfect match!"

For a split second, I didn't feel any pain. The moment the glass exploded, my mind just went blank with a loud buzz, like I had been yanked violently out from underwater. Then, a warm, thick liquid began to trickle through my hair, sliding down the back of my neck. It was sticky.

I brought a trembling hand to the back of my head and pulled it away. It was coated in slick, vivid crimson.

He turned his back on me, his voice booming as he issued a warning to the gawking onlookers.

"Nobody helps Sienna tonight! Anyone who lifts a finger for her makes an enemy of the Reed family!"

I felt my sanity slipping. My head spun violently from the blow, blood pouring out in a steady stream. The throbbing agony made it nearly impossible to form a coherent thought, but I summoned every last ounce of strength I had left and screamed at his retreating back.

"Julian, you animal! You ruined my life five years ago, and now you want to destroy whatever's left?!"

His tall frame faltered for a fraction of a second. But in the end, he kept walking. He never looked back.

I collapsed into a pool of my own blood, drained of all will to fight. I could only stare numbly up at the brilliant crystal chandelier swaying gently above us. It was a beautiful fixture. The glass pendants hung in delicate layers, the light refracting through them like shattered stars.

As the light danced in my fading vision, only one thought played on a loop in my mind:

Julian, if I really caught AIDS and died right here... would you feel even an ounce of grief?

Suddenly, a wet, choking sound jolted me back to reality. Overcome by the exertion and sheer adrenaline, the sick man's condition flared. He seized up and violently vomited a mouthful of dark blood straight into my face. It was warm, carrying the metallic rot of sickness, mixing with my own blood as it dripped down my cheeks.

The utter revulsion gave me a final surge of adrenaline. I shoved his convulsing body off of me and scrambled toward the door, crawling on my hands and knees until I escaped.

I fled that hellhole half-naked, my head still bleeding profusely as I stumbled into a torrential downpour.

The rain was punishing. It fell so thick and heavy that I couldn't clearly see the road, the traffic lights, or even where I was. I walked barefoot through the flooded gutters. Shards of broken glass sliced into the soles of my feet, but I was completely numb to the pain. I just kept walking. Left foot, right foot. Pushing forward, driven by the irrational fear that the moment I stopped, I would die.

The screeching of tires cut through the roar of the storm. A luxury car slammed on its brakes right beside me, splashing a wave of muddy water all over my shivering frame.

"Is this how pathetic your life became the second you left me?"

The tinted window rolled down, revealing Julian’s sharp, agonizingly handsome face.

I didn't want to look at him. I turned to walk away, but his hand shot out into the rain, gripping my arm like a vice and violently yanking me into the pristine interior of his car.

"You're bleeding! Where the hell do you think you’re going in this storm?"

That was the last thing I heard. The massive blood loss finally caught up with me, and everything faded to black.

When I finally fluttered my eyes open, the harsh fluorescent lights of a hospital room blinded me. And there, standing in the sterile silence, Julian and my little girl stared at each other in utter shock.