She Discovers Their Secret, She Chooses Their World novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Girl at the Hotel Bar

Elsa did not come in.

She stood on the front steps in the headlights with a white box held out in both hands.

Sergio had put on a robe and Marco had put on his trousers, and I wore Marco's shirt and nothing under it.

"I saw how that went," Elsa said. "The girl, the table. It was clumsy of me, and I'm sorry."

"You embarrassed my woman in front of ten men," Sergio said.

"I did, and it was a stupid thing to do." She turned her eyes on me, and they were soft and tired. "Élise, I brought you something of your mother's. I've kept it a long time. I wanted you to have it."

She pushed the box into my hands.

It was light.

"Open it when you're ready," she said. "Not tonight, I think."

She went down the steps and got into her car, and she waved to me before she drove away.

Marco watched her taillights all the way down the drive.

"I don't like it," he said.

"She's apologizing," I said.

"Women like her don't."

I set the box on the hall table.

I wanted to open it, and I was afraid to, so I left it shut.

The next night I asked for something else.

We were in the old billiards room at the back of the manor, with its green felt table and its long mahogany bar and its dust-sheeted chairs.

Marco had pulled the sheets off, and Sergio had poured whiskey into three heavy glasses.

"Tell us," Sergio said.

I had written it out in my head in the bath.

"I want to play a game," I said. "I'm a girl in a hotel bar. You're a man who wants to buy a night with me, Marco, and Sergio is the one who sells it."

Marco set down his glass.

"A whore," he said carefully.

"A paid girl. Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I want to be looked at like I'm for sale and know that I'm not," I said. "I want to be told what I'm worth, and I want to be the one who says when it stops."

"How will you say it?" Sergio asked.

"I'll say your name, Sergio. Just that, and everything stops."

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