Chapter 5: The Nineteenth Floor

I held the green dress up by its thin straps.

It was the kind of dress you can't wear anything under.

"You're not dealing his game," Andre said behind me.

"I am."

"Under my roof, you do what I say."

"Then I'll make sure I'm not under your roof on Saturday night."

The bell over the door rang before he could answer.

Laurent Roux walked in, in the same dark suit or another one exactly like it.

He looked at the dress in my hands.

"It's ugly," he said.

"You said Tuesday," I said. "It's Monday."

"You lost your badge today, so I came early."

Andre came around the counter. "We split the month. You don't get to take extra days."

"Then take one of mine," Laurent said, without looking at him. "Get your coat, Aimee."

Laurent lived on the nineteenth floor of a tower on Beach Boulevard.

One whole wall of his living room was glass, and the Gulf lay behind it, black, with the lights of the shrimp boats far out.

There was almost nothing else in the room.

There was a leather couch, a lamp, and a small card table set up by the window with two chairs.

"Sit," he said.

I sat.

He took off his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair, and he didn't sit down yet.

"I'm going to tell you a rule," he said. "I don't touch you while I'm hiding something from you."

"Are you hiding something from me?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"If I told you, I wouldn't be hiding it."

He said it plainly.

"You called my pit boss today," I said. "The phone on the podium."

"I told him suspend, not fire. Fired is forever."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Stepfather Lost Me in a Poker Game, Then I Cleaned Him Out from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.