She Discovers Their Secret, She Chooses Their World novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Twelve Years of Breakfast

The Gilt Room had no sign on its door.

It sat behind a jeweler's shop in Manhattan, down a staircase lit with amber lamps, and a man in a black suit opened the door before Sergio knocked.

"Mr. Giordano," he said, and he stepped back.

He looked at me, then at the hand Sergio kept low on my back.

He said nothing at all.

Inside, the air was warm and smelled of leather and expensive smoke.

A long bar ran down one wall.

Past it, shadowy rooms opened off a wide floor where men in suits and women in very little stood talking in low voices, and I saw a woman on her knees at a man's feet with her wrists tied in front of her.

I stared.

Sergio leaned down to my ear.

"Anything you don't like," he said, "you tell Marco or me. Out loud."

"I'm fine."

"That isn't what I said."

"I'll tell you," I said.

"Business first," Marco said. "Elsa will look after you. Ten minutes."

"Ten minutes for what?"

"A member's wife who needs us," Marco said, and he did not meet my eyes.

I should have heard that.

I only nodded, because I wanted to be good.

Elsa came across the floor to meet us in a black dress that clung to her, her pale hair pinned up.

"You brought her," she said, and kissed my cheek. "Good. I told them you would want to see it for yourself."

"You did?"

"Of course." She took my arm. "Men like these decide for you. Come. I'll show you the house."

She did, with a friendliness that put me at ease.

She showed me the library where the members talked, and the bar with its glass wall, and a small quiet lounge where a woman was being fed strawberries by a man who fed her slowly and watched her chew.

"Not all of it is rough," Elsa said. "Some of it is just attention."

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