She had ten men dogging her every step.
Ten burly, insufferable walls of muscle stupidly watching her like she was the most interesting episode of real housewives. She shuffled two steps to the left, they followed. She shuffled two steps to the right, they followed. They could be subtle, but subtlety was beyond their little pea sized brains.
Adria had quite enough of their idiotic mugs, the lecherous bastards.
They gave her a corner, partitioned by a dirty, mouldy, shower curtain that had probably been salvaged from the 50's, with a beat-up vanity stained grey by grime. It had tiny white bulbs along the mirror; only about 4 worked and the little they gave was faint and orange. All for show, no doubt. Make her feel like a star – she'd be less likely to act up, or whatever reason they had in their weird, small, messed up brains. She could hardly begin to guess.
On the vanity she had red nail polish, a chewed lipstick that said soft pink on the lid but was a red they had forced into the empty tub, and a half – shattered palette. Adria painted her nails, for a lack of better things to do.
"I need to take a shit," she said at large.
It wasn't the first time she'd randomly said things to get a rise out of them.
The men ignored her, only the blank faced blonde sucker deigned her with a nod. She spied the little grimace curling his lips downward and the pretentious eyeroll.
"You gone follow me there too?"
He nodded.
You never did get any privacy in the compound, there were barely any functionable toilets, but Adria had gotten used to the little she could gleam from her isolation. It felt like she was slowly going mad, counting down the seconds, and still not finding a solution to the stupid guards. At this rate, she would have to go through with the dammed showcase and say goodbye to ever getting out. Every attempt made to slip their grasp had been futile. They watched her like hawks, never leaving her side, and if they did, the blonde sucker would stay behind, sticking uncomfortably close to her side.
Adria held up her hands, whistled at her own handy work (sloppy and smudged) and glared disdainfully at the broken mirror. Stupid costume.
She had no choice.
A thought struck Adria then – oh but what a thought…
The girls were herded into the red room, they walked out one by one on a platform they had put together last minute, literally. It was a long line of broken doors put together, glued with tape. The cheap kind too that broke easily. It was hard to believe this was a human prostitution ring.
Her turn came too soon. Adria froze. The blonde sucker stepped up and shoved her through the door. Adria had enough time to throw a glare over her shoulder before she emerged through the hanging red lanterns.
Men on either side jeered, their beers sloshing. The other girls spread around the room sat on their laps or on the floor. Someone had connected their phone to a music box that had seen better days. Most things in the compound had seen better days.
She stomped down the creaky wood, the heels bending dangerously every time she stepped on a looser part. The twin ponytails her dark brown hair had been roughly pushed into swished in her face. It made walking harder.
She glanced up, and there at the end of the wobbly platform was the big boss honcho.
The reason she was here.
Her ticket out.
On a wide armchair, newer than anything in the whole place, his feet crossed elegantly, a man lounged back, chin perched on a fist, cigarette hanging loosely from red lips. The first thing she noticed (the second really, she was too busy admiring his looks) was the paleness of his skin, the greyness marking his hair, and the amber eyes. He was handsome, in his perfectly cut suit and the stupid coat hanging over his shoulders. His hair was slicked back sharply, revealing the mean scar running down from his temple over his eye and down his cheek.
He smirked, tilting his head to the side. The dark stripe of a shoulder holster peeked from underneath the opened blazer.
Adria did not like the way he watched her. No, there was an intensity to him that made the normal Mary Jane hiding in her quake. She swallowed thickly, gingerly stepping around him to drape her arm over his shoulder. Adria leaned in, told herself to do it for Vicky, and whispered the venom that had sat on her tongue since Ricky had whispered those words to her.
"Someone told me if I whispered the right words in your ear I'd get what I want. I think he was right…"
Adria snaked her arm down his chest, over the lapels of his blazer, and grinned when she found what she needed.