Two and a half years ago, Cora Mann was like every other seventeen-year-old girl. She worried about finishing her final year of high school with top marks, fashion, learning to drive as her parents hadn't allowed her to yet, and whether this year's football star would invite her to prom. There were perks to being the cheerleading captain and she hoped her hard work would pay off with a date to prom with the quarterback.
That had all come crashing to an end when she had arrived home to her all-around good dad on the sofa with a bottle of whiskey and red eyes. He had scrubbed at his face like he could erase the pain with the gesture, but the pain was there to stay as Cora would soon learn. Her mother Patricia's plane went down over the Rocky Mountains, there was a lightening storm and something vital shorted and 173 lives just disintegrated high in those majestic mountains.
Patricia had been on her way home after an impromptu trip to meet her youngest sister's baby daughter. A life begins and a life ends, easy as it pleases. Cora had wanted to go to but had a nasty mid-term that week and she didn't dare skip it. College scholarship deadlines were right around the corner, and they were expecting grades to be included in the applications. Go on the trip and not afford life in the dorms. The trade-off wasn't worth it to Cora. She was getting out of the house first year.
None of those dreams Cora and her mother had spent countless hours dreaming where she went to college to become a journalist, jetted off to countries to report on real news, and eventually having seen the world would settle down with a family of her own one day mattered one little bit. Cora and her mother would tell these stories almost as if they were reality already. They would never be reality.
Her mom always told her that she needed to visualize the life she wanted for it to happen. How about a life where people lived forever and didn't die in plane crashes? That could be a life she could've visualized. Cora was still bitter about that even all these years later.
So, Cora's father had told her about her mother dying in the plane crash then promptly moved on with his life of drinking himself into the dark side of oblivion. Which he had done like they were handing out medals in it and he was going for the secret platinum tier. They are the creatures that presided over hell and cheered during one's descent into the pit. Cora realized she was waxing poetic when she was trying to recall how her life had come to this abysmal point that it was at right this moment.
Soon every responsibility was hers. She planned and held the funeral, her father barely showed up. Everyone understood, her parents had been soulmates, fated loves. His life was over now, thanks for encouraging him to remember he had a daughter. How about remembering that she had lost a mother? Fuck soulmates, that was just mumbo jumbo bullshit used to make excuses for terrible behavior.
How about her learning to pay the mortgage and missing the deadlines for those scholarships? Trying to pay taxes during finals. Pulling her father out of bed and getting him dressed so he could just barely make it to work. Why did none of his crew step in? He was the fire chief, people could die. They finally retired him a year early with pension because of his tragedy.
Fob him off on the daughter that never left for college. All those perfect grades were wasted in the last half of senior year. He drank away a large part of his pension monthly but luckily Cora managed to get a good job as an executive assistant for the Duluth Family Insurance Group and eventually a fiancé in the youngest son Jared.
Cora excelled at her job and was happy to be out of the house doing something that was at least partially for herself. With Jared she liked the idea of being a wife with a home and a family even if Jared's advances kind of grossed her out. He didn't push though and that made the issue easy to ignore. Her family wasn't wealthy, but her father was a respected retired fire chief and that was enough for the Duluth family.
Until the day that her family name was no longer respected but instead was reviled. Her father had stopped trying to pretend he was anything but a drunk once he no longer had to go to work. It was leaving the job behind that was the final nail in her father's coffin.
Right away he received two DUI's and a third DWI. They revoked his license and ordered him to classes. He didn't go, Mr. Mann could not be swayed from his alcoholic ways or his driving while intoxicated, that was until he mowed down a mother a father and their two young children. The father was the only one of them that survived, and he was permanently in a wheelchair.
Soon every penny her father had was being spent to pay his legal fees. He was sitting in jail with full knowledge that he would not get out for the next twenty-five years but the money he was spending was to help keep him out of death row thanks to a new law that his crime qualified for.
If only he could have taken five seconds to tell her that all the money she was spending on the mortgage and house expenses didn't matter because the father of the other family had won the house in a restitution lawsuit or maybe he could have told her she was being evicted at any point.
Like when she lost her job at the Duluth Insurance Company because they couldn't be associated with her father's name or maybe when her fiancé told her that they couldn't be engaged but that he still wanted to date Cora secretly, until they found other people at least.
Imagine it was eleven at night and the police show up at your front door telling you that you have fifteen minutes to grab what was important and vacate the premises. Oh, no one informed her well that wasn't their deal. The police officers were responsible for making her leave and would there be any problems with that?
Cora had stepped into the backyard to take a breath and for just a moment she had imagined that there was a woman in the woods. Maybe she would take her away from all this bullshit. Then the imagined person was gone, and she faced the music. She had very little money.
If Cora had only known she could have prepared for this back before she paid for the house for the last six months on her own. Cora quickly gathered up everything of importance that she could think of. Most of her personal items had to be left behind but she was able to grab a couple photo albums with her mother, some jewelry. All the important documents that were available and some clothes and keepsakes.
When she was told that everything else would be trashed starting tonight. Sorry they were twelve hours behind schedule but that was how things went sometimes. Did she have a ride, or could they drop her off at a hotel? She chose a cheap hotel, and she was dumped off there twenty minutes later, her life essentially over.
Cora realized that night if she stayed in hotels, she would be flat broke in under two weeks. The next morning, she managed to find a boarding house that had an open bed. They had strict daily check-in times and waiting lists for beds. If she missed her check-in time she would be booted no exceptions.
Cora had been out looking for work all day. People would hear her name, ask about her father and tell her they had nothing available. After almost no sleep, not being used to so many people around making noise and moving all night, she fell asleep on the bus and missed her stop. It took her an extra hour and a half to get to the bunk house. They had her stuff piled by the door and someone else in her bed.
Cora called a taxi to take her to the camp. The camp was one step above full homelessness. They charged less than ten dollars per day and gave a tent, a sleeping bag, and one meal a day. She could pick either breakfast or dinner. She could buy the extra meal for three dollars, but she hoped to be working for most of the day.
Cora struggled to set up her tent and slept miserably in the sleeping bag, but she was still alive and that was what mattered. The next day she put her belongings into a small storage unit and spent the day looking for any work she could find but everyone recognized the Mann name from the recent trials and the horrific news coverage of the surviving family member of the family her father butchered. She couldn't find work. Cora was guilty of being born.
Cora finally discussed the situation with Jared when he came to laugh at how abysmal the camps were. He suggested this club in the seediest part of the city called Chaos Zone. Jared said she was hot enough to work there then he left her alone in the camp to figure it all out on her own.
The next morning, she had made her way to the club and the manager Stephan literally looked like he planned to devour her whole. There was minimal paperwork, and she wasn't sure how she would be getting paid but if show up that evening at eight she would have a uniform waiting for her. Cora had shown up at quarter to eight and she was shown to the dressing room, handed two scraps of fabric, and told to get dressed.
These were the life catastrophes that had led Cora to be sitting in this room with the henchman Antione that she was certain would stop her from leaving before the owner could come convince her to trade sex for staying employed and not starving to death. Where did she have to go?
Cora had tried all over town and couldn't find work. What the hell was she going to do? She had never had sex with a man, hell she wasn't even sure she liked men. They were all leering and filthy. The thought of it made her a bit queasy. Cora was going to have a panic attack if he didn't get on with this soon. Would she be raped if she said no? If Stephan was in charge, she knew that was possible.
Oh hell, what was she going to do? She was going to kill Jared if she lived past tonight. Then the door opened briefly, and it was a beautiful woman. Antione stood saying thank goodness she was here. Was the owner a woman? Did that change things?