“Did you hear me, bitch?” Irina snapped as her phone buzzed with an incoming text.
I watched as something came over Irina’s stunning face when she stared down at the screen, something I hadn’t seen in the long weeks I’d been working for her.
Fear.
The dark, slick glimmer of it like gasoline spilled inside the dark rims of her eyes.
Knowing there was something that scared Irina, who herself was the scariest person I knew (and I was a biker babe, I knew lots of scary), I was afraid too.
I was so focused on that, at first, I didn’t notice Irina get up and stalk across the room. I didn’t know what the sharp crack of sound meant.
Irina had backhanded Honey across the face, sending her careening to the ground.
Instantly, Lysander was there, gently cradling her small form and carting it into his arms. Honey turned her cheek into his chest and held on, the other a brilliant red from Irina’s hand.
“Put the puta down, bruto,” she demanded of Sander.
He did not move an inch. There was a battle cry in his eyes, and I knew it was only a matter of time before it moved to his tongue.
“She’s useless now,” I said, standing up from my chair with my clipboard in hand, Bluetooth in my ear, in full assistant mode. “We won’t be able to cover up the bruise forming in editing.”
“Are you volunteering to take her place?” Irina asked me, her voice saccharine.
I swallowed quickly, but bile lingered on the back of my tongue. “I don’t look young enough for this scene. Why don’t we take a break, and I’ll go make some calls, see who I can round up real quick?”
Irina glared at me for a long, eerily intense moment, her eyes racking over me head to toe. She moved to me on the clack of her high heels and stopped when our breasts brushed, so close I could smell the Bubbaloo Plantano banana gum she had imported on her breath.
“Mia hermosa,” she whispered as she cupped my face. “Such a pretty face you have. I wonder, sometimes, what it might look like reddened by my hand.”
“Have I displeased you, Irina?” I asked calmly, even though my heart was hammering so hard in my throat I thought I would choke.
“You?” she asked, surprised. “No, but we all know about the sins of the father, hmm?”
I frowned at her. I was under the distinct impression she had hired me because of my connection to Ignacio. A chill swept through me.
“I don’t speak to Ignacio anymore,” I told her something she already knew.
“Pity. He hid something from me for a very long time ago. I would like it back,” she mused as she continued to stroke my cheek. “But I was not referring to Ignacio.”
Before I could digest her words, she turned on her heel and eased back into her director’s chair, gesturing with a limp hand to the set. “I like this idea. You replace the girl. The contrast between Mary’s pale, Irish complexion and your Hispanic looks will be very pleasing.”
I was frozen, my body held in the paralysis of my mind as thoughts rocked through me.
This was the worst possible outcome of working for Irina.
Being forced to do as the girls did and get naked, take dick, preform on camera.
For a moment, I was faced with the question I hadn’t been willing to ask when I decided to help the club this way.
Was I really willing to trade my body in a bid for their safety?
But then it occurred to me, Irina hadn’t divulged any of her criminal tricks or tried to hook me on drugs so that I would stay docile and obedient.
She was betting on the threat of her reputation or her husband’s to get me on my knees before her.
I wanted to slam my clipboard across her face, but instead, I laughed a little, just lightly. “I’m not a porn star, el jefa,” I said, calling her boss. “And I have no plans to start now.”
Irina’s perfectly manicured eyebrows arched delicately. “Perdóneme?”
“I have no plans to start now,” I repeated placidly. “What I will do is go to the office and make some calls. If that isn’t okay with you then fire me. I hope you don’t because I love my job, but even loving it, I won’t fuck anyone unless I say so.”
The air in the studio went flat like stale pop as everyone held their breath.
No one talked to Irina like that.
Not a soul.
She was treated as a cruel goddess, some heathen archetype of beauty and pain that everyone worshipped in fear instead of love.
The odds were good that she would assault me. Or fire me, at the very least.
But I would rather take the back of her hand to my face than take off my clothes because I was weak enough to be coerced.