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  She didn’t say anything; she just examined his face until she felt like he was telling the truth. She turned away from him and grabbed the red-stained bar soap that she had been using before she heard the hotel room door open. Turning her back on him she leaned over the tub so she could scrub vigorously at her hands and arms. She wanted to hurry up before her baby woke up hungry and screaming. That was the last thing she needed.

  “You should leave,” she said over her shoulder. “If Madame finds you in here with me she will make me kill you too.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I can handle myself. I’m more intrigued by you. Are you going to tell me who you killed?” Quinton asked again. “Was it his parents?”

  “Her,” she corrected him. Although she was slightly comforted by the fact that he was not one of Madame’s henchmen, she knew that she didn’t have much time before her absence was noticed. Her heart was pounding and, no matter how badly she tried to, she couldn’t stop the shaking of her body. “And yes. I killed her father. I’m her mother.”

  He noticed the rush in her motions. She was moving like a person who had somewhere to be, or someone who was about to run.

  “Here, let me help you,” he said, tucking his gun away when she got quiet. The only sounds coming from the room were running water and the TV. He reached for her and she flinched when he removed the bloody robe from her body. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’ve bodied a couple of people in my day too. I ain’t have anybody help me get rid of the blood, though.”

  From where he knelt on the hard floor Quinton noticed that she had many healed scars on her back. The kind of scars that only came from deep gashes. “You don’t have any blood on your lingerie or legs but we need to rinse this shit off of your body before you get an infection.” Quinton helped her wash the blood from her arms and hands. When finally the last of the pink was being washed down the drain he asked, “What’s your name?”

  The woman looked curiously at him, trying to figure out if she should trust him. Of course she couldn’t trust him; she didn’t know anything about him. Yet, he surprisingly wasn’t unnerved at the scene at hand, and he also hadn’t run to get help. He was a mystery to her. Where had he come from? Why had he been booked in her secret hideaway room? Nobody was ever booked there; she was sure that most of the other girls in Madame’s inn didn’t even know it existed.

  She dried her arms and hands off with a towel before wrapping it around her body. She grabbed another clean towel from under the sink and scooped her baby up into it. She continued to ignore the man in the room with her and stood so that she could continue with her plan, but he stood too. He blocked the doorway and wouldn’t let her pass him. She sighed and glared at him.

  “Tamia,” she answered with a lie.

  “Nah, try again. I just met Tamia at the front desk.”

  She cut her eyes at him and clenched her teeth, pondering if she should tell him her real name. “Rhebecca,” she unwillingly said. She didn’t have much time and he was getting in her way, literally. She brushed past him holding the baby tenderly to her chest. “You?”

  “Quinton.”

  “Well, excuse me, Quinton. I’ll be out of your hair shortly.”

  She set the baby down on the bed and ran back into the bathroom, reaching under the sink once more for the bottle of bleach that was there. There was so much blood in the bathroom, but she wanted to get rid of all the evidence proving that she’d been there. Since it was so fresh it came right up, but it took awhile to get it all clean. The bathroom was spotless by the time she was done, but there was one more place with blood that she had to get rid of.

  “Do you have a change of clothes?” she asked, surprising Quinton, who had been watching her clean the bathroom better than any housekeeper. She noticed the puzzled look on his face and pointed to the blood on his still-damp clothes. “I need to dump those on my way out.”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking down at himself, pleased at her keen eyes. “Let me get up out of these before the people come after me for a dead nigga I don’t even know.”

  He turned his back on her, walked back to the bed and, forgetting that there was a sleeping baby there, he plopped down. The baby felt the sudden movement and began to whine in her sleep.

  “Shh, shhh.” Rhebecca rushed to soothe the cranky baby. “It’s okay, baby. Mommy won’t ever leave you alone again. I promise.” She held the baby like she was as fragile as glass when she rocked her back to a comfortable sleep. Quinton saw the love in her eyes and felt it seeping from her into the small body she held.

  “I’m not trying to be in your business too much. I’ve learned in situations like this the less you know the better. But by the amount of blood that was in the bathroom one can only assume it was drawn by a knife. Usually if a woman kills her boyfriend it’s something quick, like a gunshot to the chest or head. So, I have to know, why did you kill her father?”

  Quinton removed a pair of shorts and another T-shirt from his bag while Rhebecca laid her daughter between the pillows again. He didn’t want to put the clean clothes on his dirty body, and he also didn’t want to risk taking a shower while she was there. He opted to just take his shirt and jeans off and sit on the bed in his Calvin Klein boxers. He handed her the clothes, which she took, and then she knelt down to look under the bed, holding the clothes to her stomach. He waited patiently as she extended her free arm under and brought it back, clenching the handle of a briefcase in her fist.

  The contents inside of it was what was going to save her. Everything she had been planning had fallen upon that very moment and the last thing she ever expected was for Quinton to impose. She reached under the bed again and that time brought back a plastic bag containing two outfits: one for her, and one for her baby. She removed the towel from her body and put on a black T-shirt, a pair of dark blue jeans, and a pair of black flats. She sighed after she put the footed onesie on her baby, careful not to upset her, finally ready to answer his question.

  “He wasn’t my boyfriend. And I killed him because I had to,” she whispered, stuffing the bloody towels and clothing into the plastic bag. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Did he have a gun to your head?”

  “No.”

  “A knife?”

  “No.”

  “Did he try to kill you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why would you kill the father of your child? Are you a sociopath?” He studied her face. Neither her wild hair nor the dried mascara on her face took away from her natural beauty. After a few moments of him staring intently into her eyes, she looked away.

  “Madame,” she whispered and set her daughter back down. “She makes us do horrible things for her, and if we don’t comply she will do unimaginable things to us. She made me do it. She made me kill him.”

  “Why?” Quinton leaned on the wall behind him, trying to make sense of her words.

  “Because she is evil. This is the Opulent Inn, the place to fill all of your heart’s desires.”

  “My heart’s desires?”

  “Yes. If you couldn’t tell by my original getup, I am what people call a whore. I . . . we are all sex slaves.” Rhebecca gazed into space as she spoke. “Me and all the other girls. We all belong to Madame.”

  “Others? I only saw one other girl. “

  “Because we are completely booked up tonight. Very wealthy men travel from all around the world to spend their nights with Madame’s girls. Prosecutors all the way down to drug lords, like Lorenz, my daughter’s father.”

  Suddenly he remembered that Tamia had called the room he was booked in a “regular” room. Now he understood why. “So this is a brothel?”

  “Worse. More like a cult.”

  “So this Madame person, why did she make you kill the father of your child?”

  Rhebecca looked down at her hands and breathed deeply with quivering lips. A few tears fell from her eyes, but she wiped them away when she felt them on her cheeks. “When our guests come,” she star
ted, “they tell us things they never tell anyone else. Because we never leave this place. So they confide in us. Many of us have regular customers. Lorenz is . . . was one of mine. He is”—she stopped and cleared her throat before correcting herself again—“was a big drug dealer in Texas. He didn’t even know he fathered my child. Babies aren’t allowed here. I had to keep it a secret.”

  “How?”

  “Well,” Rhebecca said and smiled at her sleeping Mini-Me, “it helped that my stomach was small the whole nine months. The girls here can volunteer to sleep with the patrons, or do Madame’s bidding.”

  “Kill for her,” Quinton clarified for himself.

  “Yes. I don’t know for sure all of Madame’s business dealings. This inn is only one of them. She is a cruel woman. She used some of us to seduce her enemies and then others to kill them. I had to. It was the only way I could wear baggier clothing to hide my stomach closer to my baby’s birth date. When the time came, I passed my labor off as the flu. No one wanted to come near me.”

  “Is her father one of Madame’s enemies?”

  “No, not until I gave her more information than she needed to know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Instead of answering him directly with words, she grabbed the suitcase that she’d taken from under the bed. “The last time he was here, Lorenz was so drunk after we got done, you know, that he told me things he wasn’t supposed to.” She opened up the briefcase and took out a small Baggie with a substance that Quinton had never seen before. She then pulled out a sheet of paper with fine writing on it.

  “What is this?” Quinton asked when she handed him the paper. He studied the formula written on it and felt his eyes grow wide at the treasure he was holding in his hand. He grabbed the small Baggie from her, too, and studied the contents. “Did he . . .”

  “Yes.” Rhebecca swallowed. “He created a new drug. And she wants it. She told me to slit his throat from ear to ear, and watch him bleed out to make sure he died.”

  “Well, that explains the blood.” Quinton reached to put the paper and bag back in the briefcase, but when he grabbed it he was hit with another surprise. “What’s this?”

  In the briefcase there was enough money to make the job that he was coming on look like child’s play.

  “My savior,” Rhebecca said and once again stared in Quinton’s eyes. “I was supposed to be dropping off this paper to her safe before I cleaned up, but instead I robbed it. I’m the only one who knew the numbers to the safe. She trusted me more than the other girls. She can’t get this drug. She will force us all to take it and she will sell it. If she sells it she will get even more money and be able to buy a bigger facility. I wouldn’t wish this hell on my worst enemy. I can’t stay here anymore. I made the decision tonight that I have to run. My daughter, she’s getting louder and she’s begun to move around. If Madame finds her she won’t hesitate. She will kill her. I have to run. I only have another thirty minutes before one of the girls does inspections. I need to be gone before then.”

  Quinton saw the tears streaming from her eyes, but even more so he saw the terror there again. His hand, with a mind of its own, found its way to her soft brown cheek. He stroked it with his thumb. “I would ask you how you ended up here,” Quinton said in a low voice, “but I can tell in your eyes that you don’t want to remember that part of your life. Did this Madame put those gashes on your body?”

  “Yes.” Rhebecca nodded. “She punishes us with a machete. Please help me. I’ll give you money. I just need you to drive me far away from here.”

  Quinton’s brow furrowed again. He was deep in thought. A part of his brain was yelling for him to turn the girl in and keep the contents of the briefcase. A bigger part was telling him to help her. Never in his life had he seen anything like what he was witnessing in front of him. His eyes went to the sleeping baby and he felt something in his chest that he never had before. She was little, so innocent. She deserved a chance at life. He didn’t know if his decision was made because his own mother hadn’t fought for his life the way Rhebecca fought for her daughter’s. Or if it was because, even looking as distraught as she did, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on.

  “Okay,” Quinton finally said after pondering over it for a little longer. “I will help you.”

  “Really?” Rhebecca threw her arms around him before jumping to her feet. “We have to go before Madame wakes up!”

  He grabbed her arm before she got too ahead of herself and he brought her back down on the bed. He shook his head at her when he saw her bewildered expression.

  “I thought you said you were going to get me out of here.”

  “I am,” he said, letting her arm go. “But if Madame is as ruthless as you say, and if she really has a crew of killer hoes running around, going straight out of that door wouldn’t be a smart idea. What time does she get up in the morning?”

  “Eleven o’clock. Every morning.”

  “What would you do to save your daughter’s life?”

  “Anything.”

  “Would you die?”

  “Ten times.”

  “Good. Go to your room. Leave the baby and the briefcase with me. I’m leaving at ten o’clock. If you want to get out of here, you’ll be there. I’m driving an all-black Impala, the only one out in the parking lot.”

  “What? No!” Rhebecca looked from Quinton to her baby. “That’s . . . no! How do I know you won’t rob me? I don’t know how I’m going to get out if—”

  “Do you have another plan? If I wanted to rob you I would have put a bullet in your forehead and given your kid to the wolves. Trust me.”

  Rhebecca clenched her teeth so hard that for a second Quinton thought she was going to take the baby and the briefcase and bolt out of the door. Her movement was so sudden that he didn’t even have time to flinch. She placed both hands on his cheeks and put her face so close to his that she could smell the steak he had for lunch on his breath.

  “Promise me you won’t leave me.” Her voice cracked and he could feel every shake coming from her hands.

  He put his hands over hers and awkwardly rubbed them with his thumbs. “If you are at my car by ten o’clock, I promise I won’t leave you. Now go to your room before your absence is noticed.”

  Slowly Rhebecca let her hands drop to her lap. Sighing deeply she turned her body so that she could pick her daughter up and hug her sleeping body. She listened to the quick little breaths and felt the beating of her little heart. She smiled sadly into the baby’s shoulder. She never thought that she would be able to love anybody the way she loved that little girl. She had given her something that had gone away a long time ago: the will to live.

  “I love you,” Rhebecca whispered before handing the baby to Quinton. “She likes to be held when she sleeps. When she wakes up there is milk in a bottle hidden in the nightstand next to the bed. Please keep her safe.”

  She stood and walked reluctantly to the door. Leaving her baby behind that time was the hardest ever, but something was telling her that she could trust Quinton now. It seemed like an entire lifetime since she looked in someone’s face and didn’t see any lies. She was comforted by the fact that even if she wasn’t able to make it away from Madame’s clutches, her baby would have the opportunity to really live. And she would know that her mother loved her.

  “Wait!” Rhebecca was halfway out of the door when Quinton called out to her.

  “Yes?”

  “What’s her name?”

  In a perfect world the image she turned and was looking at was one she thought she would wake up and see when she had her own family. Rhebecca smiled at Quinton rocking the baby on his bare chest, holding her like she could shatter any second.

  “Ahli. Her name is Ahli.”

  Reliving the moment he met Rhebecca brought goose bumps to the back of Quinton’s arms. Mentally he remembered the complete story, but verbally he told Ahli everything except the part about her. He would never tell her that biologic
ally he was not her father because regardless of that she was his child. After spending just one night with her as a baby he knew he could never let the world get to her. The way her small hand wrapped around his finger foreshadowed how she would always have him wrapped around hers. Waking up to her wide eyes, exactly like her mother’s, studying his face quietly signified that she trusted the unknown person. She smiled a wide, toothless smile at him as soon as she saw he was awake and went into a sea of babbles. He knew then at that very moment what the feeling in his chest had been love.

  “What happened when you got away?” Ahli asked.

  “She asked me to take her somewhere safe and where no one would ever find her,” Quinton said, thinking about the two-hour drive back home.

  “Where did you take her?”

  “To my house. I like to say I fell in love with her on my way back to Nebraska. Her mind was one I knew I’d never come across again. Once she came into my life, she never left until God called her home.”

  Ahli sat feeling like a revelation had overcome her. So many things began to make sense now; the dots were connecting. Knowing her mother’s past allowed her some insight about why they did the things they did, in the way that they did them. She sighed, thinking that Rhebecca was a slave at the age that she was now. It was something unimaginable. Her body wasn’t even her body, her mind wasn’t her mind.

  “What happened to the formula she found? Did you guys sell it?”

  “We tossed it the first chance we got,” Quinton answered without batting an eye. “A drug like that is worth billions, and if you think the war on drugs is bad now, it would have been disastrous and influenced many wars. If it had hit the streets, whoever had it in their possession would be king of many lands.”

  Ahli studied her father’s face not knowing if she should believe him. She decided that she didn’t want to press the matter right then. Instead, she rose to her feet and advanced on him so she could throw her arms around his neck.

  “Okay, King Arthur,” she joked in his neck. “I love you, Daddy. You’re everybody’s hero.”