Page 5 of Johny B

Months. It’s been months. Not one word have I heard from him since he upped and left here. Yet he turns up and has the audacity to look fucking hurt when I reject him.

“Mother-fucking asshole,” I hiss out to no one other than myself. I push myself off the floor, I stagger to the couch and drop my troubled, exhausted body onto it. Laying on my side across the plush seating, I curl into myself, tucking my knees up and wrapping my arms around them. I close my eyes, a big mistake because it’s only a matter of seconds before my mind travels back to the very start. The when, why and wherefores as to when my path crossed with the man who left an indelible mark on my heart and soul.

Chapter

Four

Six months earlier. Velvet Reds.

Scarlett

Brothel. Whorehouse. Chicken Ranch.

Whatever name you want to use, it comes down to the same thing: a house full of women who sell their bodies for money—one of the oldest professions known to man. Mmm, Men.

Can’t live with them and, in this instance, can’t live without them, although we do have a handful of female clientele who visit our ladies that are bi-sexual and only too happy to accommodate.

We try our best to cater to all sexual needs and desires, but when it comes to the darker, kinky stuff, the girls set their own hard lines. I’m aware of every single one of them and make sure that the clients never cross it.

You’d be surprised at how many male clients prefer to watch while a girl or two gets themselves off, usually with cock in hand, pleasuring themselves. Guess they don’t consider that they’re guilty if they haven’t actually had any physical contact with myladies. They can go home to their deluded wives, conscience clear, but we all know that in their fucked-up minds, it’s their hand fingering the wet, warm pussy and their mouth that’s sucking on Chelsea’s pink pert nipple, not Nina.

You see, I know this place—every inch, every room, every single movement. This place is in my blood and has been from the day I screamed my way into the world from between my young momma’s thighs as she named me Scarlett.

Naming me was a no-brainer, really.

With my bright tuft of red hair and pale skin, I was every bit the image of my sweet momma—the queen of Velvet Reds—who had worked hard to get to where she was by fucking her way to the top. She showed the caring, mothering side of her personality, gaining her the respect of the other girls working in the joint and the owners.

A year before I was born, she stopped taking callers, her time purely taken up with running the house owned by the Young Outlaws Motorcycle Club. It was her job to keep a clean house, within the law and make sure the money that came in was plentiful.

Despite being raised in a legal brothel, my upbringing was relatively normal. Our living quarters had a distinct boundary, cutting us off from the ‘working’ area and living quarters of the girls. We even had a separate entrance at the back of the house, out of sight from the general comings and goings on the business side. I had an abundance of loving and caring aunts who made sure my momma’s wishes of protecting me from knowing the truth behind Velvet Reds were kept.

When I hit the age of five, like any other kid, I attended the local elementary school. It wasn’t until I was halfway through middle school, at the tender age of thirteen, that I found out exactly what environment I was living in. I guess it was inevitable because why on Earth would Becky Couldn’t-Keep-Her-Trap-Shut-If-She-Tried Lambert not spread that little doozy around? The teasing started but soon stopped once their parents had received a warning from one of Velvet’s leather-clad protectors.

When I faced my momma about the jibes I’d received, I could instantly tell by her expression that the rumors were true. I immediately turned into an intolerable brat. Screaming and shouting, I lashed out. I wasn’t physical with my momma—I’d never do that—but I trashed my room, barricading myself in and refusing to come out. Momma sat on the other side of the door, and I listened to her pathetic cries of regret and the reasoning behind why she had deceived me. Honestly, I didn’t give a shit—at least not until she explained how she’d ended up at Velvet Reds in the first place.

Her childhood had been full of violence, abuse, and neglect. Food was sparse, love and care non-existent—unless you counted being coerced into stealing or performing sexual favors for her own mother’s male friends who had fancied a young body to violate.

Momma didn’t pull any punches. She told me everything: how, at fifteen, she managed to escape from the clutches of her sick-minded parents—who had been squatting in a barely habitable house in the West Side of Chicago—and hitched rides across states until she ended up in Reno. It was while she was scouting at a roadside diner for her next trucker, negotiating a ride over to the California coastline with the promise of a fuck or cock suck in return, that things took a dramatic turn.

With a hunger that ate her from the inside out, she did the one thing she hated the most. But needs must. She walked around the back of the diner to where the trash bins were. Splitting open the waste bags, she hunted for something resembling edible food.

Even though she was nauseous from the smell of the mix of various greasy foods that were congealing, when she found something, she grabbed it like the scavenger she had been forced to become simply to survive.

Stepping back from the dumpster, she brushed any evidence of dirt from the sleeve of her tatty denim jacket. The half-eaten burger was about to breach her mouth when a hand grabbed her wrist, stopping it from passing her lips.

Enter Molly Sanders: owner of Big Moll’s diner and, in my momma’s eyes, someone who would always be her savior.

Some might say that Molly was far from that, as she was the one who had handed her over to the then manager of Velvet Reds, Dolores, but Molly had six kids of her own, in a two-bedroomed house, the takings at the diner barely covering her costs, she’d had no room and no other option.

It was obvious to Molly that Momma had been damaged young and was prostituting herself to get by, so the lesser of two evils was Velvet Reds, a legalized brothel in Storey County around twenty miles east of Reno, and a warm, safe place to stay.

A way of making money.

Velvet Reds became her home. For the first few years, she was a glorified housekeeper and cleaner, but as soon as she reached the age that was acceptable to the madame at the time, she asked to become one of the girls.

As the story of her life concluded, I sat with my back against the bed, took in the mess I’d made of my safe, comfortable place, and was sick with regret. My heart knew that although I would have preferred my momma to have a different profession, she had done what she needed to do to survive.

When I slowly opened the door, finding my momma huddled up on the floor, tears streaming, face red and blotchy, I crawled into her lap and cried with her—for her loss of a safe and lovingchildhood, the pain and neglect she’d had to endure, and how deep my love and respect for her had intensified beyond belief.

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