Page 3 of Kobra's Opal

“What!” I barked at them. “Ain’t like I’m looking for a fight. Not my fault every bastard near me is asking for me to reshape their face.”

Creaton smirked, Tane chuckled, and Easton gave me a proud look.

“Kobra,” Tane leant forward. “Swallow ya pride and go see your woman.”

“Not my woman,” I pointed out. “She wanted nothing to do with me then, nor now.”

Creaton gave me a cold look. “You left her at a train station pregnant. What did you expect?” Did he have to rub the past in? “I’m with Tane. Take the hit to your pride, go get Holly’s shit and have a conversation with her. It’s been five years Kobra.”

Five fucking years. But could I do it? Could I swallow my pride and have a conversation with a woman that I loved and loathed? She gave my child up for adoption. To her prick of a brother, too. But then my mind went back to the day she got my name tattooed on her chest. A tattoo she still wore—that much I was sure of.

So I decided. I’d go see her.

I was taught the right way to apply lipstick at the age of nine. I knew how to shape, fill, shadow and contour my lips before I was fourteen. I got my first lip filler at sixteen. My mother believed your worth was determined by your reflection in the mirror.

It was ingrained in me at a young age that the lips are the gateway for men’s fantasies.

I was nineteen when I had my first shaping liposuction. Did I need it? Well, it depended on who you asked.

I was twenty when I started working in the family’s business. Elite Escorting. This meant I was the girl those billionaires fucked in the late hours of Friday night when they told their wives they were still working late. My mother was a Madam. She ran the most prestigious service that you wouldn’t even know it existed.

She prided herself on her girls being the image of perfection. We had to allure, seduce and fill their every fantasy. She sold the forbidden fruit. The girls they wanted would do anything for their fix. It was our job to keep them hooked, tease, and mainly keep them coming back.

So a few cosmic touch-ups were considered maintenance. After all, what girl at the age of twenty can say she earns a high six-figure within months?

My mom was a successful Madam and businesswoman. Her elite girls had to be able to do everything. Because her high-end clients wanted more than just sex, they wanted a package—an experience. A woman they could dine, flaunt to the public. A woman that could hold a conversation. Then when they wanted, the girl was to open her legs, or get on her knees and fulfil his needs.

I often wondered, was I heading to hell or was I living in it. Is a nightmare nothing but our circumstances— that we created? That living with our mistakes, our decisions— is that the true meaning of hell. Because most days, I felt I was in hell, ruled by the devil of money and expectations.

The expectations that society cast on you, the money you need to live a lifestyle that in return of your actions you created. I decided to spread my legs for a price, at the end of the day, it didn’t matter if I got paid thousands, hundreds or cents. I traded my morals for money. At the same time, someone on the outside wouldn’t know what I did, unless they knew.

I did know.

So I could fool them that I was a functioning mid-twenties adult, but at the end of the day, I had to live in my mind, and my mind was nothing but chaos, ruled by dark demons; where I continually asked myself, what the fuck am I doing.

Some days I wondered if I was mentally ill for the lies that others believed of me. Other days, I believed the lies that I told others.

But only rarely did I see who I really was. Right now, as I stared at the woman in the mirror, I didn’t know her. Her perfect makeup, constructed curves, beautifully maintained blonde hair. She even had a small smile on my face that never fell. I saw the woman everyone else saw. The only downfall was I was within her mind. I felt the weight of the lies—the dark, suffocating guilt of being a soul that did nothing but keep up a front. I watched the tailor-made mask fall from the woman’s face. And I watched as her eyes became mine. When I saw the ghost of my decisions, the hollowness, the crippling pain rise in my blue eyes— I felt a tightness in my chest.

I had always worked well with clients. Always kept a clear line between them and me. But that was before Ty. A cutthroat businessman. He was everything I was trained to trap in. The only problem was, he trapped me, not the other way around. In other words, his soft kisses, that charming smile and how he actually asked me questions wanting to know the real answer.

In my head, I knew what we had wasn’t healthy. But I slowly began to believe that what Ty and I had was an affair more than a business relationship.

He hired out our usual penthouse floor, flew into town just a few hours ago. We have had our typical dinner, and he was the only person in this world that felt like—he cared about me. I was in the middle of telling him that I wanted to step away from the business… the lifestyle. For some stupid reason I thought he’d encourage it, and hell Ty was always great at giving advice. So I’m sitting there in our bed after we just made love. I’m bleeding to him, that who I’m pretending to be and who I wanted to be, wasn’t the same person.

That’s when his wife called. His lips brushed my forehead, he says the words that shocked me, ‘you’re good at your job sweetie,’ and he left. Just like that, his wife had called, he left.

My heart is bleeding in front of him. And he just puts on his suit, while calling his pilot to fly back home. While also reminding me, I’m in this on my own.

He went back to his wife, and I was left lying in a hotel bed. Suddenly I was reminded every month when my monthly payment went in, that what we had wasn’t love— it was a business transaction. It didn’t matter how much I wanted to believe he loved me or how soft his touches were. How, when he smiled at me, I would melt.

I didn’t even wipe the tears away. They just rolled down my cheeks.

I managed to get dressed, and I did the thing that was expected of me. I suffocated my emotions and went back into business mode. A client had cancelled their appointment. So. I had to rebook the spot. However, I couldn’t stop thinking. Was it all forced? His laughter, the knee-buckling smile he gives me? I felt myself crumbling to pieces…tiny pieces.

I headed home, waiting for my client to confirm the next booking.

I was standing in front of the floor-length mirror now, getting ready to leave to entertain another client. The only problem was, I loved Ty. He stopped being a client to me a long time ago.

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