Page 49 of The Assistant
There was an option to be covert about this and give the person at the brothel door the code word, but instead I knee him in the groin and shove him to the ground, pointing a gun at his head. Nobody else in the nightclub seems to notice when I pull the trigger, and he goes limp on the stairs.
We walk into the brothel, and I immediately start searching for Harper amongst the women working. Various different men are all drinking and looking at the women they’re going to pay for the evening. Cigar smoke fills the room and only adds to the disgusting atmosphere as we walk through the crowd of people.
Everybody seems to turn their attention toward us when we approach. A group of armed men will do that to a crowd. People run and hide in the corners, locking themselves away in rooms. I’m about to yell out to the crowd to ask if anybody has seen Harper when I hear a shriek coming from one of the rooms and run toward it.
I kick the door down to see exactly what I was expecting. Harper is lying on a bed with a man on top of her, trying to hold her arms above her head. He’s clearly drunk and out of it, looking down at her body without a care for what she’s feeling. He tears his eyes away from her and looks at me with his eyebrows wrinkled.
“Who the fuck are—” he starts before I raise my gun and shoot him in the head. With his eyes wide open, he crumbles to the ground, hitting the floor with a thud.
Harper screams again, the shrill sound echoes through the room. She looks up from the dead body toward the door and sees me standing here with the gun that just killed her would-be customer.
“Dawson…” she sobs, as I take in her beaten face.
I don’t waste a moment walking over to her and scooping her up in my arms. She doesn’t fight me as I carry her out of the brothel. Instead, she shakes and cries as she hangs on to me.
There are enough cars that I’m not worried about Xander and Quinton getting home, so I set her down in the car we drove in and immediately take off. I have to get her as far away from here as I can.
It takes a few minutes for her to settle down and wipe the tears from her eyes as she takes some deep breaths and tries to calm herself. I reach a hand out to grab hers, hoping I can let her know it’ll be okay. But she pulls away from me and leans against the door while glaring at me.
“You knew about this. This whole time, you knew.” The betrayal in her voice is hard to stomach. I look away from the road briefly to see the hurt in her eyes, and I feel terrible. She’s never looked at me like this, and I wish I could go back in time and change everything to make sure it never happened.
I did feel somewhat of a rush after everything happened, and seeing her now makes that feeling go away. But I understand why she’s acting like this.
“You have to believe me when I say I’ve tried everything to stop this,” I say, hoping I can sway her back into trusting me. “You have no idea what I just went through to save you. There’s a house filled with dead people right now because of it.”
“Is Malik one of them?” For the first time since rescuing her, there is hope in her voice. The bruises on her face must be from him. When I find him, I’m going to make sure he knows exactly what she went through because I won’t hold back.
“No, he must have escaped somewhere,” I reply, wishing I could say something different.
Harper looks away from me and stares blankly out the window.
“Well, it’s not over, is it?” Her voice is flat, and the hope is gone.
She’s right, and I hate knowing that. I hate that Malik got away and very well might escape justice for this. I hate that she’s going to have to live in fear. And I hate that she thinks I had a bigger part in this, that I was as guilty of signing her away as my dad.
I watch from the corner of my eye as she retreats into her shell, making herself small as she tries to come to terms with everything that’s happened to her today. I ask her questions, and she doesn’t answer. She won’t speak to me.
All I can think about is how I’m going to make this right again—if something like that might even be possible now.
Chapter 26
Harper
Dawson doesn’t takeme to the penthouse, which I’m thankful for. That’s the last place I want to be right now. After everything I’ve been through, I want to feel safe, and I was just abducted from there.
God, even thinking that seems so surreal. I can’t believe what’s happened to me in the past twenty-four hours. And to think my own family has done this to me. My mother, who is supposed to love me unconditionally, had agreed to sign me away to some sort of criminal to take my virginity. Dawson, someone I have come to trust, knew all about it. He had ample opportunity to tell me so I could get away, but he didn’t.
In fact, the bruises all over my face and body are because of him. He knew about this deal, and he took my virginity, anyway. He’s the one who warned me about Malik. He had to have known what he was capable of.
“Xander has a safe house in the city that he said we could stay at,” Dawson explains as we pull up to a simple Colonial-style house in the middle of the suburbs. “For obvious reasons, it’s notsafe for us to go back to the penthouse. Malik is still out there, and he’s going to be looking for us.”
He parks the car and watches me while he waits for me to reply, but I don’t say anything. I don’t want to talk to him right now. I don’t even want to look at him.
Dawson helps me out of the car, and I let him do that. As much as I wish I could stand on my own and shove off his help, every muscle in my body is aching, and it takes a lot just to walk.
Thankfully, it’s late and none of the neighbors are out walking their dogs or attempting to stargaze through the Los Angeles smog because I look atrocious. Anybody who sees me would think it reasonable to call someone to help me. But then again, nobody has ever seemed to care about me. With my luck, a bystander would see it and just walk by as if it was nothing.
Dawson guides me through the house to a bedroom on the first floor and helps me get settled in bed. More than anything, I want a hot shower, but I know that’s not going to happen right now. I practically collapse against the pillow as he covers me with a blanket and stands at the edge of my bed to watch me for a moment.
