Page 1 of Femme Fatale
Chapter One
Selene
Iwant you to know me. By getting to know me, you’ll understand my story a little better. I was born thirty years ago to parents who should never have been fucking in the first place, let alone caring for a child. Mom was a drug user up until the day I was born and until she died fifteen years later. My father? He was killed when one of Mom’s dealers showed up on the porch with a hit of meth.
I was in my bedroom with my nose in a book because when a child lives the life I was living, books had a way of taking me away from real life. It gave me an escape. Anyway, I heard Dad arguing with this guy, and I could hear Mom yelling from the kitchen, telling my dad to shut the fuck up. Dad told her to shut the fuck up, and then a loud bang echoed through the house. A second later, that sound was followed by a loud thud on the floor. That thud was my father’s body.
The police showed up ten minutes later, but the dealer was gone, and Mom claimed not to know the man who killed my father. That dealer showed up again a week later when I was alone at home. Yeah, Mom was in the living room, but her worthless ass was tripping on another planet.
Eight months later, I gave birth to a little boy, whom I gave up for adoption. I wasn’t better off for doing so, but he was. Nobody knows this, at least not until now, but I killed that dealer two weeks after my son was born. I dumped his ass in the Mississippi River between Kentucky and Missouri. A month later, I saw on the news that his body, identified with DNA, was found floating between Arkansas and Mississippi.
Honestly, that’s when I learned retribution. That’s when I learned killing a piece of shit was okay because that piece of shit wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else.
Before I walked away from the house forever, I ransacked that dump and found a thousand dollars in cash. Ten $100 bills. I also found a flyer addressed to current residents offering a free weekend at a Vegas hotel and casino. I dialed the number on the flyer and made a reservation under my dead mother’s name. No questions asked, just come on and spend some money in the casino.
I had one problem. How the hell was I going to get to Vegas? That’s when I remembered one of the things my father left behind. In the garage, an old one-car structure behind our ratty house, I pulled off the tarp of his Harley Iron 833, turned the keys already in the ignition, and not one fucking thing happened. But, unlike my mother, my father had loved teaching me things. I had the battery charged in an hour and had the bike started at sunset.
It took nearly an hour to learn how to ride the damn thing. Dad had me on it a few times, but my five-foot-eight, one-hundred thirty pounds had a time keeping the bitch upright. Itwas all in the feet and shifting of the weight, he’d said. By ten PM, I was on the streets of Paducah, Kentucky, and heading west wearing torn jeans, a black leather jacket, and boots that felt lighter than usual.
My phone, the one luxury I’d been allowed, sat snug in my back pocket. In my front left pocket, I kept the $1,000. That was it. No photos, no clothes, no fucking tampons. Just me and 2,000 miles worth of road. That’s when I moved from sugar and spice and everything nice. I was harder. Life had made me that way.
The first stint of the trip was a bitch. I napped at a campground in Arkansas the first night under the cover of an old couple’s RV awning. I shared my brief life story with them, and they provided me with food and shelter. The old woman even gave me a towel to use at the campground shower.
Before I left the campground, the old woman, while her husband was inside the RV, slipped me $500. She told me they were never able to have any children, and this was her way of having a daughter. She sent me on my way with her cell number and told me to call whenever I needed, which I did when I finally got to Vegas. Unfortunately, when I did call, the phone was answered by a state trooper. The couple had run off the road in the RV the day after I left. Both drowned when the RV crashed into a lake.
I checked into the Vegas hotel and sat on the bed and cried, feeling like my life was destined for tragedy, none of which was my fault. It just seemed to be following me. By midnight, the tears had stopped, I’d showered, and stood at my window, looking down at a city that didn’t sleep.
The city seemed to look back, and I was scared. At sixteen, what the fuck did I know? Not a damn thing. I knew the second I hit the streets that men would approach me. Someone would try to coax me into this or that. That’s when my Dad spoke to me.There are no monsters under the bed, only monsters walking the streets. Slay the monsters, Selene. Slay the monsters.
I left the hotel and walked the strip, studying the people, the tourists, the lunatics, the drug dealers, and the entertainers. I was mesmerized by the sounds: traffic, singers, musicians, and slot machines. Although little Paducah, Kentucky, was home, I’d found a new home. Vegas became a place to lose bad memories and start new ones. Nobody knew about my past, and I knew nothing of theirs.
Near the end of the strip, I found a beaten and battered casino. Buck’s, it was called. On the door, there was a sign for blackjack dealers. I went inside, asked for the manager—who just happened to be Buck himself—and he took me into his office.
Buck asked my age and laughed when I told him. I handed him my mother’s ID, claiming it was me, and he laughed again. He told me business was shit and that he couldn’t keep dealers or help around for very long. He asked my real age, and I told him, expecting to be sent outside on my ass.
Instead, Buck hired me on the spot, and we agreed he could pay me in cash; that way, there’d be no questions about my age. Buck set me up in a room in the hotel. Thirteen years I worked for that man and not once did he ever try to lay a hand on me. Buck died a year ago, another tragedy thrown my way. Or at least that’s what I thought.
The day before they put Buck in the ground, his attorney showed up at my room. The man, dressed in a suit, white shirt, and red tie, handed me an envelope. We sat down together and went over all of Buck’s finances. It wasn’t great, but he also wasn’t broke. Like me, Buck had no family. Like the old woman who took me in at the Arkansas campsite, Buck gave me a gift. The casino and hotel were mine, free and clear.
“It’s a lot,” he said. “I know some investors.”
I considered the offer for a few minutes but shook my head. I knew Buck had had visitors and investors who wanted to tear the place down and replace it with something else. “I have some ideas on how to increase business,” I told him. “A little remodeling and better-trained staff should do the trick.”
The man chuckled at me. Literally at me. “If you change your mind, let me know. Otherwise, it’s all signed, sealed, and delivered.”
"I won’t change my mind,” I said as he got up.
“Roger that,” is the last thing he ever said to me.
As I went through the paperwork, I laid the last sheet on the desk. I had no idea Buck was running a brothel on the outskirts of Vegas. The brothel sat on two hundred acres of property, the brothel on one end, Buck’s house on the other.
The following morning, I drove out to the property. I stopped at Buck’s house first and did a walkthrough. The man loved Elvis. Statues, carpets, velvet pictures on the walls, a very large music collection, and several Elvis outfits in his closet. The most impressive collection? Buck had ticket stubs from over 200 Elvis venues he had attended.
I left the house, promising myself I wouldn’t change a thing. Outside, two barn-like structures needed my attention, but my mind wouldn’t stay away from the thoughts of the brothel. I climbed back into my car and drove the short distance to the brothel where, as soon as I parked, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen walked out onto the wraparound porch.
“You must be Selene,” she said and offered her hand, all smiles.
I politely shook her hand, and she chuckled at my disbelief. “I’m sorry. This is all a big surprise.”
