Page 23 of Game of Love
The ultimate plan was to leave, but first I had to pave the way and there was no way in hell that I was going to allow Armand to get under my skin.
Chapter 6
Jia
Women out of business.
That was the first thing Pa had preached to me when I was old enough to understand that our family was different from everybody else.
Actually, he’d started my lessons on that mantra even before I could talk.
I used to hear him with it, talking to Ma when she tried to prod, and pry. It could have been something very simple, like her wanting to know what was bugging him.
He’d always give the same answer.Women out of business.
It was something I was well versed in and something I knew to heed, given who he was.
So I should have expected the look of hell fury he cast my way when he saw me waltzing into the so called recruitment facility at eight o’clock sharp.
The place was more of a club come warehouse. Or rather a very raunchy gentlemen’s club that I’d never been allowed in. The minute I stepped in, I saw why and it wasn’t because of the naked women who served the men gathered there tonight.
It was the men. The rough look about them told me I was absolutely in the company of the worst kind known to humanity.
People who shouldn’t really see my face and know who I was. The hotel and casino were fine. I could blend in. Chances were the people who ventured there were friends not foe, or even potential foe.
Here though… not so much. It was more of a den of thieves who wanted to work for my father but may have other intentions toward him.
That didn’t stop me though. With Pa avoiding me, this was me stepping up my game.
He was still fucking avoiding me, but I got his attention now, big time and I knew the little skin tight body con I was wearing would piss him off.
Like the king he was, he was sitting at the head of a circle with the men gathered around him.
However, he practically flew over to me when he saw me walk in like I was waltzing into a party.
Grabbing me by my arm, he hustled me over to the side of the room and scowled so deeply I thought he would breathe fire.
“Fuck, Jia!” he growled. He didn’t normally swear at me, but I guess it was an expression of his displeasure. “What the fuck are you doing here? And, who let you in?”
I wouldn’t tell him that. Honestly, I couldn’t quite remember the guy’s name myself. I promised the man he’d get to keep his life though, so I wasn’t going to rat him out. What got me in was the whole look. Wave a pair of tits in a guy’s face the right way and you could make him do whatever you wanted.
“That is not the problem here. I need to speak to you,” I answered in a nonchalant manner that pissed him off even more.
“Jia, you are working hard to cross me the wrong way. If you weren’t my daughter, I swear to God –”
“You’d what Pa, kill another man’s daughter?” I held his gaze and intensified my glare. “Is that what you’d do? Kill her if she annoyed you?” My voice shook and my soul quivered when I thought of the reality of it.
The truth was… he might.
The women here couldn’t have been older than me.
Living this life, I’d had to open my mind to a lot. Not that I was accepting of it, but I’d had to learn to live with what I saw and what I knew. Live with what my father did for a living and the fact that the consequences of it had taken my mother away from me.
“Jia, you cannot stay here,” he stated, baring his teeth.
“I’m staying. I’m definitely staying because we need to talk. Armand… you’ve been avoiding talking to me about him. Why would he get the impression that it would be okay to marry me? That you would allow someone like him to just have me.”
I’d been seething since the other night. Seething with the knowledge and the angst, feeling sick every time Armand looked at me like he already owned me. Then the little comments would come and twist me up from the inside out.
