Chapter Eighteen
ROXANNE
After talking with PJ, it was clear that she had book smarts, but not street smarts. I felt like there was no way she was going to make it into Stephano’s house. If, by some miracle, she did make it into his house, he would quickly see through her plan and realize that she was not really from overseas at all.
It drove me nuts that Jackson was pushing me out of being involved in the investigation. I knew what was going on just as well as PJ and the others. I was invested in helping Ana and it was more than just a job to me. I wanted to change my entire life and I was going to start by being there to get Ana out safely. Deep down, I knew I had a much better chance with Stephano than PJ or any of the guys could have. I knew him so much better than all of them combined.
I couldn’t just stand by and watch as the whole operation went down in smoke. Ana’s life was still on the line and I couldn’t risk having her sent overseas. It had become personal now, and I was more determined than ever to make a difference and save her. She was a nice girl and didn’t deserve what was happening to her.
The last few days with Jackson had opened up my heart more than I even knew was possible. I couldn’t remember the last time I had passionately cared about a cause. But there I was, worried to death that something bad was going to happen to Ana.
If my plan worked out, then Jackson would have to look at me as more than just some girl who was there for him to have fun with. He would have to look at me as someone he could work with and certainly someone who deserved to be paid $250,000 for helping rescue Ana. I wasn’t a charity case, and I didn’t need Jackson to protect me. I had been looking out for myself my entire life.
The best way to get Stephano on my side was to make sure he knew he was in control. He didn’t like it when the women who worked for him thought for themselves. This had been an area of contention between the two of us the entire time I had worked with him. But I knew right away what I had to do in order to gain his sympathies and get inside his house.
“Punch me,” I said to Michaela.
“Um, hi, Roxy, it’s good to see you, too. And no, I’m not going to punch you. But I did tell you never to call me again.”
“I didn’t call. This time, I came to see you,” I said with a smile. “Come on, I’ve been gone and Stephano is going to be pissed. Just punch me, please.”
“I’m going to punch you, but not because you want me to. I’m going to punch you because you’re putting me in danger by coming here. Stephano could be following you and you led him right to my work.”
“Then punch me.”
Without hesitation, Michaela punched me right in the mouth. I felt the sting of it as the pain radiated through my entire jaw. Soon, I felt the wet trickle of the blood as it fell from my split open lip.
Michaela and I had our differences, but she knew as well as I did that there was no messing around with Stephano. If I was going to go back to him and beg for him to help take care of me, I needed to look like some serious shit had happened.
I still didn’t know if Stephano had actually told his goon to strangle me behind the club. I didn’t think he had said any such thing, but I really had no guarantee. I could have been walking right in Stephano’s house when he wanted me dead. There was no safety net, no right or wrong, I had to just go with my gut.
“Thanks,” I said as I turned to leave.
“You be safe. You know he’s no one to mess around with. I can help you if you ever decide to actually get away from him.”
“Thanks again, Michaela. Take care of yourself.”
I knew she didn’t hate me. Michaela was just trying to protect herself from what she knew Stephano was capable of. I would be doing the exact same thing if I still lived in Miami and had tried to escape Stephano. The thing Michaela didn’t understand was Stephano knew exactly where she was. He always kept track of his girls after they left him, just in case he ever needed a favor. The girls thought they had gotten away from him, but he never truly let them get away. He always kept them in his sights.
My plan had always been to get far away from Miami, so far away that he wouldn’t bother looking for me. I had thought about moving out to Seattle or Portland. Anyplace that was on the west coast would have been just perfect.
After meeting Jackson, though, I started to think about what life would be like if I really had a normal life. It was motivating to meet him and to have a semi-normal relationship with a man. Even if Jackson and I didn’t last after we rescued Ana, I would always be grateful to him for opening my eyes to what a normal life I could have away from Stephano.
I didn’t take a taxi, and instead opted to walk to Stephano’s house from Michaela’s salon. It was early in the morning still, but I knew Stephano could track down a taxi if I took it to his house. He would find out where I had been and even find out where it had originally picked me up at the hotel before going to Michaela’s. I couldn’t risk that for Jackson and everyone else, so I walked.
As I approached the front security guard, I took off my sunglasses so I could look him in the eyes. I had made an effort to smear my makeup so it looked like I had been crying. I was carrying the high heels and had dried blood from my broken lip on my face.
“I’m just going to see a friend,” I said as I looked the man in the eyes.
“Okay,” he said without asking me another thing.
I had to assume that the security guards had more than a few women coming and going from Stephano’s house. They probably didn’t consider a woman in a miniskirt and bare feet as a threat to him. Although, I was a huge threat to Stephano. I was going to get Ana out of his house – and any of the other women he had there. It was a fact that I was going to help take him down.
“I need to see Stephano,” I said as a man came to his gate.
“He’s busy.”
“Tell him Roxy is here.”
The man stepped away from the gate and talked into his walkie-talkie before he returned and opened the gate. I knew Stephano would let me in. I knew there was no way he could turn down the opportunity to tell me I was wrong and he was right.
Or, Stephano was letting me into his house so he could finish the job that he set his goon out to do the other night. I felt my heart beating faster as I walked toward the door. I could have just willingly brought myself to the home of Stephano Copal when he wanted me dead.
I felt sweat start to form on my brow and I wiped it off before Stephano could see me. I couldn’t let him know how scared I was of him. He had to think I was so scared of the man I had been with that I was willing to come back to him. I needed him to see that he was needed by me. That was the only way I would ever be able to convince him to let me stay in his home.
As I walked inside, it looked surprisingly normal. There wasn’t a big party going on and there weren’t dozens of security guards all around as I had expected. There were expensive paintings on the walls and high end furnishings throughout the house. It was a very stylish house that could have been in a magazine even. It surprised me.
“Have a seat, he’ll be right here,” the guard said as he pointed to the plush couch in the middle of the room.
“So, your independence didn’t treat you so well?” Stephano said as he walked in from the kitchen.
He was dressed casually in some linen pants and a button up silk shirt. It looked like he had just woken up, and I felt like it was the perfect time for me to come and see him. He seemed to be in a good mood, and I felt at ease very quickly. It certainly didn’t appear that he wanted me dead at all.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted something normal. He seemed like a good guy.”
“They all seem like good guys until they don’t get what they want. Then they turn ugly. Do you want me to take care of him?”
“No. But he knows where I live and I didn’t feel safe going back there.”
“The boys say he’s a good fighter. I’m surprised that’s all that he did to you.”
“I don’t think he meant to hit me. He said he was sorry right after it happened. But I couldn’t stay. I thought he was different. I thought he was the one,” I said as I started to cry hysterically.
If Stephano had ever really paid attention to who I was, he would have known right then and there that I didn’t cry. The tears were fake and only drawn up to make him uncomfortable.
Stephano hated when his girls cried. It was a weakness of his that he just couldn’t get over. In the beginning months, he spent a lot of time trying to harden girls up so they weren’t so emotional. Or he drugged them so they didn’t care as much about their emotions.
“Stop, you can stay here. But I’m not letting you dance anymore. I think we need to move on to something else. If you want a man, I’ll find you one. Or if you want to stay here, you can help me with the girls. How about that?”
I looked cautiously up at him. Giving me the job to work with the girls was by far the perfect position for me to help Ana out. But it put me in a very difficult position, too. I had seen the way the girls were treated, and I didn’t like it. I wasn’t sure I would be able to treat them as poorly as he required, even if it was only for a day.
“Like a good one, a good man?” I asked.
“Good ones, bad ones, men are all the same. I’ll find you a rich one.”
“Okay,” I said and nodded my head. “I’ll help you with the girls until we find me someone. Does that work?”
“Yes, that will be fine.”
I just needed a reason to stay with him. I needed him to trust me and I needed to not be strong in front of him. It was harder than I expected as I tried to push down the independence of my normal personality so I could let Stephano take care of me.
“Go downstairs with the rest of the girls. They will clean you up and then we need to go into one of the clubs so a couple girls can dance this afternoon. You can help them, maybe even show them some moves so they look good on camera.”
“Okay, thank you,” I said as I looked down at the ground and made my way to the back stairs.
The downstairs was just as big as the main floor, but it was designed more like a sorority house. There were at least eight bedrooms and each of them had bunk beds. There was a main living room area and a small kitchen.
I expected to see a bunch of women tied up or malnourished. But instead, I saw girls sitting around watching television and eating oatmeal. Out of all the women, I probably looked the worst. They did seem sort of out of it and dazed, but they didn’t seem all that malnourished.
Instantly, I thought of PJ, Jackson, Nate, and Chase and what they were going to be doing with Stephano today. They certainly weren’t prepared to find the girls actually happy and healthy.
“Roxanne,” I heard a timid voice say.
“Ana. Hi, it’s good to see you,” I said as I tried to sound happy to see her but not too enthusiastic.
“What happened to you?” she asked me.
She looked good, not quite like she had looked when I saw her last, but she looked better than I had expected. There was a glazed over look in her eyes, though, and I felt like she had to be on some sort of drugs.
“Bad night,” I said as I lightly touched my split lip. “How are you? You look good.”
“Thanks, I’m feeling really good. Sort of tired, you know, because I hardly have slept much. But we have had lots of good food this week so I feel better.”
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” I asked as I looked at her.
Something was off. She seemed different than she had been when she was at my apartment. She was still timid, but there was something weird about the way she was talking to me. She was hyper-verbal and rambling, her eyes didn’t seem to focus on me, and she looked like she needed another fix of whatever drug it was that she was taking.
“Oh, I’ve been in a lot of pain. But I have good pain medication. It just makes it hard to sleep sometimes. But Stephano gave me some good sleeping medication, I just am afraid to take it with the pain medication. You know, I don’t want to take too many drugs.”
Ana was rambling a bit, and I needed to figure out what all she was taking before she took more of it.
“I’m in a lot of pain. What do you have?”
“Oh, yeah, follow me. I’ll show you.”
Ana brought me back to a large bathroom at the end of the hall. She opened a cabinet that was filled with every kind of prescription drug possible. There was pain medication, anxiety meds, depression meds, and pretty much a drug for anything that was wrong. Each of them were labels with handwritten notes that read, “wake up,” “sleep,” “feeling sad,” and “pain.”
“Do you just take whatever you want?” I asked.
“Well, here. Take one of these. I take three, but if it’s your first time, you should only take one,” Ana said as she grabbed a pill from the bottle labeled “pain.”
“What is it?”
“It’s methadone. It works really good. You might feel drugged up at first. But it will take away the pain.”
Methadone was one of the strongest pain medications I knew of. Girls that had had their faces fractured and eye sockets broken would take that stuff. It certainly wasn’t for someone who was walking around without any visible broken bones.
“That’s a little strong for me, I’m all right for now,” I said.
“You should probably take it or one of Stephano’s men will make you take two of them,” Ana said as she looked up at the camera in the corner of the room.
I was starting to see what was going on. The girls needed to be drugged up so they would listen to Stephano, but he didn’t pick light drugs. He picked things that would get the girls addicted. That way, even if they wanted to leave, they wouldn’t leave because they needed their drugs so bad. It was sad, and I could only imagine the withdrawals that the girls went through after he sold them off. Those men probably had to deal with some really dangerous medical issues.