“Thank you so much!” Alexa squeals, repeating her words for the hundredth time since she stepped into my office. Reaching across the table, she takes my hands in hers and, squeezing them tightly, she looks into my eyes. “I don’t have the words to thank you, Cara.”

I smile at her, trying to hide the pain shooting up my arms as she crushes my fingers in her hands. For as small of a girl as she is, she sure has a lot of strength.

“Just doing my job,” I tell her, taking my hands back and flexing my fingers - yup, they might be numb but they still work.

“You taught him a really good lesson… I doubt Ben will pull shit like that ever again. I bet he’ll think twice before crossing another woman. I can’t believe I fell for him and I --”

She continues to drone about her ex-boyfriend, her monologue filled with gleeful hate, and I just nod. When Alexa goes on a tangent like this, there are two things you shouldn’t do - you don’t interrupt her and you don’t comment on anything she's saying. You do that and I guarantee you that you just added another forty minutes to her monologue. Just let her speak and, before you know it, it’ll all be over.

Hopefully.

“...and the look on his face! Priceless!” She continues, her eyes glinting as she remembers the way I managed to expose her lovely ex-boyfriend Ben.

When Cara came up to me, suspicious that Ben wasn’t the man he said he was, I immediately got to work. It didn’t take me long to realize that Ben wasn’t even his real name.

Presenting himself as an airline pilot, he was just running a con. Dazzling women with his quick-witted responses and tailored suits, Ben’s game was a simple one - he entered a relationship with women he felt could be manipulated and then, after a few months, he’d clean their bank accounts and disappear into thin air.

Unfortunately for him, Alexa wasn’t as gullible as he expected. She came into the Lust Muscle offices, asked for my help, and I got to work right away. Pretending to be a rich widow that had no idea on how to manage her money, I ‘accidently’ bumped into Ben in one of his favorite bars. Red flags went up as he started to flirt with me, but I decided to dig deep into his history.

I went on a few dates with him, slowly piecing the puzzle together behind his back, and I managed to discover that ‘Ben’ didn’t even exist - his real name was Jeremy, and he already had a warrant for his arrest in at least three states.

I took the proof I had to Alexa and, after hearing her cry and rant for what seemed like an eternity, she finally decided to inform the police of the whereabouts of her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.

We accompanied the police to her apartment, and you can imagine the surprise on his face when he saw me and Alexa together, two cops flanking us. He didn’t even say a word - his eyes just bulged in their sockets as he realized what was going on, and then he tried to run out the door. Unfortunately for him, the NYPD officers accompanying us knew exactly how to handle scum like ‘Ben’.

One punch was all it took to bring him down to his knees.

I have to admit, though - as bad I felt for Alexa’s ruined relationship, it felt good to see a piece of shit like ‘Ben’ being hauled off by the police.

Good riddance, asshole.

“Oh, by the way,” Alexa says, remembering the purpose behind her visit. She rummages through her purse with one hand, and then fishes out a neatly folded check from the inside. She slaps it down on my desk and then slides it toward me. “Here it is!”

Still smiling, I pick the check and, without looking at its value, I save it inside one of the drawers under my desk. I don’t need to look at it to know that Alexa has paid me handsomely. You see, this isn’t my first rodeo with her. This whole ‘Ben’ situation is the second time she has used my services, and I made a very nice profit the first time I did business with her.

You’re probably wondering what I do for a living, right? It’s quite simple, actually: I’m a merchant of vengeance, a dealer of just retribution. I grab men by the balls and twist them hard, making them feel the pain they’ve caused to the women that loved them.

Now, how I do things changes on a case-by-case basis, but rest assured: I’m a bad girl, and I do whatever it takes to succeed.

“Thank you again, Cara!” Alexa repeats again, and I just give her my professional smile. “Now, I gotta go,” she continues, looking at her tiny wristwatch. “John is waiting for me.”

“John?” I ask her, raising one eyebrow. Oh, I almost regret asking.

“Yeah, he’s my new boyfriend, and he’s so sweet and amazing and --” She continues for almost five minutes, and I just nod patiently. Inside, I can’t help but wonder about why people such as Alexa jump back into the dating scene after situations such as the one she went through. Is it masochism or just plain naivete? Either way, it seems that some women just like to have their hearts broken over and over again.

I’m not one of these women.

Yup, I’m one of the women that don’t really believe in love. I mean, do people really believe that the “happy ever after” really exists? Yeah, right. The way I see it, love is just like cigarettes - it’s supposed to make you feel cooler but, in the end, it just rots you from the inside out.

There’s only one type of love I believe in, and that’s self-love. Always look out for numero uno. After all, the only person that truly cares about you is… well, you.

You might think I’m being too harsh, but that’s okay. This is how I live my life and I’ve been doing just fine.