- Chapter 8
THEO
She was cute, the way she thought I didn’t have any idea where she was really going. As Abby got out of the SUV, I saw her walk into the apartment building next to the storage units. I had been there before; many girls I knew kept their things in there. Sometimes it was just because they didn’t want their roommates stealing them, and sometimes it was because they didn’t have a place to stay at all. I wasn’t exactly sure what Abby’s situation was, but I was positive that she would eventually tell me.
For the time being, I knew it would be easier for her if I just left to get some coffee. She had seemed so nervous about me bringing her to her apartment. It was a sign I had seen many times before.
Most of the girls I found to work for me were genuinely good girls, they had just come on such hard times that being an escort seemed like a really good way to get back on their feet. I didn’t fault them for it; I loved the women who worked for me and only wanted to do what I could to help them.
Being an escort was very lucrative for my girls, and it was true, they could get back on their feet very quickly. Within a month of starting with my VIP Escorts, most girls had their own apartments without even needing to have a roommate. Although, sometimes they liked to have roommates while they saved their money up for something special that they had wanted for a long time.
“Mario, watch in the mirror to see if she leaves the apartment,” I said to him as we stopped at a light two blocks away.
“Yep, she’s going to the storage building next door.”
I just smiled. There was no need to call her out on it, but I did want to know if she had a place to stay at all. If she didn’t have a safe place to live, I needed to do something about that. Whether she came to work for me or not, I hated the idea of any woman being on the streets and not having a safe roof over her head; especially in the winter.
“Can you get me the usual and grab a large hot chocolate for Abby please,” I said as we pulled in front of the coffee shop.
Mario had turned into my assistant on some days and my driver on others. Sometimes, he was both. I made sure to pay him well, especially because he often got put in precarious positions; like the one the previous night with Kimberly. It was hard to find good help, and I knew a good man when I saw one. So I was happy to pay him well and keep Mario happy so he would continue to work for me.
We took our time driving around the block to make sure Abby had time to sneak back over to the apartment and pretend that was where she was coming out of. When we pulled up, she quickly came back out to the car.
She was dressed in a pair of tight black slacks and a blue T-shirt that matched her eyes almost perfectly. She had on a pair of black converse shoes and literally won my heart over in that moment. Her style was business casual with a splash of hipster; I loved that. It was what my own personal style was, but I hadn’t run across many women who could pull it off.
“Chuck Taylor’s?” I asked as I pointed to her shoes.
“A girl has to be comfortable,” she said, flashing me that killer smile.
I hated that I had to bring her with me to talk with Aldo, but it should be a quick conversation, and then I had a surprise for Abby. I still hadn’t decided if I was going to keep her for myself or not. Although I was leaning for giving it a go. So I was going to move forward with exposing her to the rich lifestyle that I led. Just in case, I wanted to move her into working for me. I had a huge surprise for her after our meeting with Aldo.
We pulled into the business park of Aldo’s shell company. Big G Entertainment was Aldo Gioacchino’s legitimate business. He didn’t do much of the work for the company anymore and had other people who ran it for him, but it was a very successful company. They had back lot sets and offered filming studios to music videos, television shows, and movies. His studios had office space people could rent as well as editing rooms. It was the perfect legitimate business to cover up all the illegal activities he had participated in over the years.
Aldo had been the one who gave me a hard money loan to start my escort business almost ten years before. It was Aldo who had urged me to set up legitimate businesses as well to help cover up the money I had coming in. Especially when I purchased my home, it had become too difficult to tell people I was just investing and making that kind of money.
But Aldo Gioacchino was a bad motherfucker, and I knew better than to get on his bad side. Our meeting was simple; I just needed to tell him face to face what had happened with his guy and Kimberly the previous night. I certainly wasn’t going to apologize for kicking his guys ass, but Aldo wouldn’t want that. He just needed me to know my place and understand that he was more powerful than I was. It was a game to him, life in general, and Aldo wanted to make sure everyone knew he was in charge of the game.
“Now, that’s a beautiful woman,” Aldo said as he ignored me and walked right up to Abby and grabbed her hand. “Theo, what on earth are you doing with such a magnificent creature?”
Aldo gently took Abby’s hand and pulled it up to his lips. My stomach sank, and I instantly regretted bringing Abby with me to meet him. Aldo was in his early fifties, but he had a way with the ladies that even I couldn’t compete with. His ability to wow a woman half his age was something I admired normally, but when it came to Abby, I didn’t like it at all.
At first, I had thought if she were there it would be easier for us to have a quick conversation and for him to keep his temper in check. But when I saw the way he looked at Abby, I knew I was in trouble.
Aldo liked that I ran an escort business. It ensured that he had the pick of girls to sleep with when his wife was away on one of her business trips. Or to play with them would be a better word, I didn’t think that Aldo liked to actually sleep with too many of the girls. He preferred some weird form of torture where he denied himself something that he wanted badly. The way he looked at Abby was familiar to me. It was how he looked at my girls when he wanted to keep one for himself.
But no! I hadn’t even had Abby yet. And she wasn’t working for me. She was simply a sweet girl I had met at the club. She wasn’t an escort, so he couldn’t insist on taking her out. Or so I said to myself as I watched him talk to her.
“This is my friend Abby,” I said as I stood off to the side.
“Abigail Tessaro,” she said, looking back at him with her beautiful blue eyes.
Internally I begged her to be mean to him. To stop looking at him or, at least, pull her hand away. But she didn’t. Instead, Abby was sweet and smiled at him. She looked him right in the eyes and showed confidence and power in her stance. She was being herself, and I couldn’t fault her for that, but damn, I wanted to drag her back to the SUV and get her away from Aldo as quickly as possible.
I hated myself for bringing her there.
“Well, Miss Abigail. You aren’t from New York are you? But you look very familiar to me,” Aldo said with a smile. “You served me and my wife breakfast the other day, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir. I work at Henderson’s. Your wife is so beautiful; you are a lucky man,” Abby said as she finally pulled her hand away from him.
Abby had met him already? That was an odd coincidence.
“You impressed my wife. She liked you a lot. So did I,” Aldo said as he continued to look at her.
Aldo was very good with the women. He didn’t need to hire escorts at all; he could easily get any woman he wanted to sleep with him. But he liked the emotional simplicity of having an escort as his side woman. They never got emotionally attached. They never threatened to tell his wife. And he always picked my most beautiful women to hang out with. I thought his wife probably knew about his women, though, and I had even heard rumors that she liked to play with the girls as well.
He was one of the guys I trusted to take out my girls on their first dates. He would wine and dine them and didn’t even require that they sleep with him. He liked his girls young, beautiful and unaware that they were about to become highly paid escorts. One of the things he enjoyed most was seducing a woman into the lifestyle of an escort. He preferred that they were naive to the world so he could play his games with them.
I needed to keep Abby away from him! My stomach clenched tight as the urge to pull Abby away from him almost overcame me. I couldn’t stand to see him flirting with her; I couldn’t stand to see her being nice to him.
At that moment, I decided I was keeping her for myself. I was not bringing her into the business at all. No way! I had never felt so strongly about a woman when she was around Aldo, and it had to mean something. I was in unchartered territory but felt like I needed to try and see what a real relationship would be like with a woman like Abby.
“Thank you, sir. And you are right, I’m not from here. I’m from Wichita, Kansas,” Abby said.
Aldo instantly broke into laughter as both Abby and I looked at each other. We weren’t quite sure why Kansas made him laugh so much. But neither of us wanted to ask him about it. Aldo was the kind of guy who could break out in maniacal laughter and everyone else around would just laugh too because we didn’t want to question him.
“Can we talk for a minute, Aldo?” I asked as I motioned to his office off in the corner.
“Sure,” he said. “Now you don’t go anywhere beautiful lady. I’ve got more things I’d like to talk to you about.”
Abby just smiled and shrugged her shoulders as Aldo and I went to his office. She was sweet to humor the guy. But I wasn’t about to give him any time alone with her. No matter how badly Aldo wanted her, Abby wasn’t going to be his.
“That girl, what’s the story?” Aldo said the second we got into his office.
“She’s just my date from last night. I met her at a dance club.”
“Are you grooming her? I’ll take her out.”
“No. She’s legit, and I’m not grooming her.”
“Now that’s too bad. She could make you a lot of money,” Aldo said as he sat back in his desk.
“Remember, I’m trying to go legit now.”
“It takes a long time to make the transition. You’re not going totally legit, and a girl like that isn’t going to date an escort owner. I’ve been working on it for over ten years and still can’t quite go one hundred percent legitimate. It just doesn’t pay well.”
“Anyways, I’m sorry for kicking your guy’s ass. I really didn’t know he was yours until after the fact.”
“It’s alright. I took care of him when I heard what happened. But you really shouldn’t be letting that kind of scum date your girls. It’s bad business. We’ve talked about this before. What happened to your screening?”
“I’ve been busy with my new businesses, and Jack has taken over. I talked to him about it, though.”
“Theo, you’re like a son to me. But you are putting yourself and everyone around you at risk when shit like this goes down. It can’t happen again. I’m tired of killing guys just because you fucked up.”
I swallowed hard at his words. I hadn’t realized he had murdered Rocco over the events of the previous night. That was the problem when you dealt with a man like Aldo, ‘taking care’ of a guy meant something totally different than to the rest of the world.
“I’m sorry, Aldo. I appreciate your insight. I’ll do better.”
“You better. I made you Theo, and I can take this all away from you just as quickly. You need to be smart. The only reason I worked with you, in the beginning, was because you were smart. Let’s not lose sight of that.”
“I understand. Thank you,” I said, turning to leave.
Aldo followed me out and went right up to Abby again. I couldn’t take it. I wanted to just leave right then and there, but I also didn’t want to get Aldo any angrier at me. We didn’t see each other too often anymore, but I still gave him a cut of my business each month, and he still ensured that the police weren’t knocking down my door to arrest me. We had a good working relationship that I certainly didn’t want to mess up.
“Do you have family back home in Kansas?” he asked her.
“Yes, two sisters. They are 18 and 21. I send money back to them to help them out when I can,” she added.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
“That’s really sweet of you. You know I have a big party I have to go to at the end of the week, and my wife is regretful that she won’t be able to come. Would you consider coming with me? I’d be more than happy to pay you for your time. It would be doing me a big favor.”
Fuck! He was doing it. Aldo Gioacchino was recruiting Abby to be an escort or to be his girl. Fuck!
Abby looked at me and then back at Aldo.
“I don’t know. Only if it’s alright with Theo; I don’t want to be rude.”
Abby looked at me, and I could see in her eyes that she wasn’t going to say yes. All I needed to do was tell her I wanted to spend time with her and she would turn him down right then and there.
There are always moments in your life that you look back on and clearly regret. That was one of those moments for me. I hesitated just long enough, and Aldo took over.
“Oh, Theo won’t mind. Will you friend? And I’ll give you ten thousand dollars for your troubles. My friends can be a real bore, and putting up with them for the evening will be hard on you,” Aldo said.
I fucking hated him. If he didn’t have the ability to get me sent to jail for my entire life, I would have punched him right in the face at that very moment. But Aldo just wasn’t the kind of man you wanted to get on his bad side; so I just stood there silently.
“What?” Abby squealed. “Ten thousand dollars?”
She tried to calm herself down and not look so excited, but there was no stopping her. She smiled and hugged him and no longer looked over toward me for approval to say yes. I could tell the money was important to her, but I had ten thousand dollars I could have loaned her if she needed it so badly. I hated that Aldo was walking all over me and trying to steal her away.
“So is that a yes?” Aldo asked as he eyed me and smiled.
“Yes, I’d love to keep you company with your boring friends.”
“Alright, we better get going. Talk to you later Aldo,” I said as I tried to control my temper.
He was a slimy bastard for sideswiping me like that. I had decided to keep her out of the business, and he went and threw a bunch of money at her and totally undermined any ability I had of keeping her as my girlfriend.
The disappointment was palpable as we got into the SUV. I was disappointed in myself for not speaking up and telling her I didn’t like the idea. I was disappointed that I didn’t offer her the money to help her family. I was utterly disappointed in myself for how I had reacted.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Abby asked as she squeezed my hand. “It’s not a date or anything. He’s married. I’ll just keep him company and that’s it.”
“Sure, it’s fine,” I reluctantly said.
It was clear to me she had no idea that she had just agreed to be Aldo Gioacchino’s escort. Many girls had started their way into the escort business with a single date alongside Aldo; I could only hope that Abby wouldn’t end up wanting in the business.