When Nyssa finally convinced Kimmie it was safe to leave Sebastian’s bedroom and head outside, there was a town car waiting in the front of the condominium complex, a familiar-looking chauffeur waiting to usher them into the backseat.
Kimmie followed Nyssa’s lead, but she still jerked a little bit in alarm as the car lurched into motion, heading in the direction of Katrina’s brothel.
“It’s okay, Kimmie. It’s all okay,” Nyssa said soothingly. “Sebastian took care of it. I promise.” She spoke with perfect confidence, even though in all honesty she still had no idea what was going on. In the back of her mind, she was a little worried that the whole thing was an elaborate trap. Maybe the Giustinis found Sebastian and put a gun to his head, forcing him to lure Nyssa and Kimmie back to the brothel so they could be killed, too. No, Nyssa admonished herself silently. He wouldn’t do that. Even with a gun to his head. He wouldn’t put me in danger.
The town car eventually rolled to a stop in front of the old brothel, and Kimmie started shaking her head, trembling powerfully like a piece of sand tossed back and forth inside a tornado. “It’s okay, Kimmie,” Nyssa said again, rubbing her best friend’s knee. Kimmie was obviously traumatized at having to kill someone, even to save her own life, but Nyssa didn’t know exactly what to do to help. She probably should have insisted that Kimmie be brought somewhere else, anywhere other than the Giustini brothel, but she didn’t want to leave Kimmie’s side for a second. So she had to pull her out of the car by her wrist, tugging her along like dead weight. “I’m going to protect you, Kimmie. Just like you protected me. It’s going to be all right,” Nyssa said reassuringly as she dragged Kimmie into the brothel.
“I’m guessing he wants us to meet him in the parlor,” Nyssa said to herself, pulling Kimmie along to Katrina’s favorite room in the building.
When Nyssa opened the door and stepped aside, her jaw almost dropped open in utter shock. “What? I—what?” she stuttered out helplessly.
There, in the center of the room, were Katrina and Papa Giustini, handcuffed to each other, staring stonily at the wall behind Nyssa’s head. Sebastian was standing behind them, holding a gun, while various guards were stationed at other points in the room, strapped with weapons all over their bodies.
“Welcome to our new domain, princess!” Sebastian announced. “Or should I say queen?”
“Give me a fucking break,” Katrina muttered under breath.
“What was that?” Sebastian said, dangling the tip of his gun in Katrina’s face. “I didn’t quite hear you.”
“Nothing,” Katrina mumbled.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Sebastian spat. “You see, you’re not the queen anymore, Katrina. You were a spoiled little daddy’s girl, and now you’re going to be a very poor little daddy’s girl. I was going to let you guys keep your side of the business while I went away to bigger and better things. But you just couldn’t let me go, could you? Worse, you had to go after the mother of my child. And that is something that I can never forgive.”
“Sebastian, boy-o, please, just listen,” Papa Giustini started to say, but Sebastian cut him off with deep, throaty laughter.
“Don’t waste your breath pleading with me. You must know, though, what your daughter doesn’t. That you’re ruined. You’re over. You’re done with in this town. In the whole world, actually, because all of your henchmen that didn’t come over to support me are dead now. Gone.”
Nyssa stepped a little deeper into the room, still gripping hard onto Kimmie’s wrist. “Sebastian, what is this? What are you doing? What’s going on?”
“They tried to kill you,” Sebastian said. “They tried to kill our baby. They have to pay. But I figured you should pick how they do that.”
“What? Why?” Nyssa asked.
“Because,” Sebastian said with a shrug. “You’re going to be my queen. You need to get used to this kind of decision-making. I’m going to need you to counsel me on everything from now on. We’re a team.”
Nyssa smiled a little, feeling a hint of excitement climb up her spine as she considered Sebastian’s offer. He was asking her to be his equal, his partner, his other half. It would mean a lot of responsibility, a lot of authority and power that Nyssa had never had before. It was honestly thrilling, but at the same time Nyssa felt a little fear unsettle her already unsteady stomach. She’d only ever been a streetwalker her whole adult life. How could she pretend to be anything else?
“Sebastian, thank you, but I don’t know if I can—if I should… you know. Decide on something like that,” Nyssa said sheepishly.
Sebastian frowned, furrowing his brows together and shaking his head. “No. It’s up to you.”
Katrina gasped softly and shut her eyes, breathing hard. Nyssa couldn’t be sure, but she had a feeling that her former madam and torturer was trying hard not to cry.
Despite everything—all the pain and worry, all the disrespect, all the fear that Katrina had forced her to feel—she felt bad for the woman. She wasn’t like Nyssa, after all. She hadn’t had to grow up on the streets, working hard for everything she ever had. She didn’t know what it was like to suffer, to struggle. To fight to stay alive. Somehow Nyssa thought that Katrina probably wasn’t capable of that.
“It’s up to me?” Nyssa said. “You promise? Whatever it is I say to do to them, you’ll do?”
Sebastian nodded, a solemn, serious look on his face. “I promise.”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” Nyssa said with a nervous laugh. She slowly let go of Kimmie’s hand, turning to look at her friend for a moment and making sure that she was relatively okay before looking back on the Giustinis. They looked so pathetic, so horribly weak, sitting there chained together on the ground. How could Nyssa ever make things worse for them? They’d already lost their empire, their power, their prestige, and their legacy. And yet they’d killed so many people, terrorized so many people. Even before Nyssa came here, they hurt her by killing her pimp. How many working girls had gone without protection, all because the Giustinis acted without a single drop of empathy for any other human being?
“I know what we have to do,” Nyssa whispered. She saw Katrina’s whole body go stiff, while her father bent his head down to the ground, sniffling a little.
“What is it, baby?” Sebastian asked, clearly getting a little impatient at this point. “Anything you want. Just tell me.”
“Let them go,” Nyssa said as confidently as she could. As soon as the words left her mouth, she knew they were right. This was what had to be done.
“What?” Sebastian and Kimmie said in union.
“What are you talking about?” Sebastian said.
“You can’t do that, Nyssa,” Kimmie interjected.
“They’re murderers. Psychopaths. They can’t be loose on the street,” Sebastian argued. “Besides, they could just come back and try to kill us. Of course, with all the guards I’ve got now, they wouldn’t get very far on their own, but it’d still be a pain in the ass.”
“I know. I know,” Nyssa said, blowing out her breath before slowly walking across the room to approach the Giustinis. “But I can’t let them win.”
“What do you mean?” Sebastian asked softly.
Nyssa stopped a few inches away from the Giustinis, staring down at them with as much disdain as she could muster. “These people walk through life thinking that everyone is as horrible and rotten on the inside as they are. That’s the only way they can live with themselves. Because it’s a dog-eat-dog world, right? And the survival of the fittest means that the ends justify the means and you have to do whatever it takes to survive and come out on top, even if it means hurting everyone else on the planet to do so.”
Katrina scoffed at Nyssa’s words, rolling her eyes, but she made no move to interrupt, so Nyssa kept going.
“They think that everyone is equally horrible. Well, I can’t live that way. I can’t imagine what it feels like, to live without hope. But it’s what they’re going to do, isn’t it, guys?” Nyssa knelt down low on the floor, meeting Katrina’s eyes. “You’re going to live for a very long time, Kat. And you’re going to suffer, but you’re not going to make me like you. I’ll never be like you.”
“Oh, yeah? And why’s that? Being a whore somehow made you more compassionate than me or something?” Katrina spat out harshly.
Nyssa shrugged. “Pretty much.” She got back on her feet and headed over to Sebastian, wrapping her arms around his neck to pull him in for a kiss but pulling away after a few moments to yell over her shoulder toward Katrina. “See, whores are people who sacrifice their bodies to help others. I’ll always be a whore, even though I doubt I’ll fuck more than one person for the rest of my life. But you, Katrina, you weren’t good enough to be a whore. And you never will be.”
“Whatever,” Katrina muttered, but there was something in her voice that Nyssa hadn’t ever heard before. Fear, with a healthy dose of shame.
“Untie them,” Sebastian said to the guards stationed around the room, who had been watching silently up to this point. “Untie them and throw them out on the street.”
“Sebastian, please, I—” Papa Giustini tried yet again to plead with his former employee, but Sebastian just shook his head and pressed a finger to his lips.
“Get out of the city. Get out of the country, even, just to be safe. Because if I ever see you again, I can’t promise you that I’ll be as merciful as my girl here. Get out.”
Katrina and Papa Giustini rushed out of the parlor, running down the hall toward the exit. Nyssa felt a deep sense of satisfaction as she heard the door slam behind them. There was no guarantee that they wouldn’t be back someday, but somehow Nyssa got the sense that they wouldn’t bother trying anytime soon, at the very least.
She turned around to look at the parlor, staring at every single inch of the place before turning to Sebastian again. “Let’s tear the curtains down,” she said.
“The curtains?” Sebastian said back to her, a little confused even though a slight smile started to spread across his face.
“Yeah,” Nyssa said. “I want to let some light in.”