Chapter 4: Serena
I left Papa sitting in his recliner with a cold beer in one hand and the TV remote in the other, and rushed home to get ready for work. I did my hair and makeup, packed a bag for the weekend, and drove the Beamer north out of the city.
It took nearly two hours to arrive at the indoor parking garage where I’d leave my car for the weekend. All Club D employees—all drop-dead gorgeous women (including me ;o)—had to leave their cars at the garage and board buses with blackout windows for the thirty-minute ride to the estate high in the mountains north of San Jose.
Club D’s exact location was a closely-guarded secret for obvious reasons, as was its ownership and membership roster.
And getting a job there was a little like joining the CIA.
You had to be invited just to apply to work there in any capacity, then agree to monthly drug testing to keep the job. One strike, and you were out. You had to pass a background check, have no criminal record, and no history of bad habits that could be used to make you reveal Club D’s secrets.
There was random psychologic testing, polygraph testing, and monthly performance reviews with the director, Mr. Lemon, and his senior staff, to make sure things were cool.
You would never find Club D jobs listed on some public job board. Mr. Lemon spotted me working in a cocktail dive bar two years ago and offered me the chance to apply. To work there, you had to sign a legal document that basically said the Devil would get your soul and Club D’s lawyers would take the rest if you ever breathed a word about the club’s existence. No girl had ever broken that pledge that I knew of because it would be liked killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
Well, I sort of broke it when I told Amy Rossetti about Club D and brought her along as my guest one weekend. I might have been fired, but luckily Amy caught the eye of Denny’s partner, Isaac Hanson, and they were now living happily ever after. Mr. Lemon was going to send me into the pits of hell for that one, but Isaac intervened.
In exchange for our undying loyalty and discretion, Club D paid very well. Waitresses like me typically raked in six figures a year. The working girls, the ones who took the members upstairs, could make ten times that.
Mr. Lemon had a sign in his office that read: The 5 Things Required To Keep Any Secret: Loyalty. Trust. Discretion. Greed. Ignorance.
Part of that ignorance was not knowing exactly where Club D was located, hence the blackout windows in the bus. The ride to Club D was a little creepy at first, not knowing where you were going and not seeing outside until you got there, but I had gotten used to it. I spent the time doing my nails or listening to music or chatting with the other girls. Working at Club D was a little like going away to a ritzy camp every weekend, except for the rich guys who sometimes thought it was okay to grab your ass, which could get them ejected no matter how much money they had.
I had to give Denny and the other founders credit: they went above and beyond to protect the girls who worked at Club D. Not just the high-end Escorts and Specialists, but the waitresses, servers, hostess, chefs, cleaning crew, dancers, and bartenders. There was a strict “hands off” policy in place, enforced by Mr. Lemon and his staff of very large, very intimidating security guards; all male, all former football buddies of founder Sammy Branniff, and all sworn to secrecy, and all loyal to a fault. They were like the Unsullied on Game of Thrones, only bigger and badder, if you could imagine that.
If a member got a little fresh with a waitress or tried to grope a dancer, he was quickly corrected like a little kid who’d broken a rule in Sunday School. Mr. Lemon, who dressed and acted like some dude from The Sopranos was always quick to step in. And if he couldn’t handle the situation, there were several hulks behind him who could. Not surprisingly, such occurrences were rare. The men knew the rules. They were not construction workers and thugs getting drunk and trolling for easy pussy.
They were all unbelievably rich, mostly older, and very well-behaved.
Besides, they could have anything they wanted once they were upstairs with a girl.
All they had to do was ask, agree to the price, and the world was their oyster. At least for a little while.
* * *
“Did you see Denny Chambers on TV this morning?” another waitress named Rosalie asked as the bus started up the winding drive to the main house. We couldn’t see outside, but after taking this ride every weekend for two years, I could tell where we were. We had just turned into the front gates and were pulling up the drive. In a couple of minutes, the bus would pull around to the back of the main house and let us all out at the guest house where we could dump our stuff and get ready for our shift, which started at midnight.
“I saw it.” I smiled at the dreamy look on her face. “He looks good on TV, doesn’t he?”
She bit her bottom lip and let her eyes go soft. “He’s so fucking hot.”
“Well, he is obviously a big fan of pussy,” I said, smirking at her. “Why don’t you introduce him to yours?”
“Trust me, I’ve tried,” she said, huffing. “He’s too busy with the working girls to pay much attention to me.”
“You’re probably better off,” I said. “He’s kind of a pig.”
“He’s a hot pig,” she said. “I’ve heard that he’s amazing in bed.” She lowered her voice and leaned in. “Carina told me she would fuck Denny for free, he was that good.”
“I’m not sure how good a character reference Carina is,” I said with a sour face. “She’s pretty much a sperm repository. Every time she looks my way I feel like I need a shower.”
“Don’t be so judgmental, Serena,” she said, giving me a scolding eye. “She’s just like us, working her ass off to support her family.”
“She has a family?” I felt the heat of shame wash over my cheeks. “I didn’t know.”
“She supports her parents back in Russia, her brothers and sisters, grandparents. And I think she even has a couple of kids of her own.”
“Wow, now I feel like a douche,” I said. “Still, I could not do what she does, no matter how badly I needed the money.”
“Would you fuck him?” Rosalie asked as the bus slowed to a halt and the airbrakes hissed. I frowned at her.
“What?”
“Denny Chambers.” Rosalie flexed her perfect eyebrows. “He’s asked me about you.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, looking for any hint of a lie. I saw none. “He asked you about me?”
“Yep, a few weeks ago. You were serving a big table of dudes and Denny was at the bar and he asked me your name.”
“You’re lying.”
“Swear to God,” she said, holding up her right hand.
“What did you tell him?”
She grinned. “I told him you were a lesbian and that you hated men. Especially rich ones with big cocks.”
“You’re awful,” I said, bumping her with my elbow.
The door at the front of the bus opened and the thirty or so girls onboard slid out of the seats and started pulling their bags from the overhead compartments.
Rosalie pulled down her bag, slid the strap over her shoulder, and paused to give me one more smile before starting up the aisle. She said, “Seriously, I told him your name was Serena. And he asked if you were single and I said I thought you were.”
I blinked at her for a moment and held my breath. Denny Chambers was asking about me? The hot billionaire with the dark good looks and smoldering blue eyes… I mean… not that I had noticed. Much. I felt a little tingle between my legs.
“And?”
She shrugged. “And what?”
I huffed at her. “And what did he say then, Rosalie?”
She thought for a moment. “He said ‘interesting’.”
“Just interesting?”
“Just interesting.”
Interesting…
Denny Chambers said interesting...
What the heck did that even mean?