I was staying in a shit motel at the edge of town, the sort of place where a man could still be anonymous. I paid in cash and paid double, just in case. Probably wouldn’t do much if the mafia came looking for us, but it might make the front desk guy hesitate for a second at least.

I pulled the car into the parking lot and killed the engine, glancing over at Hartley. “Here we are,” I said.

“Nice place.”

“I like it. Has charm.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Is that a hooker?”

I followed her gaze and spotted a women dressed in a tube top. She was clearly fucked up on meth and was absolutely a prostitute.

“That is in fact a lady of the night,” I said, grinning.

“Charming,” she said. “Like the rest of this town.”

I laughed and climbed out of the car. She followed me.

“Shouldn’t talk shit about Knoxville,” I said. “This is my home.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Really. I know you can’t tell, but my family had deep roots in this place.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, you know,” I said, shrugging. “Drugs, violence, and crime. The usual sort of shit that tears apart any family.”

I began to walk toward my room, but I could sense her hesitation. She lingered near the car, frowning at me.

“Come on,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Just one night,” she said. “One night only. Okay? And then we part ways forever.”

“Whatever you want, princess,” I said, laughing. “One night is all I’ll need anyway.”

She shook her head. “None of that. This is strictly business between us.”

“I’m always all business. Come on.”

I headed toward my room and she followed. We passed the methed-out hooker and I gave the poor woman a smile. She was too busy smoking her cigarette to notice, though. Hartley, to her credit, just ignored the woman. I was guessing Hartley had never seen the darkest parts of the human world, but if she had spent any serious time in Knoxville, she’d definitely seen a few things.

I could show her more. I could show her a lot of fucked up things in this world. There was something about the girl, something that drew me toward her. It was the lips and the body and the full blond hair, sure, but it was also something else about her. Sometimes you found a person who had a pull, a magnetic draw about them, and no matter what you thought or did, you found yourself gravitating toward them. This girl had that effect on me, and I couldn’t understand why. It’d been a very long time since a girl had made me feel that way. Not since the last time I was in Knoxville, all those years ago.

I walked up the steps toward the second floor and unlocked the last room, pushing the door open. Hartley followed me in and I smiled at her, gesturing. “This is your palace, my lady.”

She sighed. “It’s beautiful.”

I laughed and shut the door behind her. The room was pretty dingy as far as motels went. The bedspread was a vague, greenish puke color, and the furniture hadn’t been updated since the ’70s. The room smelled like smoke and the ceilings were a stained yellow color, though they were probably white at some point.

“Not much,” I said, “but it’s a bed and there aren’t any folks trying to kill us.”

She sat down at the small table pressed up against the front window. I drew the curtains shut.

“It’s gross, but then again it’s about average for this town.”

“There you go again, talking shit on Knoxville.”

“I can’t help it,” she said. “I was almost raped back there.”

“Fair play. Stay here.” I opened the door again.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

“Getting ice for that face. Go take a look in the mirror.”

She frowned, but I was already leaving, shutting the door behind me. I walked back down the walkway and down the steps toward the snack area. I grabbed an ice bucket from the corner and filled it up from the machine.

This girl was so far out of her depths, it was crazy. I couldn’t even begin to understand what she was doing in Knoxville and why she was fucking with the Dixie Mafia. She hadn’t been very talkative in the car, and I didn’t think it was time to push her too hard, considering the almost-rape and all. The girl needed a second to gather herself, which was why I’d decided to leave her alone.

I took my time filling up the bucket and slowly walking back. The hooker gave me a smile as I passed her, but she didn’t ask if I wanted anything. Probably off the clock, or maybe I didn’t look like the hooker type. She was right, but still, a man liked to be asked at least.

I paused outside the door. Hartley had been surprisingly together for a girl who was just nearly raped, but there had to be something beneath that hard exterior. I pressed my ear against the door and waited a second.

Sure enough, there it was, the soft sound of someone crying. I frowned and had the urge to get in there and comfort her, but I was just another strange man. Right now, she needed a second to herself to process what had almost happened to her.

And so I leaned up against the wall outside the door and crossed my arms.

It’d been a long time since I’d had anything to do with the Dixie Mafia, but I wasn’t a stranger to those fucking bastards. I remembered clear as day the last job I did for them, the job that pushed me away from a life of petty crime and helped make me want to enlist in the military.

I was just an idiot kid back then, didn’t know shit about the world, didn’t understand a damn fucking thing. I thought the only things in the world worth owning were large trucks and lots of land. My family had the land, or at least some of it, though they mostly just grew weed and raised chickens.

As for the truck, that was up to me to steal. The Dixie Mafia was still important in Knoxville back then, though they were on the fringe of things. But when one of their members, an asshole named Pate with a big beer gut and a scraggly beard, said they had a job for me, I was pretty quick to listen.

Pate wanted me to steal him a truck. He said that if I could pull it off, then he’d consider giving me his old one. To a dumbass kid who wanted more than anything to be a real gun-toting Dixie man, that sounded like a fucking dream. Plus, I might get my own truck out of the deal.

Before that, I’d never done anything but petty crimes. I shoplifted some shit, sold a little weed here and there, basically all the beginner criminal shit. This, though, this was the big leagues as far as I was concerned.

I was such a dumb fucking kid. I remembered the night I snuck onto my neighbor’s land, a guy who owned maybe ten piece-of-shit, beat-up trucks. I figured he wouldn’t even notice if one of them went missing. Of course, as soon as I got there, I had no fucking clue how to actually steal one.

My neighbor caught me trying to break one of the windows out. I ran, but not fast enough, because the cops showed up on my doorstep the next day. I got off with a warning, thankfully, since a record could’ve fucked my chances at becoming a SEAL. But the worst part of it was, Pate stopped by the following day and beat my ass bloody for letting him down.

That beatdown really soured me on the Dixie Mafia. They went from badass heroes to a bunch of petty thugs practically overnight.

I enlisted in the military not long later. There were other reasons, good fucking reasons, but that was one of them. My brother was another reason.

I snapped back to reality and pressed my ear against the door again. The crying had stopped or moved into another room, so I figured it was time to get in there before the ice melted. I unlocked the door and stepped inside.

Hartley was sitting on the chair, looking blindly toward the bathroom.

“Got the ice,” I said.

She looked at me and nodded. “Thanks.”

Her bruise had gotten worse it seemed in the last ten minutes. I walked into the bathroom and grabbed a little towel and then wrapped it around some ice. I gave the towel to Hartley, and she pressed the thing against her eye.

The sun was beginning to set outside as I walked over to the dresser and pulled out a drawer. Inside was a nice bottle of whisky I’d bought on my way into town, just for this sort of occasion. I grabbed two glasses, opened the bottle, and poured us drinks. I returned to the table, putting the glass in front of her and holding on to mine.

She tried to smile weakly. “I must look like a mess.”

“Actually, I’ve never been fucking harder,” I said. “A woman with a black eye and running makeup does it for me.”

“That’s sick,” she said, laughing.

“What can I say? I can overlook certain defects in favor of certain other qualities.”

“What sort of qualities are you talking here?”

“For example, those lips of yours. And fuck, that body in that pretty dress. Every man in that bar probably wanted you.”

She smiled weakly. “I doubt it. They were all too drunk to notice.”

“I noticed,” I said seriously. “Couldn’t keep my eyes off you.”

She blushed and looked away. “What were you doing in there anyway?”

“Killing time,” I said. “I was on my way to visit my brother.”

“He live in town?”

“Something like that,” I said, avoiding her question. “If it’s time to ask questions, I think we ought to have a talk.”

She sighed and nodded. “I guess you want to know what that was all about.”

“Seems like a good place to start.”

“There’s not much to the story, honestly. When the recession hit, my family’s peach farm started bleeding money. We took a loan from the mafia just to stay afloat. Years later, they wanted us to pay up, so I came here hoping to make a deal or at least to work off the debt.”

I shook my head, completely fucking amazed. “Are you insane?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. They seemed reasonable at first.”

“Fucking reasonable,” I said, laughing. “Let me guess. They wanted you to fuck your way out of debt?”

“Pretty much,” she said. “I was working at a diner near here, giving them every cent I made, but it wasn’t enough.”

“Can’t imagine that would be,” I said. “You’re one brave girl. You know that?”

“I don’t feel brave,” she said.

But she really fucking was. Any person who would come to the heart of Knoxville and offer to work for the Dixie Mafia to pay off a family’s debt was very fucking brave. Maybe a little fucking stupid, maybe a little naïve, but very, very brave.

“What’s your plan now then?” I asked her.

“Like I said. I’m heading out of town, back home.”

“They’ll follow you.”

“Probably, but at least there they won’t be able to rape me in the middle of the day.”

I grunted, nodding. “Very true.”

I sipped my drink as we lapsed into a short silence. She took a tentative sip before knocking her whole drink back. I laughed and poured her another.

“You can’t seem to win,” she said when I finished pouring. “You can’t win when you’re a good person. These bastards, they always seem to get the upper hand.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked, sitting back down.

“That’s just the way it is. Everyone knows it. Honest people get screwed.”

“Maybe that’s true,” I admitted, “but you should be dead in a ditch somewhere, if we’re being honest. You’re pretty lucky yourself.”

“Yeah,” Hartley said softly. “Maybe that’s true.”

“Not many people are brave enough to try to do what you did.”

“I almost got raped over it. Almost got worse.”

“True. They’re also not that stupid.”

I grinned at her as she made a face. She stood up but wobbled on her feet for a moment. I quickly got up and grabbed her elbow.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said. “Just got a little dizzy.”

“Come on. Let me help. You might have a concussion.”

“I’m fine. Just want to change the ice.”

I helped her back into the bathroom where I’d left the ice bucket, though she seemed fine. I liked the feeling of my hands on her arm. Her skin was smooth and tan, and I got a whiff of her body. I could feel my cock getting hard again as I looked at her, those curves, those tits. I wanted to strip that dress off her and suck her clit until she screamed my name.

Instead, I helped change the ice out on her towel. She looked at me, breathing deeply and standing close.

“Thanks,” she said. “Though I still don’t get why you’re doing this.”

“Part of my job, I guess,” I said softly. “I help beautiful women.”

“What’s your job?”

“Navy SEAL.”

She looked surprised. “You’re a SEAL? Seriously?”

“Seriously,” I said. “I fuck up the bad guys and save sexy little things like you.”

“I don’t think saving damsels in distress is part of being a SEAL,” she said.

She didn’t move when I got close to her, our hips close. “Maybe it’s more of a hobby.”

“I bet your hobby is undressing those damsels.”

“Damn right,” I said. “And making them moan my name.”

“How do you do that?” she asked, her lips parted.

“First, I’ll press my fingers up her pretty dress and feel her soaking pussy. Just like your pussy is dripping wet, right now.”

“You don’t know that.”

I smirked. “Maybe not. But next, I’d press her down on the bed, slide her panties off, and lick her clit until she couldn’t stand another fucking second.”

“And then?” she asked, breathless.

My cock was fucking hard as hell as I pulled her against me. I wanted this girl, wanted her fucking badly. I didn’t know how we got from talking to this, but I couldn’t hold myself back another second.

“And then,” I said, my lips against her ear, “I’d slide my thick cock deep inside her soaked, tight little pussy and make her take that cock like she’s never been fucked before.”

My lips slid down her jaw, up her cheek, and I was inches away, inches away from her beautiful fucking mouth, inches away from my tongue pressing against hers. My cock was raging fucking hard and every inch of my body was lit up and burning with need.

Then a loud, storming banging against the door pulled us back.

“Shit,” I said.

She stepped away, the spell broken. She looked flustered as hell, but fear was in her eyes.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

I glanced at the back window, frowning. It was fully night now, but it was a two-story drop. I grabbed Hartley by the shoulders.

“Listen to me,” I said. “Go grab the sheets, every one of them, and start tying them together. Anchor that rope against the drain pipe on the sink and toss it out the window. When I give you the signal, you climb the fuck out. Understand?”

She gaped at me. “What? Are you insane.”

I grinned at her. “A little bit, yeah. You need to fucking do this. Understand me?”

She blinked at me, shocked, but slowly nodded. “Okay.”

I turned toward the front door. More banging, angrier, more insistent.

“Coming,” I called out sweetly.

I watched the girl strip the bed and carry it back into the bathroom. I nodded to her and then turned toward the front door.

I didn’t know who it was, but it couldn’t be good. Friendly people didn’t knock like that. I took a deep breath, steadying myself, and walked over to the bedside dresser.

I pulled out my gun and got myself ready.