I tried to ignore the vapid blonde showgirl hanging off my father’s shoulder, but she insisted on making eye contact over and over.

“Could you not?” I snapped at her and watched confusion fall over her already dull eyes. She was tripping hard on something, probably a drug supplied by my pervert dad, but that wasn’t my business.

I just didn’t want her to hang around while I pleaded my case to him.

“Olga, go find something to do,” Dad said, slapping the Russian girl’s ass as she turned to slink away. “Now tell me again why you need a hundred grand?”

“It’s the most prestigious fashion school in Europe,” I explained, more than a little irritated that he hadn’t been listening. “I got in, but the tuition is pretty high and I’ll need living expenses.”

“Why can’t you stay here and go to school?” he asked, picking at the salad on his plate. My father was a meat and potatoes kind of guy, but his doctor had him on a diet which made him even crankier than usual.

“There isn’t this kind of school outside of France, let alone outside of Paris,” I replied, pursing my lips. I had a feeling he was going to make this difficult. He knew I just wanted Paris, not the school, I just wanted to get away.

“I can’t allow it,” he said, stuffing a forkful of lettuce into his mouth and chewing it almost angrily.

“Why not? I’m old enough to leave home and most of my friends moved away from their parent’s place years ago. You can’t force me to stay a child forever.”

“It’s not about you being a child, Kitty cat,” he said, putting his fork down. He had a big piece of green leaf stuck in the middle of his front two teeth and I peevishly didn’t tell him. “It’s about you being safe. You know there’s been a lot of…well, let’s say movement in my particular area of business in the past few months. I can’t have you risking your life just to learn how to sew pretty dresses.”

My dad was the head of one of the largest criminal organizations in Las Vegas and beyond, there was no sugar coating it. But lately there had been others gunning for his power and control, and they’d been taking out his employees all the way from here to the Mexican border as messages to him.

At least he was sure it was all geared towards scaring him into shutting down so somebody else could take over his trade.

That being said, I wanted nothing to do with it. I hated what he did, and after my mother had been killed six years before, he’d gone off the deep end into the darkest side of crime.

She’d been the victim of a drive by shooting, probably by one of his biggest crime gang rivals and it had turned him a little crazy. He blamed himself for bringing her danger through his chosen businesses, but he blamed the gang even more.

A year or two ago he’d apparently rooted them out in California and killed them, each and every one of them, to exact revenge for my mother’s murder.

At least that was the rumor, he wouldn’t talk to me about it. He just tried to keep me in a gilded cage, safe from the men who would murder me to make him hurt.

God forbid he withdraw from his life of crime or anything, and let me have a normal life.

“It’s not sewing school,” I snarled, “it’s fashion design. A way for me to establish myself as my own person…far from this…shit.”

I waved my hand around the penthouse suite at The Millennium, a grand hotel known only to high rollers and those with more than a few million to rub together.

It was a gorgeous private suite, but it was tacky, even by Vegas standards.

And I was tired of it. It didn’t matter how nice the suite could be, it was still a cage for me. And a gilded cage was still a cage when all you yearned for was your freedom.

“This shit,” he spat and locked me into his dark gaze and I knew I was in trouble, “is what pays for things like fancy sewing school in Paris. All of this shit is what keeps you looking so beautiful, driving your expensive cars, shopping with your friends and partying with celebrities. This shit is what makes your life easy, so don’t knock it, Kitty cat.”

It was a warning, I could hear it in his voice, but I was too angry to hold back.

“Do you think the fast car or the shopping account or the parties mean anything to me when my father earns all his money off the blood of others? It’s humiliating, being the daughter of a crime boss and drug dealer. Humiliating!”

He hated it when I called him out on his criminal activities and he hated it even more when I called him a dealer. I saw his eyes darken even more, his handsome features screwing into an angry mask and in a steady, measured voice he said, “Well since it is so difficult for you to live like this, might I suggest you earn some of your own money? Your uncle Max is looking for a new girl downstairs, you need to go down and beg him for a job.”

“I’m not going to shake my tits for cash from desperate old millionaires,” I wailed. “Never. Have you seen those uniforms?”

“If you’re lucky he’ll put you behind the bar. You can use some of your book learning to memorize a few decent cocktail recipes if you know what’s good for you.”

I stood up from the breakfast table and was shaking with anger but I knew he was done. I had been dismissed the moment he looked down at his phone and started to respond to text messages.

I was enraged but I was impotent, there was nothing I could do to fight him, so I decided to follow his advice.

If he wanted me to work for Uncle Max, I’d do the best job I could. And I would proudly wear the tiny little uniform he forced his girls into, and I would happily shake my tits and ass for cash, just to see the look on my dad’s face when he found his little girl acting like a common slut in the sleazy bar downstairs.

Then he’d listen to reason and send me away to school. Or somewhere. God only knew fashion wasn’t the only thing I dreamed about, my freedom was more important than what I did with it.

Besides, who knew, maybe I’d even have a good time pissing him off, not all the millionaires in there were going to be ugly old men. There had to be a few hotties. And even a girl like me liked a little male attention from time to time.