‘I’m sorry—’
Reuben slammed the door.
It was a hoax. But how had this person got into his private
account? Only a small clique was permitted: Jean-Baptiste being one of them, and a handful of selected clients.
Pinching the material of his shirt between two fat fingers, Reuben fanned air on to his sweaty chest. Despite his self-assurances, his heart was throbbing against his rib cage.
Thump, thump, thump
.
Fuck it.
No one
was more powerful than him. This party was going to go off without a hitch and then he’d trace whatever joker had dared stray into his personal business. For that was what it was:
business
. He was a businessman. The things he’d done … well, they were to make money. And make money they most certainly had. He wasn’t about to start unravelling a moral fibre he wasn’t even sure was there. Conscience was for pussies—not for him.
This time he buzzed for Margaret, couldn’t tolerate facing her scarcely concealed rapture at whatever drama had now been thrown his way.
‘Get me a girl,’ he instructed as soon as she came on the line. ‘And make it quick.’
There was only one thing he needed right now: a fucking blow job.
Book One
2008-9
1
Lori
Loriana Garcia Torres was reading a novel. It was a good one. The hero was about to enter, a brooding, misunderstood lover with vengeance in his heart.
Dark hair fell over her face and she pulled the wild curls back with one hand, gathering them at the base of her neck. The
Tres Hermanas
beauty salon, a dusty-walled, graffiti-plastered enterprise in LA’s Eastside was, as usual, empty.
Anita approached the counter. ‘Trash needs takin’ out,’ she sneered, her features contorted with their usual combination of spite and boredom. ‘Get to it.’
Lori tore herself away. At seventeen, with skin the colour of the desert at sunrise and wide, thick-lashed gold-black eyes, she was sexy, even though—perhaps because—she had never had sex. Hers was an irresistible age. On the cusp of womanhood, she still possessed a childlike innocence that rendered her very Spanish beauty incomparable. Her
stepsisters, themselves a few years older and with none of Lori’s charm or kindness, hated her for it.
‘I’ve been here since six,’ she replied. ‘This is my first break.’
‘This is my first break,’
Anita mimicked as she chewed gum with an open mouth. It was obscene, the way she did it, because she was wearing so much lipgloss. The hand on her hip was crowned with curled fingernails, each one several inches in length, and heavy hoops pulled fatly at her earlobes. ‘Been busy readin’ that garbage?’ She snatched the book, regarding its pages with disdain. ‘There’s jobs gotta be done round here, quit makin’ excuses.’
‘I’m not. I haven’t stopped all day …’ Lori trailed off under the scorch of Anita’s glare.
‘And you won’t now.’ Anita smiled sweetly and turned up the Jay-Z track on the radio. ‘Or I’ll tell Mama and Tony about Rico. And you wouldn’t want
that
, would you?’ Rico was Lori’s boyfriend. The Garcias could never find out she was seeing him—they’d go crazy.
Lori’s gaze raked over
Tres Hermanas
: the cracked mirrors bolted to the walls; the sickly pink of the salon seats, damp and rubbery in the sticky summer heat, their mock leather peeling like sunburned skin; the stained porcelain bowls where she washed through all that tough hair; the acrid smell of ammonia. She hated it. Every second she was here she hated it.
Life hadn’t been easy since her mother had died, ten years ago now. Tony, her father, had swiftly remarried, acquiring a new family: Anita and Rosa, jealous of her beauty and dead-set on making her life a misery, and a stepmother, Angélica, whose mean stare and sideways looks gave Lori the impression she could well do without
the nuisance of a ready-made daughter. Unable to abandon the hopes and dreams of her parents, Lori had left school and joined the business, working till her bones ached and her feet blistered. It wasn’t enough. Her sisters’ attitude had driven clients away and now the salon was spiralling rapidly into debt and disrepair.
Lori had no money and no prospects. The days were long and the pay virtually non-existent, and while Anita and Rosa wasted no time spending their share, on cheap clothes, cigarettes and men, Lori put hers straight back into the enterprise. She did it because she loved her father and she didn’t want him to suffer—not more than he already had.
It wasn’t a life. It was endurance.
Rosa emerged from the back, where she’d been smoking out in the yard. Rosa was the eldest and overweight. She sported a cap of slick dark hair, which she tweezed into little hook-like curls at the sides of her face.
‘Loriana thinks she’s done enough for one day,’ chirruped Anita. ‘Got better stuff to do.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Rosa shot Lori a scornful look. ‘Like what?’
Defeated, Lori rose from the counter. It was easier than arguing. Once upon a time she’d have stood up for herself, given as good as she got, but the reality was she was outnumbered. The only person on her side was Tony—or, he had been. These days he seemed to have given up, the endless loans and threats from the bank and demands for payment finally wearing him down. He’d become weak, let Angélica take over with her punishing schedules and harsh government, at least where Lori was concerned. No, she was by herself. That was all there was to it.
The salon door opened and Rosa’s only appointment of
the afternoon wandered in, a mean-faced black girl with a tired weave. She slumped into one of the salmon-coloured chairs and threw a glance Lori’s way. ‘I want hair like hers,’ she declared. It wasn’t the first time a client had requested curls like Lori’s, something that was impossible to pull off. Rosa glowered.
Anita released a satisfied puff as Lori began mopping the floor. ‘You’re lucky to have a job here, y’know,’ she mused, leaning over the counter and lazily examining her nails. She’d always been a bully, was born with it in her character, intrinsic as genetics.
‘My family started this place,’ Lori fired back. ‘So don’t tell me I’m lucky to be here.’
It was a petty observation, but nevertheless the truth. Lori’s parents had been proud, God-fearing, hard-working people: they’d been dirt poor but they’d been happy, arriving in America with barely two cents to their name and taking out a loan to build their own business. Purchasing one of a chain of beat-up shopfronts in a down-and-out part of LA, over the years they had watched it grow into something about which they could be proud.
Then her mother had died. Too quick, too sudden, too horrible. Through a shroud of grief, Tony had allowed himself to be comforted by the first person who claimed they wanted to listen. Angélica had pounced on a vulnerable man and an exploitable business. In the weeks that followed,
Pelobello
had become
Tres Hermanas
, and from there it had begun its descent. Lori tried desperately to keep its head above water but she worked thankless, endless hours. After a while, it got to a person. It made them feel useless and hopeless. It made them feel broken.
Lori refused to accept this was her future. A light glimmered
inside her. Some days she thought it was her mother, still with her; others, the glowing, insistent ember that kept her alive. Change would come. She’d know when it did.
‘I’m done,’ she said now, shoving the mop back in its corner. Anita’s horrified expression appeared in one of the salon mirrors.
‘Don’t you dare think about it!’ she crowed.
‘I’m not thinking about it.’ Lori grabbed her bag. She changed from the uncomfortable plastic heels made obligatory by Angélica into her favourite worn Converse. ‘I’m doing it.’
‘You can’t leave,’ Rosa bitched, jabbing a pair of styling scissors in Lori’s face. ‘You’ve got another hour and you’re workin’ every second of it!’
‘Or what?’ She scooped up a stack of battered paperbacks from under the counter.
‘You’d better not be meetin’ Rico!’ one of them screeched, but she couldn’t tell which. ‘You won’t get away with it!’
Lori pulled open the door, hearing the familiar, hated metallic buzz that announced her departure. She held the books tightly to her, remembering the worlds they kept inside: other worlds she dreamed of when she lay in bed staring into darkness, imagining what opportunity, what possibility, tasted like. Sweet, she decided, like honey.
Things would be different. It was only a matter of time.
I will get out of here
, Lori Garcia vowed.
One day. One day I’m going to be free
.
2
Aurora
‘So, do you want to fuck?’
Mink Ray, sixty-something rock star fresh from a comeback tour with The Bad Brothers, put down his brush and gazed, stoned, at the canvas he’d been working on.
‘Looks like shit,’ he complained.
Aurora Nash ground out her half-smoked joint and sat up. She was naked. ‘I’m offended.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Let’s see.’ She peeled herself off the couch, one of several sunken offerings in Mink’s Hollywood apartment. Aurora was tall, about five-nine, with short ice-blonde hair and glacial blue-grey eyes. Her tits were small and high on her chest, the nipples dark and stiff. She hooked an arm round Mink’s waist. He was wearing his customary leather jacket and it felt weird, quite horny, against her skin. ‘It’s not that bad,’ she pouted, secretly thinking it was dire. She
couldn’t work out if it was meant to be abstract or if Mink was just a crap artist.
‘What’s that?’ She pointed at a jagged torpedo thing in the middle of the picture.
‘Your tit,’ he commented lazily, sparking up a cigarette and ambling to the bar, where he poured them both drinks.
‘You promised me it would be tasteful,’ Aurora teased, not minding at all. How tasteful was it ever going to be? She was posing nude for her friend’s dad, rock star legend and now, apparently, frustrated artist.
‘It is,’ Mink said, chucking back the dark liquid and immediately filling another. ‘
You
couldn’t tell what it was, could you?’
Aurora faced him, unabashed. She put a hand on her hip and felt Mink’s gaze rake over her young body. Her skin was smooth, flawless, smelled fine … and she knew it. ‘My turn.’ She arched an eyebrow at his leather-clad crotch. ‘Let me draw you.’
Mink snorted by way of reply. He fingered the blinds on the window, allowing a sliver of mid-afternoon light to stream in. It illuminated the crags on his face, features addled by years of alcohol and drug abuse and who knew what else. Aurora found it sexy. When he let go, the apartment returned to its den-like state. Aurora joined him at the bar and slipped on to a stool, crossing her long legs and in doing so folding away the light triangle of butter-coloured hair between them. She caught Mink watching.
‘Wanna get bombed?’ he asked, squinting as she took a slug of her drink.
‘What are you offering?’ She trailed her pinkie around the rim of the glass.
Mink knew he should suggest she wear a robe. He didn’t.
‘How old are you anyway?’ he growled.
‘Old enough to fuck.’
‘Yeah, right, missy.’
‘I’ll be nineteen next year.’ Aurora was guessing this was an acceptable number to him. Mink must’ve done all sorts in his day.
He narrowed his eyes. ‘More like eighteen.’
‘Whatever.’ Finishing the drink, she pushed her glass out for a refill. Mink obliged. As she padded back to the couch she could feel Mink’s gaze fixed on her ass.
Actually, Aurora was fifteen, but she was old for her age. She knew
loads
of girls who said that, but in her case it was actually true. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d slept with someone older than her dad. Mink wanted her; she could tell it a mile off.
Settling on the couch, she tucked her knees up under her chin. Mink was getting an eyeful. Around her neck was a silver locket, from which she produced a vial of white powder. She tipped a small mound on to her little finger and expertly sniffed it up each nostril.
‘Hey, let me in on summa that.’ Mink swaggered over, glass in hand. He wore a lot of chunky rings with skulls and panthers on them and things like that, and his nails looked grubby. There was paint on his knuckles.
Aurora obliged and they both sat back. Whoa, that was good. She felt Mink’s hand on her leg, creeping higher.
‘I don’t fuck kids your age,’ he pronounced.
‘I don’t fuck men your age,’ she countered.
He regarded her out of the corner of his eye, the way her chest was rising and falling as she breathed, the peaks of her tits coming closer and then receding, tempting him, teasing the growing bulge in his pants. When was the last
time
that
had happened? These days it took more than a nice rack to get him hard. This girl was hot, real hot.
‘Guess that makes us as bad as each other.’ Desire curdled his voice.
Aurora smiled. The light in the room was purplish, and she could see tiny dust motes floating close to the floor. ‘My parents wouldn’t approve,’ she said innocently, gazing up at him through pale lashes. She could see Mink struggle with the turn-on of her virgin-daddy’s-girl protest and the undeniable truth of it.
Aurora Nash was the daughter of Tom Nash and Sherilyn Rose, mega-selling country rock legends and all-round respectable American couple. Initially they’d had separate careers—Sherilyn the sweetheart of the country and western scene; Tom regarded far more seriously than Billy Ray Cyrus but still attracting the comparison, one that pissed him off no end—but when album sales tailed off in the nineties they had joined forces and become a formidable duo, singing songs about the great and good of America, the land of opportunity, all that stuff Aurora privately thought was horse shit. It sold, though—boy, did it sell. They’d made millions.
As her parents’ only daughter, Aurora had never wanted for anything. Every whim was indulged, every desire satisfied. The word ‘no’ didn’t feature in her vocabulary. She liked her life, it was fun—and it
was
fulfilling, even if recently she’d been jumping from project to project without feeling much about any of them. Everything got handed to her on a plate, and it wasn’t like she was
complaining
about it, it was just that she never, ever had to try. Then again, who wanted to try? Trying was boring. Succeeding was what it was about. In the last year alone Aurora
had released her own teen-queen album, collaborated on a fashion range with a music icon, and launched a perfume called, fittingly, ‘All Mine’. And she wasn’t even sixteen yet.