Strictly Business

She slowly pulled on the tight black lace dress she had plucked from her closet. The lighting in her room was terrible but she did her best applying the heavy eye makeup along with her signature dark red lipstick. Once she had slipped her feet into some painfully high black stiletto heels, she ruffled her dark hair and checked herself once more in the mirror.

A sharp knock on the door made her jump, but she quickly hustled over and cracked the door open, peeking outside. A tall, well-dressed older woman stood in the hallway, her arms crossed and her manicured fingers tapping rhythms against the black sleeves of her jacket. "Oh, hey Trish."

"We're leaving in ten minutes. Be downstairs by then. Oh, and find Chrissy please."

"Yes ma'am."

The older woman walked away from her without another word and she went back into her room to grab the small purse off her bedroom floor before hurrying back toward the door.

The first place she went to look was Chrissy's room, even though she was sure the girl would not be found there. She hurried around to various places inside the hotel before finally finding her well-hidden behind a large plant in the corner of the lobby. She knelt down to be eye level with the girl. "Chrissy, sweetie?"

The young girl looked up at her with wide, glassy eyes and sniffled. "I want to go home, Scarlett. I just want to go home."

"Where is home?"

"Nashville," the girl muttered, looking down at her hands in her lap.

She sighed to herself and grabbed the girl's chin, forcing her to look up. "Okay. This is what we're going to do. You are going to go back up to my room and stay there. When I get back, I'll take you to the airport myself."

"But, Scarlett, I don't have any money!"

"I'll get some money. Don't worry."

"You'd do that for me?" the girl asked, obviously surprised.

"Of course I would, sweetie. Now you go on up to my room and try to get some sleep, okay?" She stood up straight and pulled her room key out of her bag to give it to the girl who nodded and took off toward the elevators.

With one more glance back, she shook her head and headed through the lobby to the front entrance where Trish and another woman named Celeste were waiting. Trish crossed her arms when she saw Scarlett approaching alone. "Where's Chrissy?" she asked annoyed.

"I guess she bailed," she lied easily, shrugging her shoulders.

Trish shook her head and opened the door to the expensive black car waiting next to them at the curb. "Teenagers," she sighed. "Oh well. I guess it's just the three of us tonight, ladies."

Scarlett slid into the car, putting herself between Celeste and Trish. As the car pulled away from the hotel and headed toward the Las Vegas strip, she sat back in her seat and wondered to herself why her life had turned out this way.

Katie Murphy had a rocky beginning. Her mother became an alcoholic when she was just a child and, in one of her drunken rages, had taken the life of Katie's father, the only person who ever really cared about her. At the ripe old age of twelve, she was put into the foster care system of Queens while her mother went to prison. The system was a rough place for a child to grow up. There were always older children to deal with, foster parents who were worse than her real parents, and the ugly truth that adoption most likely wasn't going to happen due to her age.

Finally, a few months before her seventeenth birthday, she'd had enough. She left her foster home in New York and never looked back. She hitchhiked for weeks and finally ended up in the city of sin: Las Vegas, Nevada.

Ever since Trish had taken her in eight years ago, she'd been relatively satisfied. Her life was no longer completely terrible, though it proved to be difficult from time to time. As long as she did what she was told, she stayed in Trish's good graces and therefore was able to live the somewhat lavish lifestyle she'd grown accustomed to.

Katie Murphy was no more. Scarlett had taken her place in the form of Trish Marshall's perfect little robot. And if she lied to herself, she could pretend she was okay with that.