Angels & Demons

A few months later, they'd fallen into a pretty solid routine. Monday through Thursday J continued to give her more weapons and strength training, and Friday through Sunday she worked the clubs, running the same con she always had. The only difference was that she was more outgoing about it and ended up making a lot more money a night than she ever had before. It definitely helped that she knew J was always close by somewhere. She could almost always feel his eyes on her, even if he was somewhere that she couldn't see him.

She was surprised with how smoothly the job went for those first few months. She wondered if maybe the marks also knew that J was watching, but she came to the conclusion that there was no way they did. They wouldn't get as friendly with her as they did if they knew she was associated with J. Everyone knew what happened if you got too close to one of J's girls.

That was something else that surprised her; J didn't seem to have any girls other than her, not that she considered herself his at all. Everything she'd ever heard about him had pointed to him always having a bunch of girls on his arm and in his bed. As far as she knew, she was the only girl that he kept close. Granted, she had noticed very quickly that J didn't even come home most nights and she had no idea where he was during that time, but part of her liked the idea that maybe she was the only one, even though they hadn't been romantic or anything like that. Despite how much she'd grown to want that sort of relationship with him, he was surprisingly reserved.

It was three months in before she had any trouble at all with the job. She was riding to the club on a Saturday night in J's purple Lamborghini with him as she always did and for some reason she was uneasy. He seemed to pick up on it right away, almost before even she did.

"What's the problem, little one?" he asked, casting a sideways glance at her and raking a hand through his hair. He also seemed uneasy, but she didn't mention it.

"I don't know. I just have a bad feeling about tonight," she told him, and he nodded slightly.

"You can take the night off, if you'd like," he said, and something about his tone told her he might like it if she did.

"No. I'm sure I'm just being paranoid about nothing," she said, and he nodded again.

They arrived at the club a short time later, and for the first few hours of her night, she was sure she had just been paranoid about nothing. Nothing seemed out of place, no one seemed overly aggressive, and overall she felt safe. She noticed J watching much closer than he usually did most of the time and was glad for it.

Eventually, she felt like the particular club they were at was pretty picked over and was going to go find J and tell him they should move on. But then out of the corner of her eye, she saw a guy walking in that looked like he probably had quite a bit of money on him. He was tall and dressed lavishly; everything she could see of his outfit was definitely high-end designer. Taking a deep breath and plastering on her most friendly face, she approached him.

Things were pretty normal at first; he started dancing with her and got touchy like they always did. She lifted his wallet easily, shoving it in her handbag and getting ready to plan her escape from him. Before she could, though, he grabbed her face and started kissing her roughly. It definitely wasn't the first time the marks had gotten overly friendly with her, but the way he held her in place startled her just a little bit.

"If you're gonna lift my wallet, you better be ready to fuckin' give me something for it," he told her when he stopped kissing her, his face still inches from hers. His hands still held her arms roughly, and when she tried to pull away, he just held her tighter. She could almost feel her arms bruising under his hands.

"Let me go," she growled at him, trying her best to mimic the voice J used when he was angry. She could hear as she was saying it that she was failing miserably. The man holding her flashed an ugly grin and shook his head.

"If I don't?" he asked, and she couldn't believe how frantic she was growing. She glanced around for J and didn't see him anywhere, of course.

"Just take the wallet. I'm sorry, okay?" she offered to him, and he shook his head again.

"No. I told you, you're going to give me something in return for my trouble," he told her, turning and pulling her by the arm toward the back door of the club. "Either come with me or I'll shoot you here and now, bitch," he said when she resisted, and she racked her brain over the training she'd been going through for the past three months, and for some reason nothing she'd learned was coming to mind as useful. She cursed herself as she thought as hard as she could, trying to ignore the rapidly growing panic that was living inside her chest.