The room was beautiful, but I barely registered the silk duvet or the view. I tossed my small bag onto the floor. I got up from my bed and walked straight to the full-length mirror and stared at the reflection of my twenty-year-old self—hair still messy from the wind at the cemetery, eyes wide and glittering, not with tears, but with a sudden, startling resolve.
“He said he owns me for two hours a night at the club,” I whispered to the girl in the glass, my voice husky. “He doesn’t realize I plan to make him my exclusive gig.”
My mourning could wait. Grief was patient. But the opportunity to shatter the serene, respectful façade of Fabio Edgar, to interrupt his tidy schedule of business and maid-sized distractions, felt urgent, vital.
I was no longer the little, orphaned Tiana… I am a w
