Chapter 2

Odette

Odette didn’t mind the forced day in bed, enjoying a deep sleep before she rose at five pm to get ready to work at the Beaufort brothers’ nightclub. She dressed a little brighter than usual with a neat corset top and long skirt, making an effort to straighten her fire-engine red locks so that she looked as slick as the brothers—at least to the best of her ability. She felt that any club they ran might be swankier than the places she usually frequented. However, the brothers were incredibly well presented, and she wouldn’t lie and say that despite their controlling ways, they were pleasant to look at around the shop. She could tell they were mixed race, with some exotic combination that gave them beautiful, tanned, clear skin to be envied and perfect, sculpted features. As she thought that, she spent a little extra time on her makeup before making her way to the club for her 8 pm start.

She arrived at the club and found the staff entrance at the back of the building. After explaining who she was to a bouncer, she was allowed into the club. An attractive woman introduced herself as the manager and took Odette to the cloakroom. Odette listened to the instructions for greeting patrons and how to carry herself. It wasn’t that difficult, she thought as she looked around the room. She was told she’d be on til 4 am, which she could handle, and then was left with another girl to wait as the club opened up. 

The patrons were wealthy, stylish, and very polished. Odette’s rebellious streak sneered at the money and privilege she witnessed parading in front of her. Some patrons were very sharp in their speech with her, either condescending or demeaning, as they thrust their clothes into her hands as though she were a lowly creature. They were impatient as she fetched coats for them when they left the club as well. That was something new for her, compared to being the mythical staff member at an emporium of unknown and magical sex toys. She didn’t like the experience of being treated as though she were nothing of value and was in a decidedly bad mood when Clint came in around 11 pm to check up on her.

“Are you picking up the job?” he asked as he strode to the cloakroom desk.

Odette smiled weakly. “I think I prefer working at the shop if it’s all the same to you,” she said.

“It seemed that you weren’t doing that great there, so you won’t be returning to your previous role.”

“What?!”

“We’ve got our own staff there now, but you can fill in there if someone calls in sick.”

“How can you just change my life over like that?! I don’t like working here!” Odette complained, aware that she was whining.

Clint smiled and raised a confident hand to stroke her cheek, causing Odette to shiver.

“Believe me. Your looks were wasted in a sex shop.”

“And you think a cloakroom is a place for good looks?” Odette snapped.

“Just stay there and look pretty,” Clint said with amusement before leaving to check on the staff at the front counter.

Odette fumed at his nerve as she stood trapped in her little cubicle filled with clutter and clothing. How could he treat her like a decoration? This is what she hated about beautiful people—they were just so entitled! She growled and ripped a coat off its hanger, tossing it on the floor.

“Now, now, Odette,” she heard someone say behind her. “Don’t mess us the patrons’ clothes.”

Odette whirled around to see Sam Beaufort entering the cloakroom through the back entrance.

“I’ll do what I damn well like!” she said before she grumbled and picked up the coat. 

As she hung it back up, Sam appraised her outfit.

“You look much nicer than how you dressed at the sex shop,” he said. 

Odette reddened that he had noticed her efforts with her self-presentation. 

“I didn’t know what to expect here,” she said. 

Someone called in at the counter, so Odette took their coat and gave them a ticket. When she had hung up the garment, Sam was still standing there. 

“Do you have nothing better to do than to micromanage me?” she said tersely.

Sam chuckled. “You’re full of hate, aren’t you? Always on the defensive.”

Odette didn’t care what he thought. After having a boyfriend like Tom, she wouldn’t give men more chances to belittle or bully her. 

“I just don’t want to sit here and look pretty, or however Clint put it,” she said. “I’d much rather be back in my shop. I don’t like this work—it’s too monotonous.”

“If you hate it that much, you could just quit,” Sam said as he walked towards the exit.

Odette watched him leave and realized that, while that sounded like a dream, she somehow had to pay the rent. She sighed in resignation and continued to collect clients’ coats, but she was considerably less friendly to the patrons. When Clint returned to see her sullenly accepting jackets from one of the clubbers, he frowned. 

“Put a bit of cheer into it,” he said over his shoulder, not even giving her a chance to complain about her aching feet. 

By the time 4 am rolled around, she was most definitely ready to go home. She was advised by the manager that she was to repeat the same shift for the next three nights, then was sent on her way. She trudged back from the train station to her boarding house, feeling very sorry for herself. Her friends messaged at 5 am to see what she was doing, but she didn’t feel up to socializing with those who were going to be drunk or high companions. She sat on the edge of her bed and wondered what she would do to wind down. In the end, she lay on her bed and surfed the internet until she finally drifted off to sleep around 6 am.

***

The next few days were painful for Odette. Her dislike for the club's clientele remained the same, if not worse. She didn’t get along with the other staff and felt like she no longer had a social life since she was working while her friends were spending time together. As the Beaufort brothers came to check on her at work, she grew increasingly frustrated with them. They had taken over her shitty sex store workplace and turned it into something upmarket and competitive, taken her out of it and put her in a dreary, back-breaking role, constantly sucking up to people and lifting their clothing simply because of her ‘looks.’ Whenever she ran into the brothers at work, they were condescending smartasses when she told them exactly what she thought of the job they’d given her. But they knew she had no choice but to stay where she was. She decided she had better start job hunting for something better but didn’t know who would accept an employee like her, with her total lack of work experience.

Then there were the less than likable behaviors of the brothers. Clint tried to flirt with her in the cloakroom when he’d come by at different points during her shift. He wasn’t even subtle; he just behaved as if he owned her now that he was one of her employees. And for such an infuriating man to be so handsome, it drove Odette insane. She wanted to hate Clint, but looking at him immediately had her heart beating faster and her body on the edge of her seat. And, on top of everything, she knew he probably talked to all women in that confident, direct manner that seemed to see into their souls. She was nothing special to him. It ate her to bits. 

Sam…He tended to check up on her and observe her. That was his style, his method of relating to his surroundings and the people around him. Odette could tell he was a fighter and wondered whether he had to enact violence in his business dealings as one of the Beauforts. He certainly seemed like a wild one with his massive bulk of muscle and his precise physical movements. He subtly took in every detail of the scenes around him; his inky blue eyes carefully added all the information in front of him. It made her self-conscious, and she could feel it in her very core when he looked directly into her eyes with a simple demand or a question. It made her tremble inside.

All of this undesirable work and the feeling of being on edge around the Beaufort brothers were having a draining impact on Odette over the following few night shifts. Finally, she had the next day off at the end of the sixth night. She stumbled into her boarding house to find Genna, Mark, and Christian pulling up in her driveway.

“We missed you!” they said as they piled out of their car. 

“Oh, how I’ve missed you all, too,” she said as she accepted a beer from Christian. 

They tumbled into her small room and sat on the only available surface, her bed. 

“I managed to get these pills,” Mark said. “Have one.”

“Thanks. Don’t mind if I do,” Odette said as she swallowed one with beer.

By now 6 am, Odette felt no guilt in cranking up the music loud as her boarding housemates would be getting up to go to work anyway. The four of them drank and talked until they fell asleep in a heap on her bed around 11 am. When her phone rang at 1 pm, Odette wanted to ignore it. Unfortunately, after some insistent ringing, Genna grumbled and answered the phone; Odette snatched it out of her hand.

“Hello?” she said weakly.

“It’s Clint,” the voice said over the phone. “I need you to come into the shop today.”

“Clint, it’s my day off….” Odette started.

“I wonder whether you’re a team player, Odette. If you come into work, you’re showing me that you’re dedicated to the business, and that’s what we want from our employees.”

The business. What Clint meant were all of the Beaufort businesses. Finally, she sighed and gave in.

“Alright, I can be there at three.”

“Thanks, Odette. I knew I could count on you.”

Clint hung up the phone, and Odette groaned as she stumbled to her feet. 

“What is it?” Genna asked.

“Gotta go to work. My boss is an asshole.”

“Mmm…That sucks,” Genna said sleepily.

“You guys can sleep here and let yourselves out later. It was good catching up,” Odette said as she searched her dirty floor for something suitable to wear. 

She pulled the first clean dress on, tidied her hair in a messy side braid, and stumbled out the door to catch a bus to the Toy Locker, the shop that had been her life since Tom. Kym was waiting for her when she arrived, looking green around the gills. 

“I’m feeling really sick today, so I have to go home. I’m afraid you’ll be on your own,” she said as she bid Odette goodbye.

Odette sighed and looked around the unfamiliar store. The new team had rearranged everything. There were no customers, so she looked around at the different displays. It seemed they specialized in much more kink clothing and leather than before and many overpriced high-end toys. She wondered how the store was faring with the fancy new upgrades, so she snuck into Ken’s office to look through his records. Of course, Ken didn’t know that she knew the passcode to his office as she browsed his desk unashamedly. 

She tripped over the corner of the carpet by the desk and discovered that it had been tampered with. When she lifted the corner, she found a large safe had been installed on the floor underneath her. That was interesting! Taking a gamble, she entered Ken’s passcode to discover that it opened the safe. Inside, she found stacks of money and gasped at the sheer amount of it…she couldn’t even begin to guess how much money she was looking at. 

She blinked, still weak from not sleeping all night and from the bender she had been on with the pills and booze all morning. Her reactions were slow as she went to close the vault, her hands shaking from exhaustion as she tried to pull the door back into place. Suddenly, she felt a cracking pain at the back of her skull, and then everything went black.