The Darkest Pleasure. Gena Showalter

anything. They, too, had stopped checking in. For everyone’s safety, her mom had said during their last conversation. Calls could be traced, cell phones confiscated and used against them.

      Her eyes burned and her chin trembled. No. No! What are you doing? She couldn’t think about her family now. “What if” would paralyze her.

      “You’re wasting time,” Enrique said, tugging her from her dark musings. “Shake your ass like I told you. Your customers are waiting and if they send back their food ’cause it’s cold, you’re going to pay for it.”

      She wanted to throw the plates at him, but “No attention!” was screaming inside her head, so she just smiled and pivoted on her heels, ratty sneakers squeaking. Chin high, back straight, she marched toward the table with dread congealing in her stomach. Both men watched her with those hard eyes. They were clearly middle-class with their inexpensive clothes and average haircuts. Tanned and buff as they were, they could have been construction workers. If so, they hadn’t come straight from a job. They were clean, their jeans and T-shirts unstained.

      One had a toothpick sticking out from between his teeth and was rolling it from one side of his mouth to the other, the motions faster and faster the closer she came. Her hands were shaking from fatigue, but she managed to set the plates in front of each man without accidentally dumping the food in their laps. A lock of inky hair escaped her ponytail and fell down her temple.

      Hands finally free, she hooked the strands behind her ear. BB—before Budapest—she’d had long blond hair. AB—after Budapest—she’d chopped it to shoulder length and dyed it black to alter her appearance. Another crime to lay at the monsters’ door.

      “Sorry about the fry.” Despite their clear disdain for her, these men were good tippers. “I wasn’t trying to eat it, just to keep it on the plate.” Liar. God, she never used to lie.

      “Don’t worry about it,” Bird One said, unable to mask the slight twinge of irritation in his voice.

      Don’t send the food back. Please don’t send the food back. She couldn’t afford the cut in her pay. “Can I get you anything else?” Their cups were almost full, so she left them in place.

      “We’re fine,” Bird Two replied. Again, polite enough words but uttered in an unmistakably waspish tone. He waved one of the paper napkins and settled it on his lap.

      She caught a glimpse of a small figure eight tattooed on the inside of his wrist. Surprising. Had anyone asked her to bet, she would have put big money on a dark-haired female with a bloody hatchet coming out of her back.

      “Well, holler if you need anything.” She forced herself to smile, knowing she probably resembled a feral wolf. “I hope you enjoy your meal.” Just as she was about to move away—

      “When do you take a break?” Two asked abruptly.

      Uh, what now? He wanted to know when she went on break? Why? She doubted he’d asked for romantic reasons, since he was still watching her with mild distaste. “I, uh, don’t.”

      He popped a fry in his mouth, chewed, then licked his grease-smeared lips. “How about taking one tonight?”

      “Sorry. Can’t.” Keep smiling. “I have other tables.” She should have added: Maybe next time. Encouragement might have softened him at tip time. But the words clumped together in her throat, forming a hard knot. Go, go, go.

      Pivot. They disappeared from view. Her smile—gone. Six quick strides and she reached Gilly, the only other waitress on duty tonight, who stood in front of the drink counter, filling three plastic cups with different sodas. Though Danika should’ve been checking on the patrons she’d used as an excuse only seconds before, she needed a moment to fortify her composure.

      “God save me,” she muttered. She flattened her hands on the bar and leaned forward, cocking her hip. Thankfully, a half wall blocked her from the customers’ view.

      “He won’t.” Gilly, a sixteen-year-old runaway—eighteen if anyone asked—flashed Danika a tired grimace of sympathy. They’d both been working fourteen-hour days. “He’s already given up on us, I think.”

      Such pessimism seemed wrong in someone so young. “I refuse to believe that.” Lying must have become second nature to her. Danika wasn’t sure God cared anymore, either. “Something wonderful could be days away.” Yeah. Right.

      “Well, my something wonderful was that the Bird Brothers sat in your section again.”

      “Who are you kidding? They smile at you as if you’re the Sugar Plum Fairy and they smirk at me as if I’m the Wicked Witch of the West. I have no idea what I did to them or why they keep coming back for more of me.” Second time they’d come in, she’d feared they meant to pull her back into the nightmare she’d just escaped. But they’d never revealed a monstrous side, so she’d eventually relaxed.

      Gilly laughed. “Want me to shank them for you?”

      “Now, Gilly, that would be a travesty. Shanking’s a felony and cuffs are so not a good look for you.”

      The girl’s smile slowly melted away. “Don’t I know it,” she muttered.

      Part of Danika wanted to tell her to go home; life with her mom couldn’t be this bad. The other part admitted that life with Gilly’s mom could indeed be much, much worse. The terrible things Danika had seen on these darkened streets, even in the short time she’d been here…women with deadened eyes selling their bodies. Beatings. Drug overdoses. Whatever Gilly’s mother had done to drive the teenager to the streets had to have been severe.

      Once, Danika had been able to delude herself into thinking the world was a safe and magnificent place, full of possibilities. Now, her eyes had been opened.

      “Are you going to class in the morning?” she asked, propelling them into a safer conversation. She’d only worked here a week, but every day of that week she and Gilly had taken self-defense lessons, learning how to kick, hit and yes, kill with lethal precision. Besides her family, those lessons were the only thing Danika lived for anymore.

      She would never be helpless again.

      Gilly sighed and faced her. Danika thought again that she looked too young and fresh to be leading such a life of drudgery. Dark, chin-length hair, as straight as a pin. Big brown eyes. Honey-kissed skin. Average height, curvy body. She was innocence mixed with haunted sensuality. Right now, she was the only friend Danika had.

      “My feet will loathe me forever, but yeah. I’m going. You?”

      “Absolutely.” Friends weren’t something she could afford these days, but Danika had taken one look at the sad, brave girl and felt an instant kinship with her.

      “Maybe we’ll overpower the instructor again. Now, that was fun.”

      A chuckle escaped her, the first in what seemed forever. “Maybe.”

      A bell rang, hacking through the cackle of voices that echoed across the diner. Another order was up. Neither of them moved, however.

      “Gotta tell you,” Gilly said, anchoring her hand on her hip. “When Charles told us to come at him, rage, like, took me over. I could have killed him and giggled about it later.”

      “Me, too.” Sadly, those words were not a lie.

      Picture me as your enemy and show me what you’ve learned so far. Attack me, Charles had said, and both of them had.

      He’d needed fifty-nine stitches before the night had ended. Fortunately, he’d been a good sport about it.

      Dark fury had consumed Danika as images of Aeron, Lucien and Reyes—she gulped. Reyes!—had fluttered through her mind. Her kidnappers, her tormentors. Men she should hate with every fiber of her being. Did hate. Except for one. Reyes. Stupid girl.

      Him, she dreamed about constantly. Waking, sleeping, didn’t matter. He was always