One Wild Night

Without taking off her sleeping mask, Brandy groaned in her sleep as she reached for her phone when it started ringing and picked it up from the top of the bedstand. She had barely had enough sleep since the moment she returned from the club.

"Hello!" she greeted in a hoarse voice once she received the call, half expecting it to be Candace since she was yet to hear from her since the previous day.

"Hey, Brandy! Are you still in bed? Wake up. Work calls," The familiar male voice which belonged to her boss greeted, and Brandy groaned as she sat up.

"C'mon! I worked all through the night. I deserve to get my beauty sleep!" Brandy complained irritably as she sat up on the bed.

"Well, it's not my fault that you're so damned good at your job. A client wants you. He is hosting a bachelor's eve party for his best friend, and he specifically requested for you and Candy. He's paying a lot of dough," her boss said excitedly. They all knew how much he loved to make money off the ladies who worked for him at the club.

"Well, let whoever the client is know that I can't make it. Besides, Candy is not around," Brandy reminded him as she took off her sleeping mask.

"Yeah, I told him that. He is willing to compromise. Maybe you and another one of the girls. He's willing to pay double the price for your services. You know you're one of the bests here," her boss reminded her.

"Have you checked out the client? Is he legit? A regular client?" Brandy asked thoughtfully.

"Of course. By now you should know that I wouldn't ask you to take on a job without being sure of the client," her boss pointed out.

"Sure. I still need to rest though. When is this party holding? And where?" Brandy asked as she got off the bed.

"Well, he said it's tonight. He will send a car for you girls by 8 PM."

"No. I'd rather he gives us an address and we find our way there than he sends a car to pick us up. That is too risky and you know it," Brandy protested as she went to stand in front of the mirror to check out her appearance.

"He is paying a lot of money, Brandy. And you know that the rich customers are ALWAYS right. I think the client is very wealthy and he has trust issues. So he doesn't want you knowing the venue," her boss said reasonably.

Although Brandy was not convinced, she knew better than to argue with him, "Fine. I will be there. But know that I'm taking seventy percent of this money. It's either that or I'm not in," Brandy bargained.

"Seventy percent? Come on! How do you go from receiving forty percent to seventy?" He complained.

"Okay, I need to rest. Get someone else," Brandy said dismissively.

"Okay, I will give you forty-five percent," he rushed to stop her before she could hang up.

"I'm not kidding, Joey. It's either seventy or nothing."

"Fifty percent?" He asked, wondering why she was being so unnecessarily greedy.

"Get someone else to do the job."

"Come on, Brandy."

"It's the same thing, isn't it? You said he doubled the pay because he wanted me. I get to keep the extra money. Why is that a problem?" Brandy asked reasonably.

"Fine, what about you keep sixty percent and I take forty?" He pleaded greedily.

"Fine. You can keep thirty-five percent. That's how high I can go. If you have a problem with it, get someone else."

"Fine. I will send you the money. Make sure you are here before the time," he ordered before hanging up the call.

Brandy smiled to herself, pleased with her bargaining skills as she pulled out the last drawer on the dressing table and took out a notebook and a pen. She jotted down the amount of money she was expecting for this job and summed it up with the rest of her savings. She needed to save up enough money for her studio sessions. She wasn't planning on continuing in this line of job forever, especially not now that Candace was working hard to become a lawyer. She also needed to do something worthwhile with her life so she wouldn't be a source of embarrassment to either her sister or her nephew.

Once she closed the notebook, she returned it into the drawer and her eyes fell on the jewelry box that Matt had gifted her. He had returned to see her the next day after sending off Candace and Jamal, and he had brought her the gift. She was meant to wear the earrings and necklace whenever she was going out, as it would not only enable them to track her at all times but would also record whatever was happening around her.

Thus far she had been very reluctant to wear it to the club since she didn't want to violate the club's laws, but seeing as she was going to work for someone she didn't know at an undisclosed location, she thought it wise to use the jewelry tonight, so she took out the jewelry box before closing the drawer.

**************

"My parents didn't have a problem with me having a boyfriend. It was Jamie who didn't let any guy come close to me."

"Jamie? Do you mean Sonia's half-brother? The one who always treated you like you didn't exist? How so?" Alicia asked, unable to hide her curiosity.

"That is the crazy thing," Lucy said with a sigh, as she started recounting all she had told Tom regarding how she and Sonia had discovered Jamie's obsession with her.

"Hold on! You mean he threatened and beat up any guy who showed any interest in you even though he completely ignored you whenever he saw you?" Alicia asked in disbelief.

"Crazy, isn't it? How each of these guys had stayed away from me thinking he was my boyfriend. I would never have known had I not confronted the last guy," Lucy said with a shake of her head.

"But why? Why would he do that? And how did he find out about all these guys? It's not like he was your classmate or something," Alicia asked in confusion.

Sonia decided to respond this time, "I still can't understand why he never said anything and had to do all of that. So we can't tell why, other than the only logical reason that he was crazy and was obsessed without her. We tried to figure out how he could have known about all these guys that approached Lucy, and we discovered that he set up a camera in my room," Sonia said with a shake of her head, as though she still couldn't believe that Jamie had done that.

"What? A camera in your bedroom?" Alicia asked in horror, while Bryan listened with utter disbelief.

Both Sonia and Lucy nodded. Sonia turned to look at Lucy, "I'm sorry," she murmured, not sure she could ever forget the look of shock and horror on Lucy's face that day when they saw the pictures and videos which Jamie had compiled.

"You mean he had pictures of you? He set up a camera in your bedroom?" Alicia asked, still trying to get past the surprise. Although it had creeped her out earlier when she read about it in the articles on Twitter, hearing it directly from both ladies was even more horrible.

"Yes. We searched his bedroom and saw several nude pictures and videos he had of Lucy in his system. Not all the pictures were taken from my bedroom. Some of them were taken without Lucy's knowledge while she was going about her normal daily activities. I always wondered why he refused to move out of the house after he started college. But I guess he didn't want to leave because of Lucy," Sonia explained.

Alicia shuddered involuntarily, "So what did you girls do? Who did you report to?"

Lucy's eyes glazed over, and she had a distant look in her eyes as she gazed at Alicia who could tell that she wasn't looking at her, "Nobody. I was scared and ashamed, and couldn't bring myself to speak with anybody. Instead, I started hiding from him," Lucy said in a distant voice that sounded like it was coming from somewhere far away inside her. It was like she was trying to separate herself from what was being discussed, and this made Tom's brows pull together.

"I would stay locked up in my bedroom unless I had to go to school. I stayed away from Sonia's house and every other place that I might run into him."

Alicia's heart broke as she watched Lucy, and she could tell that talking about this wasn't easy for Lucy. She wanted to call for a break, but Lucy continued. She told them all that she had told Tom concerning how Jamie had abducted her on the night of her prom.

Bryan handed Sonia a hankie when tears kept dropping from Sonia's eyes, and Alicia reached for her hankie to also wipe her tears as they listened to Lucy's narration.

The information Lucy was sharing now was not in the papers since she had not told anyone about it other than Tom. All they knew was that she had been abducted but they didn't know the exact details of how it had happened.

"I killed Jamie," Lucy said after a while as she tried to refocus her gaze on Alicia, "I didn't mean to kill him, but I was glad he died," She confessed as her hands began to tremble.

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