Tempting BAD: VIP Spin Off (47 page)

She sympathetically grinned at me. “Brooke, you have heard the doctors, even they don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to heal. I was badly beaten and I’m lucky to be alive. Please, don’t argue with me. Just make the call.”

I sighed, “Okay.” I didn’t think Ysabelle had to come to help me run things. I could have handled it, but when Madam requests something, we listen. It’s part of being Madam.

I dialed the number and it started ringing, I hit speaker.

“Hello,” Ysabelle answered.

“Bella,” I replied, my emotions getting the best of me. I tried to hold back the tears; between Devon and now this, it was a sensory overload.

“Brooke? Are you all right? What’s wrong?”

I took a deep breath. “Bella, it’s Madam. We’re in the hospital and she’s been badly injured. I don’t know what to do and I need you to come home. I need your help with everything. I can’t do this on my own. Please, please tell me you’ll come home,” I pleaded, surprised over the words that were coming out of my mouth.

Maybe I did need her help…

“What? Is she okay?” Ysabelle asked with desperation in her voice.

“Yes… but the doctors don’t know how long it will take for her to recover, and VIP can’t run itself. I need you to come home and help me. Bella, we owe everything to VIP. We can’t let it go down because Madam is helpless. Tell me you are coming home.”

“Brooke…” 

“Please… for me.” I urged.

“All right. I’ll book the next flight out.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll have the jet come get you. It should be there by tonight.”

“Okay.”

“And Bella?”

“Yes.”

“Are you coming alone?” I don’t know what possessed me to ask that, but I did.

She hesitated. “Yes.”

“Okay, I love you.”

“I’ll see you soon,” she said and ended the call.

I put down my phone and hugged Madam. “I don’t know what I would have done, if I would have lost you. Oh my God, I have never been so scared,” I honestly spoke. I wanted to tell her what was going on, but it wasn’t about me. It was about her. She didn’t need anything else on her plate.

“It’s all right, darling, I will be fine. It will take some time, but I will be better than before; you will see. Everything will fall into place. I promise.”

We both turned when the door was roughly pushed open. A man with long blonde hair that was pulled back into a ponytail, rushed in. I had seen him a few times before, mostly at parties and sometimes in Madam’s office. I never spoke to him; I think his name was Mika. He was older, but fuck he was sexy. The intensity of his stare at Madam made me come unglued and nervous.

I stared at him, confused and then back at Madam, by the look on her face she was as surprised as I was.

“I’ll leave you two alone. I will be right outside,” I announced, walking out of the room, and shutting the door behind me to give them privacy.

It took everything in me to not call Devon. I wanted to so desperately just to hear his voice, to have a shoulder to lean on. We hadn’t spoke since the day he ran out of my condo. I sat in the waiting room, and my head fell back against the headrest.

I closed my eyes and tried not to think about it. I focused on the fact that Ysabelle was coming home.

Back to VIP.

I saw Ysabelle’s face light up my cellphone screen. “Hey, Kid,” I answered, placing my phone on my shoulder and angling my head to hold it. “What’s up?” I asked, looking over the liquor shipment.

“I’m here.”

I looked around the bar. “Come again?”

“I’m in Miami.”

“Okay… is Sebastian with you?”

“No.”

“Are you okay?”

“No.”

“Where are you?”

“Sitting outside your bar in one of Madam’s cars.”

I awkwardly laughed. “Are you going to come inside?”

“Okay.”

I heard the sound of the call ending, and a few seconds later she walked in. I hadn’t seen her dressed like that in years. She looked like Brooke; she looked like a VIP. Straight hair displayed all over her face, heels sky high, tight jeans, and an off the shoulder blouse. The outfit probably cost more than my mortgage. No longer the carefree island girl with crazy curly hair, running wild and free.

“Do you want a drink?” I asked as she sat on the stool in front of the bar.

“Water,” she simply stated.

I grabbed a glass, sprayed some water in it and handed it to her.

“Are you okay?”

She shrugged, still looking in front of her in a complete daze.

“What’s going on?”

“I have not a fucking clue.”

I nodded. “Kid…”

Her eyes met mine.

“Start from the beginning.”

She chuckled. “Devon, if I knew where the beginning was, I would gladly tell you. Madam got assaulted and she’s in the hospital. I’ve been here a little over a week. I came back to help Brooke, but I also left Sebastian. I don’t know which side is up or down anymore.”

“You’re not like working, working, right?” I blurted.

“Of course not. I’m just helping run the business side of things. I’m not a VIP. I have no desire to become one again either.

“Does Sebastian know that? And does he know you’re here?”

She raised her eyebrows, reminiscing. “Oh yeah. That didn’t go so well. He showed up at The Cathouse. It was bad, but he knows I’m only here to help. I need a break… you know? I just need some space. Everything is so intense; too intense. I went from my piece of shit mother; to you, to VIP, to Sebastian, back to VIP, and then back to Sebastian. I never thought he would come to me, not after how we ended things with our fucked up affair. But there he was… almost two years later on my island. For me. And now one year later… here I am. At VIP.” She took a deep breath, contemplating what to say next.

“I never thought I would be back here, Devon. The day I walked out, I never looked back. Now I’m here, and it feels like home. How the fuck does that make any sense?”

I thought about Brooke. VIP had a hold on both of them, and I didn’t understand why.

“I love him, Devon. I love him so much. I’m never going to be Julia, his ex-wife. They have a child. She was perfect. She is perfect. I don’t think I want to get married, and with the genes I have running through me. What if I’m just like my mother? I would never bring a child into that.” She laid her head on her arms that were on the bar.

I rubbed her head, not knowing what else to do. “Kid…”

She turned her head to the side to peek up at me.

“You’re going to be okay. I know you will. Sometimes it takes for us to get lost until we can find our way.”

“You sound like a fortune cookie.”

I smiled. “How’s everything else?”

“Madam is… well, Madam. She wants me to take over, like indefinitely. Brooke is… I don’t fucking know.”

I lowered my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“She’s being weird, evasive. I feel like she’s hiding something from me. I know it hurts her that Madam wouldn’t offer VIP to her. I don’t really understand why she would offer it to me. I’ve always had a special place in whatever she calls a heart, but so has Brooke. It’s a very confusing time for all of us,” she half-joked.

I cleared my throat. “So… Brooke, hasn’t said anything to you, about anything?” I casually asked.

“We don’t really talk about stuff like that. I know she’s confused and hurting… I just assume it’s from Madam being in the hospital and almost losing her; then her offering me VIP. I know Brooke wants it; she’s been there forever. She knows what she’s doing, too. I’m helping where I can, but she knows her shit.”

“Yeah,” was all I could say.

“She’s sad though. I can tell. The crazy thing about Brooke and I, Devon, is that we don’t know much about each other. I shared with her a little bit of my past, and she shut down on me. We went to Vegas instead.”

“What did you do there?” I asked, thinking about the mansion she took me to for New Year’s Eve.

“Watched her get fucked up and babysat.”

I nodded, not being able to hear anymore.

“Anyways… thanks for listening. I don’t know what I would do without you,” she acknowledged, reaching for my hand.

“Good thing you never have to find out.”

“Yeah… how many VIPs does he need?” I asked Madam on the phone.

“He said six, but he’s also requested you as well,” she replied in a neutral tone.

“I haven’t really been playing, Madam, running things takes a lot more time than I would have premeditated.”

“I understand, darling, however, Marc has been with VIP for a long time. He’s important, and so is his business. I don’t want to let him down.”

I understood her subtle, yet persuasive order. “Then I won’t let him down.”

I could sense her smiling on the other end. “I knew you wouldn’t. I told him he could have my condo for the night. There will be about twenty of them. They love to watch…”

“Then I will make sure that they get a hell of a show.”

“I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me. Have a great time, Brooke baby.”

“Always.” I hung up, looking out Madam’s office window, which overlooked all the front grounds.

I thought about everything; Devon, Sebastian, and Ysabelle, my parents, Madam, and VIP. It was a juggling act in my mind; each thought scrambled the other and moved about quickly, as I tried to maneuver one at a time without dropping any of them. 

One thought barely ended, before the other began. If Sebastian and Ysabelle couldn’t make it work, then what was left for the rest of us… they were devoted to each other; almost annoyingly so. I loved visiting and watching them together, it sometimes gave me hope in moments of despair. Especially since I thought I never needed any to begin with.

They were beautiful together, and I would be lying, if I didn’t say that I was shocked that she was back at The Cathouse. Ysabelle didn’t belong there, she never did. She wasn’t like me. No one was. That’s why it hurt so much when Madam offered her VIP. I felt like I took a knife to the heart. The same heart Devon had stolen, and had yet given back.

I did the only thing I knew to be true. I poured myself into VIP, running it with Ysabelle by my side, for the last week or so. She didn’t know as much as me, but Madam never trained her… again, I didn’t understand. Although I didn’t question it, Madam did things her own way, and it wouldn’t matter if I had. I marched in line, exactly how I always did.

One day turned into two, two days turned into one week, which then turned into weeks. I hadn’t spoken or seen Devon in two weeks, but it may have been closer to three. Everything blended together. As much as I tried not to think about him, I subconsciously looked at my phone every night and every morning… waiting for the text messages that never came.

I did the only thing that came natural. I drenched myself into VIP. At the end of the day, it’s all I had.

It’s who I was.

The night of the orgy fiesta was here. I got dressed in a sequined, lacy red bra and matching panty set. The garter belt was snapped perfectly into place, and my heels were sky high. I looked at myself in the mirror; the VIP staring back at me was stunning and picture-perfect; she was flawless. The illusion so eloquently portrayed. I leaned forward and did a line of cocaine, which was already spread out ready to be inhaled.