The Story of Blood and Roses

"Cienna, you\'re scaring me." To be quite honest, it was. I hadn\'t thought she\'d snap like this. I really needed to make that cabbie talk. He\'d be my only chance at figuring out where he\'d picked her up and what he\'d heard from her.

"Am I, now? You\'re gonna see so much more than this. You think I\'m going nuts, don\'t you? Anthony will do the same to you," she said and then grinned, her teeth showing, looking almost malicious in her gleefully inebriated state. "We? We\'re the currency. We\'re useful until we sell. I sold myself all those years back. Did you know that I got pregnant when I was in my teens? I\'d just gotten into the business," she whispered, the smile still plastered on her face. Her eyes were unfocused, but she went back to staring at the ceiling and not at me. "I know that you know where I come from. I\'m a top class saleswoman, am I not? I loved my job, you know. I was the best anyone ever had. I wasn\'t one of those high-class escorts who worked at gentlemen clubs. I worked on the streets, only took the filthiest rich to bed and made them fall in love with my body." She paused then and then laughed out abruptly and shaking her head. "Ah, what I\'d do to be young and beautiful again." She nodded to herself, and I wondered if she was talking to herself.

"You\'ll end up the same way I am: high and in denial. I love to be a whore, but Anthony. He\'s robbed me of my love. He doesn\'t even touch me anymore, and it\'s your fault."

"And how is it my fault that you\'re not getting any?" I tried to suppress an amused chuckle at her accusation.

"He wants to fuck you. Are you happy?" Actually, I wasn\'t.

"No, I\'m not. I\'m not interested in fucking him, Cienna. He\'s all yours. You can have him." I assured her. "Now tell me what happened to you."

"No."

"What is going on here?" I could hear the anger in Anthony\'s voice. "You\'re as high as a fucking kite!"

He took longer, more aggressive steps and then stopped right in front of me and peered at Cienna. He bent forward and touched her face. He spread her eyelids with his fingers and swore.

"What did you do?"

"Molly knocked on my door. I couldn\'t say no." She looked guiltily at Anthony who clenched his fists and shot me a look. I took the opportunity to stand up and wait for him to say something.

"Molly?" he whispered harshly before running his hands through his hair.

"Ecstasy, Anthony," her voice oozed reverie. I shook my head and sent Anthony a worried look of my own.

"The drug that is ruining America," I thought out loud before shoving my hands into pockets.

"What else did you have?" he practically growled out.

"Molly wanted a dance with Johnnie Walker. Who was I to say no? We had a lovely threesome."

"Do you want me to take her back to her apartment or do you want me to just leave her here?" I asked Anthony as he paced the room, furious.

"She stays here. She has some answering to do." He turned to me, then.

"There is a cab waiting outside. The man refuses to go before he knows that no one is going to harm her," I said and pointed at her. He swore again.

"You need to find out what she said. Everything."

"On it, boss. No need to worry."

"No rest for the wicked, huh?" he tried to joke but failed miserably.

"You should go off to sleep. I\'ll leave her some food, water and something for her head."

"Yeah, you do that. You\'re a savior, Mia. I don\'t know what I\'d do without you."

"Thank you, Anthony." I smiled at him and he returned it in earnest. As he went back upstairs, I sat beside Cienna and asked her the most obvious question.

"Where were you all this time? Cienna?" I tried to shake her into focus.

"\'I belonged to no one, who belonged to everyone. Who had nothing, who wanted everything. With a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom, that terrified me to the point that I couldn\'t even talk about it. And pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me...\'"

The words sounded vaguely familiar, but the implication was loaded. I guessed that she had been going back to the same place she had been working before Anthony got her out of the business. She might resent Anthony for doing such a thing, but he did save her life.

Having seen her bank account left no confusion in my mind that she was somehow being dragged back into the prostitution ring again, either willfully or forcefully, but she was going back.

I wasn\'t worried about her, I was more worried about how that would affect the mob or my mission. If Cienna made one wrong move and somehow gave the mob away... I didn\'t even want to think about it.

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