Mafia Kings: Roberto: Dark Mafia Romance Series #5

My life quickly fell apart.

My boyfriend was the first casualty.

I called him in hysterics when I got back to my apartment, but he didn’t answer.

I texted him it was an emergency –

And got back a text message:

I can’t see you anymore.

That was when I really lost it.

WHY? I texted back.

I called and texted him so many times that he finally showed me the reason:

A picture of his face with a swollen black eye and multiple scrapes and bruises.

Three gangsters jumped me coming out of my apartment this morning. They beat me up and told me they’d kill me if I ever talked to you again. What the fuck is going on, Mei-ling?

I apologized profusely. I told him my father was triad and that he’d found out about my secret life.

My boyfriend was understandably angry that I’d kept my father’s profession a secret.

But it’s over, I pleaded. He disowned me. He won’t ever bother us again.

I can’t take that chance, he replied. Please don’t ever contact me again.

That was the last I heard from him.

I tried contacting my brothers, but neither returned my calls or texts.

I realized after a few days that they had blocked my number.

Next up was my boss.

After crying all weekend, I forced myself to go back to work on Monday – only to find my badge to get into the building didn’t work.

Security called my boss, who came down with a small cardboard box full of my cubicle belongings.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but we can’t have those kinds of people showing up here again.”

He knew they were triad. Everybody at work knew it.

“They won’t,” I said frantically. “I promise you it will never happen again.”

“It’s too much of a risk,” he said as he handed me the cardboard box. “Good luck.”

I stood there in shock as he turned his back on me and walked away.

Even if I had continued getting a paycheck, I didn’t make nearly enough to pay for my apartment, much less food or utilities.

Once the money from my father stopped coming – which happened immediately – I was faced with losing my home. Even a single month’s rent payment would wipe out all my savings.

I sat at my kitchen table in shock, terrified I would never be able to get myself out of this mess –

Until my fear gave way to hatred.

FUCK him.

I’ll show him.

I don’t need him, or my mother, or anybody.

I’ll make it on my own.

That was when I decided I would survive no matter what I had to do.

I took stock of what I had.

A degree in Economics and experience at an investment bank, which might have gotten me a subsistence-level job –

Except I couldn’t imagine my former boss recommending me to another employer.

In fact, he would probably warn them not to hire me.

However, it just so happened that I had a contact list of well-to-do men…

Men who had attended my fetish parties…

Who enjoyed being tied up, whipped, and humiliated…

And who had repeatedly asked if they could pay me to give them what they wanted.

I called the first guy I thought of.

I told him I had quit my day job and was now offering my services for hire.

“How much?” he asked eagerly.

I hesitated, then forced myself to sound confident. “Three thousand per hour.”

That was Hong Kong dollars – the equivalent of $385 US per hour.

“And no sex,” I added firmly.

He immediately said he wanted three hours and asked if I could come to a hotel room that night, which he would pay for.

I said yes.Belongs to (N)ôvel/Drama.Org.

Before I left to meet him at the hotel, I had booked seven more gigs – enough to pay my rent for the month.

And my utilities.

And my grocery bill.

The best part was, it would only take me a few days.

I would make ten times more than my monthly paycheck… in less than a week.

And that was how I started my career as a dominatrix.

For a year or so, the money was enough to keep me interested – but I gradually grew weary of being a dominatrix.

My heart wasn’t in it, and I found some of the things I had to do distasteful.

I never had sex with my clients, though.

Well…

I was never the recipient of sex.

I occasionally used sex toys on some of my better-paying clients, which was the part of the job I disliked the most.

The only thing that kept me going (other than needing to pay my rent) was I used the revenue to keep funding the fetish club.

Once a month, I would host an underground BDSM gathering in some of the wealthiest homes in Hong Kong.

Word of mouth brought in new clients begging for my private services.

The higher demand and more exclusive clientele allowed me to double my rates.

With my new influx of funds, I rented a permanent space in the warehouse district and christened it After Dark.

Eventually, I hired a dominatrix to take over some of my workload…

Then another…

And another.

I hired a male dom for the gay clients and the occasional straight woman or married couple.

Then another.

And another.

Not to mention submissives for the clients who liked to be in control…

Plus staff to handle the bookings and security.

Before I knew it, I had a bustling business bringing in half a million US in revenue per month – close to $100,000 US in profit just for me.

I retired as a dominatrix and switched to running the club full-time.

The one thing that suffered greatly was my love life.

I had the occasional bondage session with men I trusted…

But I never found anyone like my previous boyfriend, the one my father had frightened away.

Truthfully, I was too scared to let anyone get close to me again.

After the disaster that had happened when my father found out, I became withdrawn… isolated.

I didn’t really notice, though.

I was busy running a thriving business. I had less and less time for a private life.

Three years after my father had disowned me, I moved into a luxurious apartment in the Summit. I bought myself a Bentley as a reward for my success.

Life was good.

And then disaster struck again.

It was a typical Saturday night at After Dark. I was making the rounds, ensuring that all my clients were being taken care of –

When police officers in riot gear kicked down the doors.

“HALT! YOU’RE UNDER ARREST!”

Customers screamed and ran for the exits.

The cops let them go.

They only seemed interested in me.

A new customer came out of a private room, dragging along the submissive he’d hired. She was handcuffed – and not in a fun way.

He flashed a badge in my face.

An undercover cop.

“You’re the proprietor of this establishment?” he asked me gruffly.

“…yes,” I said wearily.

“Your employee solicited me for sex for money. You are hereby arrested for engaging in organized prostitution.”

In Hong Kong, prostitution wasn’t illegal, exactly – but running a brothel was.

It was informally known as the ‘one woman, one room’ rule. As long as you were a one-woman operation, the cops left you alone.

In fact, there were high-rises in Hong Kong with hundreds of rooms rented by individual sex workers.

But if several prostitutes worked out of a single apartment…

Or a person offered sex-for-hire in an establishment like After Dark…

Then the owner of that apartment or establishment could be charged with organized prostitution, and the business would be shut down.

I glared at my employee, who stared at the floor in shame.

She had violated my number one rule: no sex with customers, at least not on the premises.

If she wanted to take someone home and charge them, fine – just as long as it wasn’t at After Dark.

But she’d wanted to make a quick buck…

And now I was going to pay the price.

She would get off with a relatively small fine –

And I would lose my entire business.

She’d screwed me royally –

Not to mention all her colleagues, who wouldn’t have a place to work after tonight.

“You are under arrest,” the detective intoned as he slapped cuffs on my wrist. “If you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be appointed to you…”

I had enough good sense to prepare for just such a situation long ago.

Every month, I paid a substantial retainer to one of the preeminent criminal defense lawyers in Hong Kong – a young hotshot who had his own firm by the time he was 30.

I left a message for him on his cell phone as soon as I was booked at the police station…

But he wasn’t the one who showed up.

Instead, an older man in a pinstripe suit and wireframe glasses walked into the private consultation room. I’d never seen him before.

“Who are you?” I asked in surprise.

“Your father sent me.”

Ice water coursed through my body.

I was about to scream for the guard when he held up a finger. “Hear what I have to say first.”

I stayed silent, but my heart was beating several times faster than normal.

“Your father does not want your name in the papers, given that the press will link you to your family… so he has arranged for the charges to be dropped.”

I stared at him, stunned. “How?”

“Unofficially, all it took was a phone call. Officially, the warrant will be found to have certain flaws which will invalidate the arrest. You’ll be released half an hour after I walk out of here. However, your father wants me to give you a message.”

I sat there in silence, waiting in terror to hear it.

“Your business ends tonight. Otherwise, you will be the target of future raids. They will continue to occur until the police either find something to put you in prison or you’re financially destitute. Take whatever money you’ve made and walk away.”

I felt sick to my stomach. “Does my father want me to leave Hong Kong?”

“No. He expressly forbids that.”

I stared at the lawyer in shock. “…what?! Why?!”

“If you are willing to marry someone of his choosing, he will overlook the last three years and allow you back into the family.”

Now it made sense.

The asshole just wants to control me.

He doesn’t want me to leave –

He wants me under his thumb.

He wants me to come crawling back to him.

Like the moment when I’d decided to become a dominatrix, my fear gave way to anger, purifying and hot.

“You tell my father he can go fuck himself.”

The lawyer gave me the barest hint of a smile. “I’ll tell him you’re considering his offer. I would strongly advise you to do so.”

Then he walked out.

Just like the man in the pinstripe suit had said, I was released 30 minutes later.

The charges were dropped. Something about a faulty warrant.

Ordinarily, I would have had to go to court and spend tens of thousands of dollars before the cops would admit something like that – even if it was true, which I was guessing it wasn’t.

But that was the perk of having a triad boss as your father. Lots of crooked cops and judges on the payroll.

I got a call from the hotshot lawyer the next morning. I was still drunk from the half a bottle of vodka I’d drunk when I got home.

“What happened? By the time I got to the station, they said you’d already been released.”

I told him about the man in the pinstripe suit and the message from my father.

My lawyer already knew about my triad connections; I had warned him when I first hired him. It hadn’t phased him in the slightest.

“What are you going to do?”

“What can I do?” I asked angrily. “I have to shut everything down. Otherwise, he’s just going to sic the cops on me until I’m ruined.”

My lawyer was silent for a long moment.

Then he said, “Don’t do anything just yet.”

“Why?”

“I know a guy. Let me talk to him first.”

I scoffed. “Unless he’s more powerful than my father, I don’t think it’ll do any good.”

My lawyer laughed. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”