MR. MORENO'S SURROGATE ✔️

27 - Leilah

"What kind of business?" I ask.

"Just a few meetings with a few allying families," he says, shrugging. "Cayson and Daro will be there, but Cayson will attend the meetings with me, so you'll stick with Daro while I go in to handle my business."

"Okay," I say, nodding my head.

"Also, Mary will be moving your things into my room. I was supposed to when we got married but, you saw where we were with each other. I would say we're in a good spot with each other, wouldn't you?"

Understatement of the year.

"Yeah. Of course, I would think so."

"Okay then. You have about fourty-five minutes to get ready. I trust you'll be on time?" I nod my head in agreement. "Good." Then he gets up and heads upstairs.

It's weird being so close to him, but I'm getting to be more comfortable the more we talk. I like that we can talk to each other now without being vile to each other. It's refreshing.

I go upstairs and I get dressed, procrastinating on what to wear, but eventually putting on shorts and a tight fitting shirt that allows me to breathe, but brings out my baby bump. By the time I finish my makeup, it's already been an hour, so I head downstairs to see Elijah standing at the door.

"What is it with you and not being on time?" he complains.

"I had to do my makeup," I say, meeting him at the door and looking up at him.

He smirks at me and licks his lips before pulling me in by my hand to kiss him. When we pull away, he wipes the corners of his mouth and grins.

"You look good. You ready?" he asks me.

"Yeah, we can go," I say, smiling at him.

We walk out of the house and he closes the door as we walk hand in hand to the car. He opens my door and guides me into the passenger seat and closes the door, then gets in the driver's seat, starts the car, and pulls off.

We pull up to a club called Lust and when Elijah opens my door, I look around, taking it in. "Why are we here?" I ask curiously.

"I own this club. I come here to handle business, usually before night hours so my guests don't get suspicious of.. the noise. When I do handle business at night, the music gets so loud, it's natural noise cancelation. But majority of the people coming here are usually fucked up people like me, so they know what goes on here," he explains.

"That's a lot of information to process at once," I say with a smile.

"You get used to it."

We walk into the front and the bouncer looks at Elijah and then me. "She's fine. She's with me," he says, making the bouncer nod his head and move the velvet rope for us to enter.

As soon as I enter, there's loud music playing. Strippers dance on almost every pole, and some of them are giving lap dances to the men in chairs. There's money all over the floor, and it smells like nothing but alcohol in here.

"It's only twelve." I say, looking up at Elijah.

"I told you. These people are as fucked up as I am," he says, looking down at me.