Amalgamate

Chapter 1

My job provided me with a lot of things; a car to drive around but I refused to accept it. It provided me housing in this same area but I also refused to accept it. Instead I had chosen to commute by foot as well as choosing to live on the other side of the city, as far away as I can get from here. Anyone would call me crazy; well they did call me crazy for declining. But I had a good reason. It was about keeping something about me that no one else could own. Accepting these things would mean more money for me but it also meant giving my soul completely to them and that was something I would never allow.

As I closed the door behind me I noticed that many of the rooms that lined the hallway on this side of the floor were empty. Some of the girls had probably left to private rooms to work for the night while the rest were probably "socializing" with some of the clients.

I quickly made my way to my personal room, making sure to lock the door as I took off my coat. I dropped my gun on the vanity and kicked off my heels. I gave myself a few seconds to breathe before I walked to a rack in my closet containing various colors of lingerie. Choosing out an outfit I quickly began to change.

Martillo had been correct when he told me that I was late. The performers were required to be at the club four hours before the first performance of the night started. Performances started at eleven, so most of the girls were always on time. They had accepted the offer that was given to them and so they lived no further than 3 blocks from the club or many choose to stay living within the club. I, on the other hand, had to ride the metro for an hour and then walk a whole block before I got to the club. Taxi services refused to drive anywhere near here.

Normally, I was the first dancer to arrive along with some of the waitresses. But today I had done something out of the usual that caused me to be late. I had decided to look for a decent job. Though I was barely 23, I had finally decided that being a pole dancer wasn't something that I only wanted to do for the rest of my life. There was no way that my bosses would ever allow me to leave this job behind but they were finally allowing me to work a normal, day time job along with this one. I took advantage of that privilege and had gone to a job offering I found on the local newspaper. Things didn't go as I planned though. I was under qualified they had said to me, which was something I couldn't argue against. I had barely gotten my high school diploma and didn't even have a lick of past work experience. Frustration had taken over me after I was denied the job so I had cried myself to sleep at my apartment and had overslept.

There isn't a sad story about how I ended up as a pole dancer. There is no one else to blame for being put in this position but me. I had been young and had wanted easy, fast money. When I had just turned twenty I heard about this new club looking for dancers. I had jumped at the opportunity thinking that I would work a few nights and then eventually stop. I wanted to see what being part of the forbidden world no one liked to talk about would feel like.

I was wrong about many things. For starters, pole dancing was anything but easy. The first few nights of training gave me bad skin burns. Secondly, I wouldn't be able to 'eventually' stop. Ever.

At that time I didn't know with who I was getting involved with or that I was signing a deal that I would never be able to get out of. I didn't think that I would be stuck doing this until the day they decided they no longer needed me. I didn't know that I would be stripped of my own free will or that I would be living on their terms.

Those I speak of are my bosses and the bosses of my bosses. I came to learn that they all worked in aa organized system of people; each holding a different ranking. The higher the ranking the more power those people held. No one dared crossed them. I was a simple dancer, new at that, so I didn't know much about what went on behind closed doors. But from what I had gathered through whispers between the older co-workers, they all knew that the mafia was behind everything. Only an idiot would assume any different. Of course we never spoke about it in front of our bosses. Better to not know then know.