*Four days earlier*
*Mike's POV*
"I hope you realize just how much we appreciate you finally agreeing to come forward," I say as my partner and I sit in front of the scared man in front of us.
He looks away from us before he says, "You guys didn't give me much of a choice... Is Evan safe?"
"I think you know the answer to that," my partner replies, coldly.
The man in front of us looks down and sighs. "Yeah... I do... Alright, let's get this over with so you guys can take that bastard down."
"Easy there," I say, not wanting to ruin our chance with his anger. "Let's take this one step at a time. From the beginning. What is your name and how did you come into contact with Anthony?"
He takes a deep breath and calms himself down. "My name is Ryan. Ryan Werker, formerly known as Ohmwerker. And as for how I met Anthony, well, I was homeless. Been homeless for a year. He found me looking through his trash, trying to find something to eat, and he offered me some food in his club. Once in there, he talked about how the club will make all this money, but he didn't have reliable strippers. He offered me a deal."
"What was that deal?"
"If I worked for him, I could live at the club. However, the deal was better for him. I would have had to work for free and give him half of my tips... But I took it anyways. I had spent a year sleeping in the backseat of my car... And his couch looked so comfortable."
"So you started working for him that night?"
He nods. "I didn't really know what I was doing, but I managed to get a lot of people's attention. After that night, I worked nightly. Saved up as much money as I could to eat regularly, get a costume together, and by the time I had enough to rent my own apartment, I had fallen in love with the club life... Until we got bigger.
Once we got bigger, the shitheads started coming out. The rich assholes that thought we were below them in life, the grabby assholes that would grope us every time we walked by them. And the monsters... The bastards that would try to fuck us in front of everyone, or drag us away to do that.
I begged Jigglesworth to ban them from the club, but he refused to do it. Saying if he did that, then we'd lose out on so much money."
"I'm sorry, but Jigglesworth," I ask, knowing that we needed to be as clear as day with this.
"When he and I first started to work together, I would call him Jigglesworth. His stage name at his first club was JigglyPanda because he was a bigger guy. After getting drunk one night, the name came to be, and it stuck. After a while, I stopped calling him that, but if I needed his full attention, the name would come back up, and he would snap back to me."
"Alright," my partner then says as he writes everything down. "Let's continue forward. How did the apartments come to be?"
We see Ryan's face scrunch up at the mention of the apartments. "The most disgusting part of the job," he then says before he slides his elbows onto the table. "People started going to Panda, begging him to let them fuck us. A lot of them even threw money at him to get him to say yes. And that greedy bastard broke. After we started hiring security guards, he got everyone together and told us he was going to hold our checks for the next month. He ended up buying the first apartment building he could afford and had us all live there. I thought it was meant to be just somewhere nice for us all to live, but then he shattered that illusion.
He went to everyone, one on one, and told us that he did this so that he had somewhere to send the fuckers that wanted us. Told us if we said yes to fucking them for pay, we'd get more time on the pole, more work days, and we'd get to live there for free."
"Did you agree to all of this?"
"Not at first," he tells us. "I didn't want to do anything with anyone. But that changed when he came to the club."
"Who?"
Ryan sighs and looks down at the table. "Bryce. He was this sweet college kid, had a bit of an attitude, but he was funny and kind. I fell for him, and he quickly fell for me too. However, he wasn't going on stage as much as he should have. That is, until someone got their eye on him.
There was this sick bastard, sadly also named Ryan. He had been nice to everyone, but when he saw Bryce, he changed. I was actually giving him a lap dance the first time he saw him, and I heard him whisper "he looks just like Felix". Later on we learned that Felix was his ex that he was still in love with.
Anyways, once Ryan got his eyes on Bryce, he started throwing high amounts of cash to get Bryce. He paid Panda a crap ton of money to have Bryce all to himself and to deny anyone else that wanted him. Panda did as he wanted, and Bryce agreed to do it for more time on the pole.
Not long after Ryan started hooking up with Bryce, Bryce started coming to me. He hated being Ryan's plaything. He didn't like being used the way that he did. Eventually, Bryce started to come to me so much that we just, happened. We started doing things couples did, and Bryce wanted to end things with Ryan. He even told Panda he didn't want it anymore. He threatened to quit if Panda didn't stop everything, which made Panda nervous. By this time, Bryce started getting big. He was bringing in a lot of people, making the club a lot of money. I even used this as a playing piece in this fucked up game for us. I told Panda he could have Bryce live with me so he could hire another dancer to take dick since Bryce wanted it to end." He chuckles a bit before he continues. "Bryce and I were so happy when he said yes to that."
"And how long did that last," I ask, knowing that it couldn't have been that easy.
"A day; maybe. Ryan had already known where the apartments were, so when Bryce cut him off, he went crazy. He started stalking Bryce everywhere, begging him to talk to him. He begged Bryce to quit the club, thinking that was why Bryce ended things. He followed him everywhere he went. It got so bad that even Panda started getting worried, but he didn't do much. After a few months, he banned Ryan from the club, but that didn't stop him. We called the police several times, but he just wouldn't leave him alone. Everything he did made Bryce a nervous wreck and strained our relationship. After a few months of dating, Bryce and I had to break up, and this, for some reason, made Bryce believe that the stalking would stop. It didn't though. A few months after our break up, he started coming around less and less, but he would still show up...
It wasn't until one night that everything changed for the absolute worst."
"What happened?"
He shuts his eyes and I can see him start to shake with anger. "This is going to take us off track, and I fucking hate talking about this, but fuck it. This happened just a day before Evan was officially hired. I was at the apartment, helping Evan learn how to keep himself up on the pole, while Bryce was at work...well, just getting off of work. He was in the parking lot, by himself, when that fucking bastard jumped him... He... He forced Bryce into his car... and he..."
"Ryan, I understand that this is hard, but you need to say it. If you don't, we won't be able to use it against anyone. The other Ryan will be able to get out of prison, and we won't be able to use this against Anthony."
Ryan takes a deep breath and nods, telling me that he understands. "... The bastard raped Bryce right there in the parking lot of the club... just a few feet away from the back door... I found out about it an hour later, after Anthony called me. By then, the police came and took the bastard away... Anthony tried to hide it. He told them that Ryan was trying to kidnap him... but that was a lie and I have proof of it."
"Did you bring it?"
He nods before he reaches down and grabs his backpack off the floor. He opens it in his lap and pulls out a vanilla folder and slides it to us. "A few days after the rape, Bryce told me he had been in a lot of pain, so I took him to the hospital without Anthony's knowledge. Bryce had anal fissure from the rape, and the hospital even stated that it didn't look like it could have been caused by passing a large stool. The doctor even asked him if he had been. All Bryce told him was that he didn't want to talk about it and that everything was getting taken care of. Later, he told me what had happened to him."
I take the folder and open it, seeing the medical papers confirming everything he had told us. "Did Evan know about this?"
"No. Anthony told us to cover up the kidnapping because he didn't want Evan to get scared away, and Bryce begged me not to tell anyone what happened to him. I still can remember seeing him curled up in my car, crying his eyes out as he talked about how he felt disgusting and dirty and... He told me he didn't want anyone to know what had happened. Not even Evan, because he didn't know what anyone would think of him."
"Let's take a step back," my partner then speaks up. "How did Evan get roped into all of this?"
"... I brought him in."
I close the folder and place it back on the table, glaring at him. "You brought a fifteen-year-old into a strip club?"
"Look, it's not something I'm proud of, but at the time, I just wanted to help him. I just wanted to give him someplace to live, because I found him sleeping in a fucking park. I begged Anthony to let us keep him at the apartments, but he refused. He then proposed another deal for us." He then sighs before he continues. "The deal was that if Bryce and I sold ourselves, Evan would have been allowed to stay at the apartments. And again, it was an unfair deal. To add to his side, he said Evan also had to work for him to earn his keep.
Little did Bryce and I know, but he was going to hold Evan against us over the next two years. Any time Bryce or I fought against him, didn't do what he asked, or fucked up even a little bit, he threatened us with Evan. The stress from keeping Evan safe and having to deal with the nightmare of what happened to him started getting to Bryce fast. He wasn't a slut, and he wasn't a one-night stand kind of guy. Everything got to him and fucked him up so much that... that..." He shuts his eyes again and he starts to tear up. "Bryce was desperate for an escape from everything... He ended up going to Anthony one night before work, and he came backstage with a bag of pills... He got Xanax from Anthony and started using that night. This was about two months after his rape. And it ended up being the death of him."
"And you know for sure that he got it from Anthony?"
"Yes. Anthony loves money more than anything. He gets everything himself from a guy he had been blackmailing. Some pharmacist with connections that had been cheating on his wife with two of the dancers. He's been getting shit from him for over three years and he would sell it to the dancers. Well, taking the money out of their paychecks, but still."
"So, when Brock was in the hospital for the laced coke-"
"Wait, what?! Moo went to the hospital?! What happened to him?! Is he okay?! Please tell me he's okay!"
"Calm down," I quickly say, regretting my words. "Brock is okay. However, he went to the hospital around Thanksgiving due to an overdose. It was caused by something being laced in the cocaine he took before work."
"Fuck," Ryan then says, shaking his head. "I knew Jigglesworth was evil... I didn't know he would do that to us..."
"Please, let's stay focused here," my partner then says. "Now, did Evan know anything about what the apartments were being used for?"
"No," Ryan answers. "I never told him, and Anthony made it a rule for none of us to say anything. He didn't want to scare Evan off so he could continue to use him against Bryce and I... Then everyone else as time went on... Everyone really liked Evan."
"So is that why Evan is still there? He doesn't know?"
"I don't know if he knows or not. I haven't talked to him since I was thrown out of the club for quitting, and I haven't seen him since, maybe a week after Thanksgiving."
"What do you mean," I ask.
"Well, it's not important, but I went to the mall with my boyfriend and saw Evan there. And I know Evan. He doesn't like going out alone. He likes having people around him, or he gets nervous. So, I knew that if he was there, someone else from the club had to be there, and I didn't want Anthony to know I was trying to talk to Evan. So, I ran into the crowd."
"Alright, moving on," my partner says, taking control again. "How have you guys been hiding all of this from Evan?"
"We just don't tell him. Or, we didn't tell him."
"So he never noticed people coming in and out of the apartments," I ask, confused. "You guys never talked about this shit and he walked in? You expect us to believe that?"
"Well, he never noticed the people because no one was ever going to his apartment. As for us talking about those fuckers, well, code words can make anything sound PG."
"What do you mean," my partner asks.
Ryan shuts his eyes and sighs. "I'm so tired of playing host all night. My guest have been so annoying lately. To make matters worse, I have a very important guest coming over in the morning, and it's important that I impress him. Otherwise, Panda will be pissed that I lost him a partner."
When he says this, I look at my partner and see his face slowly shift into horror. "Th-that... They were-"
"Host was code for us having sex with those guys. Guest are Johns. Important guest are high ranking Johns that paid a large amount for us. And partners were Johns that come back so much that Anthony was able to use their money for his own little shopping spree. The last thing he bought himself with the money we made him by laying on our backs was a black, four-door truck. Never looked at the make and model, but I remember he loved the shit out of it."
My partner drops his pen and just stares at the notebook in front of him, shocked. I quickly reach over and take the pen and notebook, knowing that he needs a minute. "I think we can try to wrap this up now."
"One more thing," Ryan says, opening his eyes and looking straight into my eyes. "Evan is in a lot of trouble if he's still there. I've seen how Anthony acts around things he wants, and I know that Anthony wants Evan. If he gets the opportunity... I don't even want to think about what could happen to him. So please, get Evan out of there."
"We're going to use your statement here to try to get a warrant to take Anthony down, along with what we've gotten from the hospital and our undercover agent. As soon as we get the warrant, we will do everything we can to take him down. I promise."
He nods and we all stand up. I allow Ryan to walk out first, and my partner and I watch as he walks straight to his boyfriend and wraps his arms around him. "I can't believe how stupid I was," my partner then says before he starts walking to his desk.
"What?"
"The shit he said about the "playing host" and "guest"; the dancers talked about that shit around the bar all the time. They were talking about it right in front of me and I missed it all completely." He groans before he sits at his desk, putting his head in his hands. "I can't believe I didn't pick up on it."
"You couldn't have known," I tell him. "And even if you knew, there's no way for us to prove that that's what they were talking about. We needed someone that was there to confirm all of this, which is what we finally got with this guy."
"But there was a way for me to have gotten all of this sooner."
"Not a legal way," I practically yell at him before I slam the notebook onto his desk, making him jump. "You did everything you could while you were in there! Don't think that any of this meant you failed! If it wasn't for you, we would still be where these fuckers were a year ago, and you know it!"
He blinks and stares up at me, shocked by my outburst, but soon he laughs. "You know I can't take you seriously when you get pissy like this."
"I'm being serious!"
He laughs again and takes the notebook. "I know, and I know you're right." He opens the notebook again and reads it over. "I'm just annoyed that they literally talked about this shit in front of me almost every day and I missed it. At most, all I got us was the names of the cops from here that were probably fucking us over."
"And you know damn well that that means a lot."
He smiles at me and stands up. "Come on. Let's get this to the chief. Last thing we need is for this to slip through the cracks on us."
I smile and laugh as I follow him. "As if we would let that happen."