“Yes.” He nodded. “She left a note and the police verified that the gunshot was self-inflicted.”
“Oh my God.” My eyes widened. “Why did she kill herself?”
“She thought she was in love with Brandon. He rejected her. She got high on drugs, saw him with another girl, and I guess that was it.”
“That’s awful.” I stared up at him. “Absolutely awful.”
“I told Brandon not to mess with the girls, but he never knew how dangerous it could be. Neither of us really knew how damaged most of the girls who worked at the club were. We had a lot of drug addicts, former prostitutes, runaways, abused girls.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yes.” He nodded sadly. “It broke us both when she killed herself. Brandon left the club right away. He blamed himself for what happened. He didn’t want anything to do with me or the club.”
“He couldn’t have known she would kill herself.” I sighed. “That’s horrible. Why did he tell Katie she was his college girlfriend though?” I frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“You’d have to ask him.” He shrugged. “I don’t know much about his life after he left, aside from an incident he had with Denise and a couple other girls we fired a few years later.”
“Denise?” I looked at him blankly.
“She was a girl who worked at the club.” He sighed. “But it doesn’t matter. That’s not my story to tell.”
“So what happened after Maria killed herself?”
“I closed the club immediately. We refunded all the yearly dues, and I tried to think what I could do to make amends.”
“What happened to the girls?”
“They freaked out. They made good money at the club, even though they hated it. Brandon and I pooled together and gave each woman who went to rehab a million dollars upon successful completion.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of money.”
“We made a lot of money.” He shrugged. “Neither Brandon nor I have ever experienced a life without a lot of money.”
“That must be nice.”
“Not really. You don’t notice or appreciate it when you’re born with it.” His eyes looked away from me. “So do you hate me yet?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t hate you.”
“I hated myself when I realized what the club stood for. The subjugation of women. It made me realize that I’d gotten it all wrong. Women weren’t in it to hurt us. At least most women weren’t. They wanted to uplift their men. Most women just wanted to love and be loved. But they had issues just like us. And many of their issues were caused by men. I realized that I needed to help to uplift women who had been damaged and were on the wrong path. The club attracted all the women who needed our help the most, but instead we just hurt them even more.”
“I guess with your childhood, you didn’t really—” I started but stopped as he put up his hand.
“That’s not an excuse.” He shook his head. “Do you know how many women I’ve met who have been on drugs since they were kids because they wanted to forget the pain they couldn’t get out of their heads? The pain of being abused by their fathers or their uncles. The hunger that they’d lived through for years that selling their body for $10 seemed like a good option. Women who had nothing and did anything and everything they could to get a meal or a warm bed for the night.”
“It’s not your fault that they grew up like that.”
“But I didn’t do anything to help. If anything, I further used them.” His voice broke. “My club was the epitome of everything wrong in our world.”
“So what did you do?”
“I decided to try and help these women.” He stared at me hard then, and I could hear the determination in his voice. “I knew that we got a lot of women applying to work at the club that had problems, so I decided to let that work for me. We continued advertising and hiring girls. Only this time, we weren’t hiring them to work at the club. We were hiring them to see how we could help them.”
“Help them?” I was confused.
“We send the girls to different rehab houses, Meg.” His voice was strong. “Alcohol, drugs, vocational school, new mother training. Anything we think can help improve their lives.”
“What?” I frowned.
“That’s why we do the tests. We’re not looking to see what skills you have for working in the club. We’re looking to see your weaknesses and proclivities. If you go for the cocaine or the heroin in the drug room, we know that we need to get you to a drug rehab right away.”
“I didn’t even see the heroin.”
“That’s because you’re not a drug addict.” He smiled at me and squeezed your hand.
“What about the spelling test? What rehab do you go to for that?”
“We send the girls to different schools with tutors. The spelling test and the math test is to see what level they fit in so we know better where to send them.”
“Oh.” My eyes widened. “So you’re not sending them to men.”
“To men?”
“Like as sex slaves?” I muttered quietly, feeling like a fool as I said it.
“No, of course not.” He frowned. “I would never do that, Meg. Never.”
“What about the babies?”
“Some girls come to us when they are pregnant. We have a nursery that we set up to help look after the babies while the women get clean.”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
“We don’t want there to be any excuse to stop them from getting clean.”
“I can’t believe you do all that.”
“I wish I could do more.” He sighed. “I wish I could help every woman who needs it.”
“It must cost you a lot of money.”
“Money doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Does Brandon know that you send the girls to rehab?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “He helps to pay the bills.”
“Oh?” I was shocked.
“Yeah. His company, Marathon Corporation, donates $100 million to the club every year.”
“Wow.”
“He’s a good guy.” He kissed my cheek. “He’s a really good guy. If it weren’t for me, he always would have been a good guy.”
“You didn’t make him do anything, Greyson.” I pulled his face down to mine and kissed him. It was then that I noticed that there were tears on his skin. “Oh, Greyson.” I reached up and wiped them off of his face. “Are you okay?”