Surrender 01 - Surrender

thought, it would probably be faster to slip a credit card into the doorjamb.
    She’d watched enough movies that she could probably break into a lot of places if she needed to. The thought made her smile as the lock finally clicked and she pushed open the door. Maybe she could find a job breaking and entering. It would be a more dignified profession than prostitution.
    Though the day had started only a few hours ago, exhaustion was nipping at Ari’s heels. She sat down on the couch and glared at her purse as if there were a snake inside of it just waiting for the opportunity to strike. Did she really want to see what Mr. Palazzo had planned for her?
    With great reluctance, she finally unzipped the bag and slowly pulled the papers out, her gaze a bit clouded as she glanced down. She fought the urgency to toss them, but reality — and a slight curiosity — won out.
    With only a week left at the apartment before rent was due, and no other jobs on the horizon, she needed to weigh her options. The burden of knowing that her mother’s living conditions would worsen without Ari's financial support made the decision about the position even more crucial.
    She’d already sold her mother’s home — the place Ari had grown up in. It had broken her heart to pack her mom’s most valuable possessions and take them to storage. She’d prepaid the unit for a year, taking no chances on losing the items that meant so much to her mom.
    Everything Ari had of any decent value had been auctioned off. She’d done everything she could do up to this point. Now, she had to find work — and it seemed no one wanted to hire a college dropout, even if she had been an A student. It meant nothing if she couldn’t finish her degree.
    In the end , she really had no choice but to look at the material before her. Grasping the papers determinedly , she unfolded the m and started scanning the words. By the time she got to the end she literally wanted to throw up. She couldn’t do this — no way.

Chapter Three

    Ari was speechless. She didn’t know what to think. Her bright eyes gazed at the words while her mouth hung open in shock. There was no way in hell she would do this. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. There had to be another option .
    The words there in cold black type circled in her head, showing her a side of life she never imagined existed. He owned her body? He could take what he wanted — day or night?
    Ari didn’t think so. She’d end up even worse off than she was because she wouldn’t abide by the stupid rules he’d set forth, and then he’d prosecute her. Could he do that? If she chose not to satisfy him as much as he wanted, could he really prosecute her?
    She slowly read back through the papers, and felt a smidgeon better. No. That wasn’t what he was saying. He could only actually prosecute her if she broke his confidentiality clause.
    What did he mean, though, by the word unknowingly ? If she didn’t know she’d done something, then how could she be responsible? As she gazed at the paper, she realized what that meant. If she left information about him lying around and someone got ahold of it, leading to people finding out, then she’d be at fault.
    Well, she wasn’t going to become his employee, or mistress, or whatever he chose to call the ugly position, so she wasn’t taking chances of someone’s discovering the dang paperwork. She walked to her stove and turned on the burner, then placed the edge of the papers against it, and she was consumed with overwhelming satisfaction when the paperwork began to go up in smoke.
    She held on to it for several seconds, making sure every last word would burn, then tossed the remains in her empty sink, where the wretched thing finished burning and turned into nothing but ash.
    Washing the ash down the garbage disposal helped relax her shoulder muscles somewhat . She could shut that door in life behind her and move forward. It was a good thing she couldn’t afford smoke detectors in her place, for her little act of defiance would have set every one of them off.
    Having opened a window to let out the smoke before she choked, Ari grabbed the newspapers she’d gathered all week and began fanning the smoke toward the outdoors with a wide up-and-down motion. As the smoke lifted upward to the sky, the realization that she was turning down the opportunity of one hundred thousand dollars a year began to sink in and her hopes of taking care of her mother were now plummeting.
    She