Vanilla and Vice (Empire Sevens Book 1)

  VANILLA & VICE

  Copyright © 2018 by Tabatha Vargo & Melissa Andrea

  All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events or real people are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  VANILLA & VICE/ Tabatha Vargo & Melissa Andrea

  Cover Art by Melissa Andrea

  Photography by Eric David Battershell

  Model Kevin Hessam

  Book Design by Melissa Andrea

  Edited by Editing4Indies

  VANILLA & VICE

  My sick obsession with domination and sex had become an addiction, and I was no longer willing to be a slave to it. Now, I’m six months sex free, and I haven’t tied a woman up in five.

  I’ve never felt more powerful in my life.

  Then Eden Vaughn got a job at Empire Sevens and turned my newfound control on its head.

  She makes me feel weak and tests my restraint, silently begging me to show her how deep my addiction runs. I can’t have her sort of temptation in my casino, and I’ll do whatever it takes to get her to quit.

  I’m into all things dark and filthy, but innocence is my kryptonite. She’s virtuous and vanilla, and vanilla is my VICE.

  1

  EDEN

  VAUGHN

  IF HE WOKE UP, he would beat the hell out of me.

  I’m talking beat me within an inch of my life.

  No.

  That’s not entirely correct.

  If he caught me stealing from him, he would probably kill me—choke the life from my body while my stoned mother watched in a daze.

  I was confident he would take me out of this world without batting an eye—send me beyond the veil with a few choice words and a whole lot of pain.

  He was heartless and as mean as a snake.

  The first time Allen, my mom’s boyfriend, hit me, it wasn’t that bad—a simple backhand across the face for talking back. I remember thinking it was better me than my mother. I remember thinking that even though I felt like my cheek would explode, I was younger, and I could take more than she could.

  That was the first.

  A lot had changed since that first time. The last time he hit me was terrible.

  Using muscles I had never used before, I fought back, screaming and growling, but it was pointless. Allen was much stronger than I was and had more experience in fighting.

  Ending that night with bruises on my cheek and a bloodied lip, I spent the night trying to get comfortable in my single bed while the smell of mildew lingered in my room from a broken pipe under the bathroom.

  My eyes were still open when the sun came up, and after a night of thinking about it, I decided I was done. I was determined the last time he hit me would be just that … the last freaking time.

  No more name-calling.

  No more putting his hands where they didn’t belong.

  No more being uncomfortable in what was supposed to be my home.

  After I stepped out the front door, I would leave it all behind. Life as I knew it would cease to exist, but until then, I still needed to be cautious, which was why I was ever so careful when I snuck into my mom’s bedroom and slid his wallet from the dresser.

  I had seen him counting the money in his wallet earlier in the living room. It was right after his “friends” stopped by and left with little baggies of what I knew was drugs. Since then, he had blown a good bit of the money on beer and pizza, but I knew he still had some left in his wallet. He had sold a lot, which meant plenty of money should be left.

  My mother had never been into drugs—at least not until she met Allen, but now it was the main reason she looked away when he would flip out and put his hands on me. She was too stoned to care, and I was too broken to stay. One more blow and I was sure I would crack and break away.

  The floor beneath my feet popped and creaked, the rotten plywood just beneath the stained carpet ready to give, and I froze in fear when Allen turned on his side with a moan. If he woke up now, he would kill me for trying to steal from him.

  Their bedroom smelled of stale cigarettes and dirty laundry. My mom had always kept a clean home. It didn’t matter if we lived in an old single-wide in one of the crappiest trailer parks this side of Mesa. It might have been ugly, but it was always clean.

  Not anymore.

  These days, I kept my bathroom and bedroom clean, but I couldn’t do much about the rest of the rooms. Especially not when Allen would invite his friends over, and they would destroy the place.

  Standing next to their bed, I took in the profile of my sleeping mother. We had always been close, growing up together in a lot of ways since she had been a young, single mother. Even after I turned eighteen and passed the age of moving out, I stayed with her.

  With beautiful, long blond hair and eyes as transparent as glass, she had a smile that lit up the room, and her confidence burned even brighter. But these days, things were different. She no longer cared about her appearance. Her hair was thin, her eyes were dull, and she rarely smiled unless she was high.

  When she started dating Allen, things changed, and once he moved in with us, things took a turn for the worse. He had anger management issues and a serious drug problem. Both things meant I spent a lot of time defending her and stepping in to take the beatings intended for her.

  I loved her, and looking down at her while she slept, I could almost see the woman she used to be, but after two years of abuse and trying with all I was to bring that woman back, it was time I admitted the truth.

  My mother was long gone, and I needed to let go of the way things used to be and leave.

  Closing my eyes, I swallowed my emotions and the nerves threatening to stop me, and when I opened them again and saw the disgust of the room around me and Allen’s naked flesh in my mother’s bed, I knew I was doing the right thing.

  His black leather wallet was old, the material cracked and the contents barely hidden in the folds. The twenties tucked inside called to me—promising me a better life—promising me freedom. I had never stolen anything, but since Allen refused to let my mom and me work, I had no money. Not allowing us to work was his way of keeping control—his way of keeping us—and making it impossible for us to leave him.

  I had different plans, though, and with them both passed out after an all-night binge, I knew it was now or never.

  Plucking the wallet from the dresser, I slid it into my back pocket without taking my eyes off Allen or my mother. I held my breath, waiting for him to open his eyes and catch me stealing from him, but he remained asleep, his monstrous snores filling the silence of the room and seemingly shaking the paper-thin walls of our mobile home.

  Reaching out once again, I wrapped my fingers around his keys and closed my hand tightly to keep the keys from making any noise. A keychain, one with a jagged edge, dug into my palm, but I held my fist closed, not caring if it pierced my skin.

  Allen sucked in a breath, his snoring stopping as he coughed and gasped in his sleep. He flipped onto his side, his loose naked flesh smacking with his movement and filling me with disgust.

  I didn’t move.

  I didn’t breathe.

  My legs were stiff as I waited for him to either wake up and catch me or fall back into a deep sleep. I shook, the fear within so pungent it se
nt my nerves on a downslide.

  Finally, when I was sure he would wake up and catch me, he exhaled, and his body relaxed.

  I didn’t hang around any longer. I backed away from their bed on shaky knees, looking behind me so I didn’t run into something or knock anything over, and once I cleared their bedroom door and made it into the hallway, I released the breath I was holding to stop my lungs from aching.

  The hallway floor popped and squeaked beneath my feet again, but I didn’t pause this time. Instead, I kept moving, snatching the bag I had packed and hidden four months before. It had been ready and waiting for my time to escape.

  That time was now.

  I pushed the front door open, and the hinges groaned loudly, begging to be oiled, filling the quiet of our trailer as I stepped into the hot Arizona air. I didn’t worry that the creaking of the door would wake them because I no longer cared. All that mattered was making it to the car. As long as I could make it inside the car and lock the doors, I was good.

  We only had one car, which meant I would have a decent head start before Allen managed to get one of his friends over at four in the morning to give him a ride. He couldn’t chase me until he had a ride, and knowing his stoner friends, they would take forever to get to our place.

  I didn’t even shut the front door as I moved down the wobbly metal stairs and stepped onto the rough dead grass of our measly front yard. Then I ran all the way to Allen’s rusted Oldsmobile, the white rocks of what was supposed to be a driveway crunching beneath my feet when I reached the driver’s side door.

  The faded gray of the car was covered in earth from an earlier dust storm. Everything was smothered in desert dust and debris, making the different colored single-wides of our trailer park a matching beige. I unlocked the door and opened it. The sandy door handle felt gritty against my fingers when I popped the door open, and when I pulled my hand away, a perfect set of my fingerprints was left behind in the dust.

  My bag clunked against the passenger’s seat when I tossed it inside before I fell into the driver’s seat and pulled the door closed. I locked the doors behind me immediately even though I didn’t see anyone at the door coming after me yet. Shoving the key into the ignition, the engine roared to life, and I sighed in relief that it cranked on the first turn.

  Allen’s car was a piece of shit, and I could only pray it would take me as far as Vegas, where my aunt lived, but at that point, I no longer cared if it got me a mile down the road. Getting away from that trailer and the man inside who couldn’t keep his hands off me—whether it was secret touches behind my mother’s back or his fist slamming against my body in anger—was all that mattered.

  I had to get away.

  Leaving my mother behind was hard, but I knew I would never survive another year of Allen, so I had to go.

  I backed out of the yard and onto the gravel road of the trailer park, knowing I was doing the right thing. I had just turned twenty-one, and it was time I made my own way. Sure, I had to steal from Allen to get away, but I deserved compensation and a ride for dealing with him for the past two years of my life.

  When I finally pulled out of the trailer park and onto the main road, the weight of two long and painful years lifted from my chest. And once I was an hour away from Mesa and entering the never-ending length of desert that led to Vegas, I knew I had made it.

  I was finally free.

  2

  EDEN

  WHEN I FINALLY MADE IT to Las Vegas, it was almost ten in the morning. The early sun was blazing against the car and filling the small space with a suffocating heat. The broken air conditioner was honestly a safety hazard in the West, and my clothes stuck to my skin from the sweat.

  Exhaustion pressed down on me while my empty stomach rumbled in rage. The few measly gas station snacks I had managed to grab during a fuel stop had long burned away in my stomach, leaving nothing but water behind.

  Leaving the desert to enter the city had never felt so sweet. I had never been to Vegas, but seeing all the activity at just ten in the morning, I could only imagine how wild things got at night.

  Vegas never slept, and as I passed people who were still going strong after a long night of debauchery, I understood how it had earned its name of Sin City.

  I chewed on my bottom lip as I eyed the gas gauge. The needle was favoring the empty side of the scale, moving closer to the large red E with every mile.

  My money was long gone. I didn’t even have any loose change to toss into the gas tank. I thought Allen had plenty of money in his wallet, but when I finally had a second to open the old leather wallet, I was saddened to only find forty bucks. It was enough for gas, a small bag of chips, and a soda. All of which were long gone.

  Allen’s Oldsmobile was a gas guzzler, so even after almost filling the tank, I was still bound to run out before I made it to my destination. I prayed to the Vegas gods that what gas I had left would get me to the address I had ingrained in my memory for the past three years.

  The address had been written on a faded postcard, taunting me to run away and leave it all behind, and now that I had, I was worried the fumes lingering in the gas tank of the stolen car I was driving would not be enough to get me there.

  On top of that, I wasn’t even sure Aunt Kennedy would want me there. She was the only living relative I had, as far as I knew, and while we had once been close, that wasn’t the case anymore. She and my mom had a falling out five years ago, and I hadn’t seen her since.

  I was only sixteen at the time, so I had no say-so over what happened to myself or the life I was living, but even though my mom and I were close, I still begged my aunt to take me with her. That wasn’t a possibility, though, since we both knew my mom would have told the authorities my aunt had kidnapped me.

  I cried myself to sleep for days after Aunt Kennedy left.

  My mom refused to let me talk to her after that, but she would send me postcards from time to time, and when I got to the mail before my mother did, I would read them and then hide them. I’d read this particular card repeatedly, folding and unfolding it until the picture of the Vegas sign had a deep crease down the middle of it.

  I pushed aside the postcard and ran my fingers along the lines that made up Las Vegas on the map I had stolen from the gas station. As I calculated my distance and how much farther I had to drive, my dismay grew, choking me with worry.

  I would not make it.

  As soon as that thought crossed my mind, the car began to sputter as the exhaust spewed the last of the fumes I had been running on for the previous two miles. Quickly, I veered to the right, cutting off a brand new BMW and making the lady behind the wheel slam on her brakes. Her horn blared through the morning air, making me jump.

  “Stupid bitch!” she yelled out her window as she drove past me.

  I mouthed sorry to her and shrugged, letting her know I hadn’t meant to cut her off.

  My car sputtered once more, rolling to a stop before I could make it to the parking spot I was aiming for in the small shopping center I had pulled into.

  I gripped the steering wheel and took a deep breath as I leaned over and pressed my forehead against the worn leather. The Vegas sun was baking the inside of the car, and the smell inside mixed with the stress of the past few hours was giving me a headache.

  My head snapped up when yet another blaring horn tore through my pity party.

  It seemed everyone I passed was pissed off at me.

  A red Honda swerved around me, and the blonde behind the wheel flipped me the finger. I was blocking traffic right in front of a busy coffee shop, and I knew I couldn’t stay there.

  The car door groaned and whined when I pushed it open and climbed out. The air outside the car was cooler than inside, so I took a second to find a tiny bit of relief in the nonexistent breeze around me. Another horn exploded around me, reminding me of where the car I was driving decided to die.

  Putting the car in neutral, I attempted to push the rust bucket out of the way, but I was weak wit
h hunger and exhausted from the drive. I couldn’t budge it more than a step or two, and even then, it seemed to roll back into its original spot. That didn’t stop me from trying several times, moving it only inches with each push.

  Finally, I gave up, collapsing onto the ground between the open car door and the car and resting my head against my arm. Beads of sweat collected around my hairline and began to drip down the side of my face.

  “Do you need help?” a deep voice sounded from above me, causing a small shudder to move along my spine.

  Something about the stranger’s voice made me hesitant to lift my head, but when I did, I was met with lying eyes and blond hair that was greasy and matted.

  His muscle shirt, which at one point had been white, was dirty and stained. His pants hung from his hips, his frayed belt the only thing keeping them from falling around his ankles.

  Just as I suspected I would, I wanted to be as far away from the strange man as possible.

  “I’m good,” I said, covering my eyes from the sun as I looked up at him. “But thank you.”

  I hoped my words would be enough to see him on his way, but after a minute passed, I knew he would not go easily.

  “Are you sure? A tiny thing like you shouldn’t be trying to move this big car by yourself.”

  He licked his lips, his eyes moving up my legs as he brought a cigarette to his lips that was almost smoked down to the filter. He sucked hard, and it burned and crackled before he lifted his head to blow the smoke out from between his cracked lips.

  He was attempting to flirt.

  He thought he was turning me on, but he was only turning my stomach.

  “I’m fine. Thank you,” I stressed the word.

  I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear and attempted to ignore him, hoping it would be obvious I wasn’t interested, and I wanted him to leave me alone, but that didn’t happen.

  Instead, I felt the car door jerk, pulling roughly on my arm before his foul smell invaded my nose. He kneeled in front of me, his mix of body odor and cigarettes making my empty stomach roil.