He finally spoke. “Were you going to leave without saying goodbye?”
“I didn’t think it was needed.” I shrugged and looked away.
“You were just in my arms a few minutes ago.” His eyes questioned me.
“You left me to go and send someone else away.” My voice broke and he frowned.
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw you with the girl and the baby.”
“Oh.” He ran his hands through his hair. “That’s my business, Meg.”
“I can’t believe you can stand there and say that so calmly!” I shouted, angry now. “As if it’s no big deal.” I walked towards him now. “You can’t just treat women like that. It’s not right.”
“I told you I’m not a good man.”
“I didn’t want to believe you.”
“You should have believed me.” He sighed and took a step towards me. “Brandon was always the weaker one.”
“So? What does that have to do with anything.”
“That’s why I told you and Katie that everything was my fault.”
“Huh?”
“In the club. Maria’s death. Everything. I take responsibility for it all.”
“It is your fault.” I paused. “Or are you saying it’s not really your fault?”
“I wanted Katie to believe it was all me.” His eyes drilled into mine. “I wanted to absolve Brandon in her eyes.”
“Are you saying it wasn’t all you? Is Brandon still involved with the trafficking?”
“What?” He frowned. “No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“Will you come back inside?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Tell me now. Tell me here.”
“When we started the club, I was a spoiled, cocky rich boy. I wanted to own the world. I wanted to provide a club for the richest men in the world to enjoy. Part of that enjoyment came from women.”
“Prostitutes?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” He sighed. “The lines are blurred. The women knew what they were getting into and none of them had to do anything they weren’t comfortable with.”
“I see.” I looked away as a heavy feeling filled me.
“The club grew quickly. All the richest men in New York wanted to join the club. Then we got businessmen from LA, London, China—all over the world.”
“I see.”
“Word spread that we had the most exclusive club in the world. But no one knew exactly what was going on. We had so many different rooms and so many different levels, and each level had access to something different.”
“So men paid to have sex with women.”
“Essentially, yes,” he sighed. “I’m not proud of myself or what the club became, Meg. Every day, I wish that I hadn’t started the club.”
“Sure.”
“The day that Maria died was the pinnacle of all my bad days. I’d been starting to regret what the club had become, but it was that day that I realized that it needed to end.”
“What happened to her?” I looked at him with worried eyes. I was scared that he was going to tell me something terrible.
“She shot herself in the head.” His eyes were wide with pain, and I took his hands into mine. “She called Brandon right before she did it. He walked into her room a few minutes after it happened.”
“Are you sure it was her?” I asked, unconvinced.
“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.”