Employee Two

It was a beautiful, large bathroom. There was marble everywhere and every fixture was elegant in its design. The lighting was soft and welcoming. I took a while and noticed every detail as I scanned the room until I saw him. He was resting in a large tub that had steam rising from the water.

"Join me," he said with a refreshing smile.

I hadn't seen that smile in years, and it warmed my heart. I smiled in return and joined him in the large tub. I met his eyes with mine and he paused to take me in before he spoke.

"If you want the job, it's yours," he said bluntly.

"That's it?" I asked. "No feedback or comments about what we just did?"

"Before we get to that, let me tell you what happens next. The floor below us has all the resources needed to make you successful. We have a dance studio, a gym, massage parlor, and everything we need on that floor to make this business work. I have professional dancers, personal trainers, masseuses and the rest of the professional staff I need to go along with it. You're going to be assigned to a mentor.

"I will meet with her before you do, and she will go over your interview with you and come up with a training plan. From this moment until she tells me that you're ready, you will work downstairs. You will not meet with clients until she tells me you're ready. With me so far?"

It seemed he was all business all the time. I was disappointed that he didn't set that aside for me. I was disappointed that he wasn't lying when he said every girl goes through what I did. It seemed he had every intention of treating me like a random girl off the street.

"I think so," I told him.

"Where do you live?" he asked.

I was embarrassed to tell him, and he must have read it on my face.

"Well, not anymore. The first private floor has the residences for those who ask for it. That is the third company I own. That floor has several apartments, a lab for homeschooling children with a few teachers on call, a play area, another gym, and security from dusk till dawn. There is already an apartment reserved for you with three bedrooms. Oh, they're also all fully furnished. Would you like me to send for your children?"

My jaw must have been hanging on the floor in disbelief. I stuttered as I tried to respond to his question. He smiled at me again knowing I just realized the depth of what he had done since he left us all those years ago.

"It's like I told you, I grew up since I left home."

"This is impressive, Dylan. I don't know what to say about all this," I confessed.

"You can start by answering my question. Do you want someone to go pick up my niece and nephew?"

I was at least happy that he finally acknowledged a familial relation to me.

"I will need to pack some things first and let them know someone is coming."

He reached behind him and handed me a phone.

"Call whoever you need. Your mentor will pick up your children and go to your house to pick up some of your belongings. We will provide you with the clothes you will need to work both up here and downstairs."

"Is that necessary? I am capable of packing our stuff up myself. Plus, they can't be picked up from school by anyone other than me or Mom," I told him, still in disbelief over everything that was happening.

"We have a lot to do, Kacey. My hope is that by the end of the night, you will not only have settled in your new home, but that many of your questions will be answered."

I struggled to keep up with everything that was happening. My life was changing so suddenly and so quickly.

"I need to get Mom to pick the kids up and she will know what things I want from the house since it seems clear you have no intention of giving me the time to do that myself."

I watched my brother work quickly through his thoughts and he reacted as if an ingenious thought just came to mind.

"I know where you live, Kacey. I asked you because I just wanted to see how you reacted to the question. I set everything up here assuming that you would ultimately take the job. We'll get Mom to pick up the kids and meet your new mentor at your place. They will take care of that while we get you situated here."

With that, he stood and pulled the plug in the tub, letting the bath water drain out.

"I'm going to turn on the shower head up there," he said, pointing above him, "to rinse you off before we get started. Baths without a final rinse are disgusting."

The shower started and I stood, letting the water flow over my head and down my body. It was the perfect temperature from the start and I wanted to stand there forever. My curiosity pushed me to get out of the tub, however, and follow my brother. When we got to where we had done the deed earlier, our clothes were on hangers near the door.

"There's a one-hour cleaner across the street," he said as he unpacked the neatly wrapped package on the floor below the hung clothing. "Let's get dressed and head downstairs. There're some hair products in here if you need them."

He was in a hurry to get his secret itinerary done. He began dressing and I stood there, still incredulous about everything that had taken place.

"Are you seriously going to act like you didn't just have sex with your sister?" I asked, remaining naked in the middle of the room where it all started.

After he buttoned his pants, he turned to face me.

"As I said, all the girls do this. This is the interview process. I have to set everything aside and do this professionally and you're no different in that regard, Kacey," he told me. "I know you're my sister and yes, I did think twice about going through all this, but I won't be treating you differently from them."

He began putting his shirt on and as he buttoned it up, he followed up on his previous remarks.

"If it helps, you look great and despite what I know about your past, you performed like you've done this before which tells me you have the potential to be the best."

He paused and a goofy smile grew on his face.

"You're good," he said in his best Ace Ventura voice. "With my help, you could be the best."

It felt like he was using his sense of humor to hide something from me. We weren't bonding like I thought we could have been, and it seemed it was intentional, outside of him trying to keep things professional.

"Dylan, I'm standing here naked. I'm a grown woman, your sister, and I'm standing here naked after having sex with you and bathing with you. What is going on?"

"Kacey," he started, rolling his eyes.

I took a moment to inject a little humor of my own. I pointed at his face and attempted to mimic our mother's response to such an act.

He laughed and continued, "You're going to go through a lot today. Some of it won't be easy and you will need some time to process it all. If you still have questions then, we will go through them all."

"Fine," I said defiantly.

I was unsure what any of that meant. He confirmed that he was hiding things, but also hinted that I was probably going to have many of my questions answered. I accepted that for the moment and moved forward. When we were done dressing, he showed me a stairwell that led to the floor below us. It was for his own personal use since it was on the opposite side of the floor from the elevators. He brought me to a desk where an older woman was seated. She had her head set on and was finishing her call.

"May I help you, sir?"

"Yes, Molly, this is Kacey. She will be starting today. Have Jennifer assigned as her mentor. If you can get that started, I'll bring her right back," he told her.

"Come with me," he said to me.

As I followed him, he stopped quickly and turned to look at Molly.

"Hey, Molly, I forgot to tell you. This is employee two."

Molly's face changed to something I couldn't quite place. Everyone else stopped what they were doing briefly to look at Dylan and then me. Their eyes lingered on me for an uncomfortable amount of time. As I met each person's eyes, they smiled genuinely at me, and their eyes looked like they had known about me for quite some time. I didn't know how to react to them, so I smiled and followed my brother. He took me to a door down the hall and turned around to face me.

"I know everything has been overwhelming so far but you need to remain open minded, got it? When you walk in here, do not say anything until this door closes and when you do, keep your voice down."

I furled my brow at him and asked, "What is going on, Dylan? This is getting weird!"

He smiled for the second time and responded, "Getting?"

He opened the door and dragged me in before slamming it behind him. After being startled by the loud noise, I turned to see the most unexpected thing imaginable.

"Mom!?" I said loudly. "What the fuck!?"

"Sit down, honey. We have a lot to discuss."

"Okay then," my brother said meekly. "I'll leave you two alone here to go over..." he said, shifting his eyes between Mom and me, "some things. Mom, you'll let me know when you're done?"

Another image of our youth flashed in my head. He always respected our mother and never went against her wishes. Her being present that raised all sorts of new questions.

"Yes, this will be quick and—"

"The fuck it will!" I said loudly. "Someone better tell me what the shit is happening around here!"

Mom looked sternly at me and repeated what she was going to say.

"Have Jennifer head over to the house. When I'm done here, I will pick up the kids and take them to the house and finish getting whatever is needed from there."

He nodded and left the room. I turned to face my mother and demanded to know what was going on.

"I know you have a lot of questions so let me tell you the basics of it all first, okay? Please keep your voice down."

Images began flashing through my mind again. Images that showed events from a perspective I never experienced. In one, I was eleven years old, and I stood on the street watching the blue and red lights paint the side of my house. I saw myself staring out the window. In another, I watched my brother shiver as he slept in the corner of an abandoned house that I'd never seen before. All the memories of my past came back to me in new and terrifying ways. All I could do was stand there and nod.

"This isn't going to be easy, Kacey. You might want to sit."

I backed away from her defensively and crossed my arms as if to protect myself from what my subconscious knew might be coming. It could have even been a defense mechanism since I felt that everything that I knew in my life was about to be torn away from me.

"Fine," she said, interlacing her fingers and resting her hands on the desk. "I'll just rip the band-aid off, then. Your father was murdered that night the police came. This was his business. By that, I mean he was in this business. Your brother made it into what you have seen here today. He went to confront a client who had beaten up one of his girls and refused to pay and was shot in the process."

She paused to let me process what she had told me. My eyes filled with tears as she continued.

"We tried to shield the business from both of you. We lived in a modest house, and we had people to help run the business so we could be home when you both needed us. Dylan found out about everything before I could stop him. He left home that night; I didn't lie to you about that. What I never told you was that several months later, he was arrested for killing the man police thought shot your father."

Tears flowed down my face. I closed my eyes tightly as I recalled how wrong I was about every single thing in my life. I shook my head, outwardly begging her to stop talking. Inside, I was pleading to know more.

"He was in jail for a long time but was released because of our influence in this city. Between his time out on the streets and in jail, he was able to put the pieces together and found out how I was involved in this business. I told him every detail. Instead of being mad at me, he wanted to take his father's place. Since then, I signed the entire operation over to him."

"Stop," I cried softly. "I can't do this right now."

"Honey, you need to do this. It's time you knew everything. I never wanted this for you, but you never backed away from anything. This is the moment when we have to rip the band aid off, okay? Don't back away now."

"Mom," I sobbed quietly, begging again for her to stop.

"Dylan has missed you so much, but it was too hard for him to come home. Even at my insistence, he wanted you to find your way in the world away from this place. He never wanted you to walk into this building and neither did I. I wanted to give you all the money I could to keep you from places like this but you're smart and you would have known something was up."

I heard every word she said, but only one thing was focused in my mind.

"I had sex with him, Mom," I whimpered.

She got up and approached me. She put her hands on my shoulders, pushed my head up, and looked me in the eye.

"I know honey, he told you he wasn't going to treat you any different than the other girls, didn't he?"

I nodded.

"How did you feel doing that?"

Her tone changed and it calmed me almost instantly. My world was shaken, and she became the pillar that held me up as she had done my entire life.

I slowly calmed my emotions as I thought about what she asked me. Before all of that, I didn't care much for the idea of sex after my only experiences were awful ones for me. The problem was that Dylan was different. His cock was certainly better than the others, but I enjoyed performing for him. That idea upset me all over again. I remembered being angry at my brother all those years ago and thinking that the world only thought I was good for whoring, but I began to believe that it was something I could truly be good at.

"I liked performing for him," I told her honestly.

Mom smiled slightly at my admission.

"Would you say you're interested in all this?"

"I feel like I would be treated just like any other girl he has," I told her. "I'm not just like any other one."

"You're going to go through all the same hurdles as the other girls, but you won't be just like them. Do you know what employee two means?"

I shook my head and said, "No, but I noticed everyone in the room stopped what they were doing when he announced that."

"Honey, it means you're destined to be second in command here. I'm going to keep running the books, but that spot has always been reserved for you if this moment ever came. When your brother watched you struggle from a distance, he told me one night if you ever walked in these doors, you were going to help run the place. Let me ask you, was he mean to you when you showed up?"

"He was being a jerk," I quickly replied defiantly.

"He was trying until the last minute to make you change your mind."

"Well, I told myself last night that if I showed up here, there would be no going back. Though, when he told me to take my clothes off, I thought twice about the entire thing."

"Most girls do," she told me. "It's all fun and games until their clothes have to come off. Most who come here don't even get passed that point. Half of those who get that far can't bring themselves to have sex with him."

"So," I began hesitantly, "he's had sex with every woman I've seen here today?"

Mom returned to her desk.

"Most of them, yes. Our clients initially call him and with the information he gathers, he picks the first girl for them. From there, if they want the same girl, they'll call the front desk. If they want someone knew, they call your brother."

I felt a tinge of jealousy building inside me.

"Does he still have sex with any of them?" I asked, sitting in the chair opposite Mom.

She looked at me, judging the reason for my question.

"No, the only reason he does it is so that he knows what he's recommending to his clients. Why?"

There was suspicion in her tone.

"I was just curious," I lied.

"How are you feeling now that the cat is out of the bag?" she asked, changing the subject quickly.

"It's a lot to take in, still. I want to do it, but it will take me a lot to get settled into this new world."

As I was getting up to leave, something occurred to me.

"What if I walked away?" I asked.

Mom was quick to counter my question with several of her own.

"What would you have done if you did? Where would you have gone?"

I couldn't provide a satisfactory answer to those questions enough to satisfy either of us.

"Dylan and I talked about that possibility. We never figured out how we would have helped you, but we knew we would have if you didn't want this. Almost every avenue we traveled trying to find an answer ended with us giving you money in one way or another and through your thick headedness, you would have asked question after question about where it came from until you learned about this place. It was unavoidable. You're so god damned independent and inquisitive that you would never have accepted the money without an explanation and don't think I could bring myself to lie to you about it. I also don't think I would have let the silence between you and your brother continue for much longer. You would have learned about this place eventually is my point."

Everything she said was absolutely true. I would not have accepted money without sufficient explanation and had I found out about this place any other way, I probably would have ended up here regardless. I had one other question.

"You're okay with me being a whore?"

She sighed.

"Let me tell you about people. Many people see this work as an honest trade. Unfortunately, those types of people aren't our typical clients. Our clients are the part of society that condemns sex work publicly but come to us every week wanting our services. Those same people have skeletons in their closets they hope the world never finds out about. When you ask me if I'm okay with you being a whore, I guess my only response is that you are what you see yourself as. Are you a whore or are you a professional?"

She got up and wrapped her arms around me.

"How you see yourself is how others will treat you, honey," she told me as she held me tightly. "We're better than everyone else because we don't let people treat us like whores."

***

That night, the kids met me in the lobby of the building and Jennifer, my mentor, took me up to my new apartment and showed me everything I needed to know. She told me I would have a few days to settle in. On her way out, she handed me a card with a date, time, and place to meet her to begin my new job. As she was leaving, people began showing up with boxes of things from my previous house. When they were done, a large delivery of food was made. Two men rolled a cart in with so many things that I couldn't keep track of it all. I was overwhelmed.

One of the men pulled a bottle of wine out of a bag and handed it to me.

"This is from Dylan," he told me.

There was a card attached but I sat it down intending to read it later.

The kids were so excited with their new environment. They had a lot of questions and I answered them as best I could. I showed them around the floor and told them they would be going to school there. Every new bit of information brought on more questions that I didn't have answers for. I smiled at them and told them that it was all new to me as well and we were all learning together. Before bed that night, they both told me that I seemed happy and that was what made them happy. While I wasn't sure what my future had in store for me, I was certainly glad I made the choice to go there that day.

I spent my time alone that night thinking about all the information Mom told me. I didn't make my peace with it all, but I felt better knowing more about my past. I also revisited my feelings about having sex with my brother. Just as I thought about the intimate moment we shared together; I remembered the letter he sent to me.