Mimi's Demons

Chapter 19: Just a Housekeeper

Hey Ya'll! Here's an early chapter to make up for my mess up with chapter 18 being at the end for chapter 17 and being repeated and so on and so forth. ^.^ Thank you for letting me know about my mistake.

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Serena knew she should be cleaning. It was her job. Her high-risk job that could easily get her killed if she so much as shadowed the wrong side of her employer.

But her guilty pleasure glowed from her phone screen. Every time she told herself 'just one more chapter,' she'd find herself three more in and only brought out by the muffled shriek of her captive sensibility in the back of her head. She shouldn't even be reading stuff like this. Lord knew it wasn't good for her soul.

It wouldn't be the first time a free, too-well written dark and dirty story had wrenched her away from her work. The house was clean enough, right? And dinner tonight only had to be warmed up, so maybe—

"Do you have a moment?"

Serena shrieked and her phone went for a flight.

"Omen! Mercy, can't you warn a girl?"

Omen's brow furrowed. "I wasn't loud."

"That's the problem." With a hand to her still fluttering heart, she took a closer look at the little person clamped at the neck by his hand. She had red bruising around her mouth and the sides of her cheeks, the tell-tale signs of a gagging, but she didn't look scared. Rather, she looked angry, lower lip jutted out and nose wrinkling in the half-beginnings of a snarl.

Serena blinked again. "Why do you have a little girl?"

A little girl whose hands were tied in front of her and—Serena took a sniff—most likely hadn't bathed in who knows how long. Dirty little thing. Greasy too. But perhaps cute with a bit of scrubbing up.

"I wish I knew," said Omen with a quick sigh from his square nose. "Boss took a liking to her."

Serena stiffened. "Huh?" She'd drawn the line at pedophilia, she had drawn that line as deep as hell in her employment contract.

Omen shook his head quickly. "Not like that."

She raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "What else could it be? She's too young for...that side of the business."

"Don't mind me," croaked a worn, little voice. "I know what sex trafficking is."

Serena, despite having read the 's' word several times over the past, uh, few minutes, looked at the little girl with horror.

"I said no such thing," she looked to Omen, but the Sikh didn't looked nearly as alarmed as he should at a little more than a baby saying they knew all about forced prostitution. "You needed me for something?"

"Yeah," Omen shifted in place. "Duke says he wants the girl bathed and made comfortable." When Serena just looked at him, he sighed. "I'm not about to traumatize the girl more by bathing her myself. I need you to do it."

Serena sniffed haughtily. "You imply that you've already traumatized her."

"I—"

"He caught me with these balls connected by a rope," said the little girl, baring her teeth. "Like a zebra. On the savannah."

Something about the little girl's huffy indignation along with her word choice made Serena's stomach tickle. Serena had never been a kid person, despite having grown up around plenty of them. Which was why she also knew children shouldn't seem cute when they were angry. Maybe it was because the little girl was trying to pull off a subtle, deadly sort of fury one only saw in movies.