Chapter 3

Callie

Gemma was stunned speechless for several seconds, staring at me like I had broke another head. “Surely this is some form of a sick prank, right?”

“It's not.” I said, my face grave. I felt a little bit relieved, my heart's feeling as though they'd taken a ton of weight off it.

“H-ow o-on earth d…id-” she sputtered, folding her hands into fists as she tried to grasp the situation. “What happened? Can you start from the beginning so I don't go crazy with ideas?”

I ushered her into a seat, giving her a glass of ice tea to calm her frayed nerves while I launched into the story.

“Remember that girl I told you about? The one I helped during some dire financial straits?” I prompted, urging Gemma to remember. “It turns out that she's a fraudster and I was the one of unfortunate victims that got wound up in one of our schemes.”

Gemma gasp, covering her mouth with her hands. “Okay but what does that have to do with Lewis Capolotti?”

“Apparently she owed Lewis some money and this sounds crazy to believe but I swear to you it's the truth!” I begged, reaching for her hands. “There was one time she had me make a phone call to someone she said is her brother but now I realized that it's only Lewis.

Now she told him that I was the one with his money that was how he was able to find me. It seems she has transferred her debt over to me and if I don't pay the stipulated amount within a given period of time, I'm afraid of what Lewis might do to me!” My voice quivered, genuinely scared for my life.

Gemma pulled her hands from my grip, pressing the flat of her palm to her forehead. Her chest was moving rapidly up and down almost as though she was having a heart attack. “I thought you would know better than to do something that careless. I mean I know you have a good heart but surely that must be limited to a spot.”

“Don't be absurd, Gem. It's not as though I wanted this to happen, gell I've been trying to call her but her number goes straight to voicemail.”

She threw her hands up in exasperation. “Of course it would. What did you expect, Callie? That she would dupe you and then send you a goodbye note…. like you know ‘I'm thankful for everything you did and I love you but you're never going to see me again’ kind of thing?”

Gemma’s condescending tone didn't rub off on me the good way. “I need solutions right now, not for you to blame me because I am already doing enough of that by myself.”

Gemma exhaled roughly and from the corner of my eyes, I could see her hands trembling. “Callie, this isn't just any type of person. This is Lewis Cappolotti, he is single-handedly the most feared crime boss here. I don't know how you want to escape from this…you know what? I even forgot to ask how much money you're owing him, let's see if it's something we could work on.”

I hesitated saying such amount, knowing that it seemed entirely hopeless. It wasn't as though I could loan this kind of amount of money from someone without further entrenching myself into a deeper pit. “A $100,000…” I managed to say softly, watching Gemma’s eyes double to twice it's size.

“$100,000??!” she shrieked, her voice climbing high damn near hysterical. “Where the hell are we going to see that kind of money?!”

I rubbed at the back of my neck. “I have no idea but I was hoping that you could figure something out?” I say nervously.

Gemma's stretched her hand out, sucking in deep calming breaths. “I might know of something but I don't even know if it's still on,” she says hesitantly almost as though she was afraid to proposition the idea to me.

At this point, I was borderline desperate. “Are you sure I'll be able to raise that kind of money? Lewis only gave me two weeks and if I don't raise that money within two weeks… I do-don't… I'm a goner!”

Gemma glared at my overly dramatic expression. “Calm your tits girl, the good thing here is that Lewis gave us ample time to come up with a solution and we can start now.”

She sauntered over to the counter, picking up my laptop. Bless her soul this was why I loved Gemma. Now that the initial shock of the news had worn off, she was rolling her sleeves up to delve into this situation.

Hovering behind her shoulder, I watched as Gemma accessed google typing a website unto a new tab.

The result was the opposite of what I expected to see. The first thing I saw was the name of the company which shocked the pants off me.

Sure, ‘The Panty Auctioneer’ was a catchy name but it was mostly the pictures underneath it that caught my attention.

Half naked girls and some ladies posed in a sensual manner with sheer bits of clothes on their person was littered across the face of the websit, along with a glowing red, bouncy message icon that read…. ‘Do you want to be auctioned off?’

Having had enough, I pulled away shutting the laptop off. “What the hell was that?”

“The way you can make your $100k and even more.” Gemma said calmly.

Now, it was my turn to gape at her. “Have you gone mad? You want me to auction myself up like a piece of furniture?”

Gemma sighed. “You asked for a solution, here it is.”

“I was thinking of a more practical one, not one I'd have to whore myself out!”

“You need to take your mind away from what you're seeing and put yourself in your current situation okay? No one is turning you into a whore, now if you read the entire thing, then you'd understand…”

Gemma opened up the laptop, cajoling me to take a peek. Sucking in a deep breath, I did as she asked.