Free The Assignment 4 by Abby Weeks Page A

time,” Claire agreed. “I just meant, I’ll tell Mark you’re a friend when he gets home. He’ll be surprised because he’s never known me to have any friends.”
    “You’re a solitary creature?”
    “You could say that,” Claire said.
    Lacey nodded. There was something endearing about Claire. Despite being beautiful and fabulously wealthy, she was also modest, warm, and self-deprecating. She was everything that Lacey felt she was herself. It seemed they had more in common than having grown up with brutish, abusive men.
    “Me too,” Lacey said.
    “I can tell,” Claire said.
    “I suppose it comes from the type of childhood we had.”
    Claire nodded. She seemed reluctant to think about her childhood. Lacey could only imagine how difficult it must have been to grow up with Lally. Claire looked out the window at the glittering city.
    Lacey cleared her throat, she wanted to know what Claire had in mind for the evening, but Claire didn’t seem to hear her.
    “Claire,” Lacey said.
    “Oh yes, sorry, I was lost in thought.”
    “Can I ask what you have in mind for this evening?”
    “Of course. As you know, I’m married to Mark Wolf.”
    “Yes.”
    “It isn’t exactly a marriage of love.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean the marriage was arranged.”
    “Arranged! Oh Claire.”
    “Yes, my father told me, one month ago, that I was to marry Wolf.”
    “I had no idea men still did things like that to their daughters.”
    “Oh yes. It’s not even that uncommon. Not in the circles I’m used to. When men get as rich and powerful as my father, they don’t want anything to be out of their control. They get used to dictating everything, to calling all the shots, and that extends to the choice of partner for their daughters.”
    “It’s practically medieval,” Lacey said.
    “It is. I don’t know how things were where you grew up, but in my father’s world, deciding who gets to marry your daughter, and who gets to fuck her, is a fact of life.”
    “I suppose that’s not so very different from the way things were in my world,” Lacey said. “I didn’t ever know my father, but my mother’s pimp had a pretty good idea of what he thought his rights over me were. They certainly included controlling who got to fuck me.”
    Claire nodded. “People don’t realize how hard the world still is. I see people raising money or raising awareness for women’s rights around the world. They’re convinced that all the problems are abroad, in foreign countries. They don’t stop to think that all over America there are pockets of extreme oppression, where women are still treated as little more than chattels or property.”
    “I’ve seen a lot of that in my life. And not just with the prostitution. When I was a waitress I would work twelve hours a day, men pinching my butt, customers losing their shit, my boss trying to get in my pants, and still at the end of the day I’d barely bring home enough to live on. It was as if they wanted me to be dependent on a man.”
    “I’ve never had that sort of problem.”
    “You’re lucky you haven’t.”
    “But I’ve had other problems.”
    “With your father?”
    “Yes. I’ve had problems with other men, but all of them could be traced back to my father.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, you know my father, don’t you?”
    “Yes I do, in a manner of speaking.”
    “You’ve had to fuck him for work? At The Club?
    “Yes.”
    “Well, my father never had any difficulty using me to help with his business relationships.”
    “Oh, no!” Lacey said. She realized what Claire was saying and put her hand over her mouth in shock. “Do you mean what I think you mean?”
    “Let’s just say, Mark Wolf is not the first important businessman in this city who’s had the pleasure of sharing my bed.”
    “Oh, Claire. That’s horrible. I can’t even imagine that.”
    “It’s easy,” Claire said. “Just imagine that your pimp was your father and you’ll have a