“The girl’s a hysteric.” He dismissed the charge with an almost dainty wave of his hand. “I didn’t leave a mark on her.”
“You had your penis out when I got here.”
“I wasn’t expecting you!” The man laughed. “Ask your boss,” he added, as if that would clear everything up. “He knows I am a very pious man who would never do such things. And it is not very hospitable of you to burst into my room and accuse me.”
The tenor of his voice changed as he switched from defense to offense. The guest was someone important, Jo remembered. She’d taken the reservation from the CEO’s office herself. She couldn’t recall who he was. Mafioso, dictator, mogul, or Nobel Prize winner. It made no difference. He was a VIP. And the rules were different where VIPs were concerned.
“Your face,” the man said, adopting a tone of concern. “It is very red. I’m afraid that you are not well. Perhaps you realize that you have made a mistake?”
The heat that had begun in Jo’s chest had crept up her neck and laid claim to her head. Beads of sweat formed along her hairline. She desperately wanted to rip off her suit jacket, but she knew doing so would expose the sweat stains spreading under the arms of her silk shirt.
There was a knock at the door. The police, she assumed, before she realized that the NYPD couldn’t have made it to the hotel so quickly. The door opened before she could make a move toward it. Hotel security had arrived, led by the trainee. The relief she felt lasted less than a second.
“Jo, can you come with us for a moment?” the trainee inquired.
Something was up. “Where’s Lourdes?” Jo demanded.
“She’s totally fine,” the trainee cooed. “It was all a big misunderstanding.”
“The police will decide that,” Jo said.
“We don’t need the police. Like I said, it was all a misunderstanding. Lourdes is with HR right now, figuring out her next steps.”
Three men in their forties and fifties would be pressuring a twenty-two-year-old woman to take a payout in exchange for an NDA. “I want to see her first.”
The trainee had the chutzpah to smile at her. “I’ve already spoken with senior management. That won’t be possible.”
She knew then what she should have known all along. He’d been hired to keep an eye on her. “You fucking traitor,” Jo spat.
“Say what you like, but we need to leave this room. I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, sir,” the trainee told the guest.
“Don’t apologize.” The man stood up from the bed and laid an avuncular hand on the young man’s shoulder. “These poor women—they are at the mercy of their hormones. You and I are lucky to be men. I can only imagine what their suffering must be like.”
Jo later told Art that something inside her had ignited—a powder keg that had been filling for a very long time. The force of the explosion propelled her across the room before she knew what was happening. With one hand, she grabbed hold of the VIP’s throat and slammed him into the wall. Her free arm reared back and sent her fist flying toward the man’s face. In the last millisecond, it veered to the left and hit the wall less than an inch from his ear. When her arm finally came to a stop, it was wrist-deep in the drywall. It was clear that the impact would have killed the man in her grip. Miraculously, Jo felt no pain at all.
When security dragged her backward, her heels fell off. She didn’t fight. She watched as the man slid down the wall to the floor, where a puddle of urine was growing. Around his neck was a second degree burn in the shape of her hand.
Forty-five minutes later, Jo was standing shell-shocked in front of a departures board at Grand Central Terminal, clutching the few personal belongings she’d been allowed to take from her desk. There hadn’t been an opportunity to change her tampon before she left the hotel. She suddenly sensed how heavy it had grown inside her, and all at once, she felt it slip, and knew the dam inside her had given way. As hundreds of commuters and tourists wove around her, Jo felt the warmth overwhelm the backup pad she’d stuck to her underwear that morning and begin to soak through her pants. The closest bathroom was across the main hall and down the stairs to the dining concourse. She knew she wouldn’t make it.