Author's note: After quickly rereading this story I have noticed that there is a lot of spelling mistakes. I apologize for those and want to thank everyone who stuck around and continued to read it. Please remember to vote and comment as I want to know your thoughts.

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Jimmy came in to help me with dinner again. I cut up some carrots and corn as he fried up more of that meat. Neither of us spoke much. He had his eyes locked on me and watched every little move I made and every little detail on my body. It made me want to crawl out of my skin. I never did like it when people looked at me too closly.

Like last night, as soon as Charles and Tommy came in I put the food on the table and they scarfed it down quickly. I wasn't hungry, so I picked at my food eating the corn one at a time. Tommy knit his eyebrows at me.

"Watching your figure there, Juliet?" he asked me.

"No," I told him. "I just don't eat much."

"It's healthy to eat," Charles began to lecture me. "I know you think men were staring at you because you were skinny. That's not true though. They were perverted."

Jimmy scrunched his eyebrows together.

"What are you talking about?" he asked us.

Charles made a ticking noise with his tongue and leaned back into his chair.

"You've been a little rude, James. You're supposed to ask this girl about her life," he said, extending his arm out to point at me. "You're spending the rest of your life with this girl and you don't know anything about her. You didn't know her birth family was dead. You didn't ask her what she did for work. So go ahead and ask her."

I dropped my head, I couldn't look at Jimmy. I couldn't look at Tommy or Charles either, but it was even harder to look at Jimmy. I started to chew on my bottom lip.

"What was your job?" Jimmy asked me.

"Um...I was a stripper," I told him with the heat rushing up to my cheeks.

Tommy started to laugh and my head shot up to look at him. He had his hand over his mouth to try and stop himself from laughing. Jimmy was staring at him coldly. He picked up a carrot off of his plate and threw it at Tommy. It bounced off of his shoulder.

"Don't laugh at her," Jimmy told him sternly.

"I...I'm sorry," he said between breaths. "It's just that Juliet doesn't even like people looking at her. I can't see her taking off her clothes for any guy. She can't even look people in the eyes. Strippers aren't like that."

"How would you know?" Charles asked him.

"Taylor told me a story once," he said quickly. He let the excuse run out of his mouth. Charles just tugged on his lip with his teeth.

The rest of the dinner was pretty quiet. Tommy would look up at me and smirk. I hated that smirk so much. Every time I saw it I just wanted to beat it off of his face. If he was one of the girls at the club I probably would have already.

When dinner was done I cleaned them and put them away. I was proud of myself for how quickly I could do it now. Charles and Tommy were both in the living room with a book. Jimmy grabbed my wrist and pulled me up to his room. His hand was crushing my wrist, so I tried to pull it away, but I couldn't get free.

He slammed the door once we got into his room. He let go off my wrist and it caused me to stumble, but not fall. I haven't seen him this angry before. Not even when he yelled at me last night did his eyes look so icy and dark.

I let my eyes fall onto the bathroom door. The locked seemed so comforting right now. I could try to run to the bathroom and lock myself in and be safe. Jimmy wouldn't be able to hurt me, but as he walked towards me his body blocked my view. My heartbeat grew quicker.

"Why didn't you tell me that before?" Jimmy asked angrily. He tried to keep his voice low, like he didn't want his father to hear him yell at me. That was going to be a challenge.

"You never asked me," I said quietly. I was avoiding his eyes like usual.

"I just thought that would be something you would have told me right away."

"Like how you told me you're a murderer and rapist?" I asked him, allowing my voice to grow stronger.

Jimmy's face was growing red as I got him angrier. Not my smartest plan, but I was safe. He won't kill me because if he does he doesn't get another girl. He probably would hurt me though, but a person could easily be killed. He would know that better than anyone else's.

"Juliet, you need to stop calling me those things," Jimmy told me slowly, like he was trying to calm himself down.

"Sometimes the truth is hard to hear," I told him.

"are you always going to be the disrespectful?" he asked me raising one of his eyebrows.

"Depends."

He let out a deep breath, shook his head and started walking towards me. My shaky knees started to walk away.

"Where are you getting all this confidence from?" he asked me.

"I know you won't kill me. I'm the only girl you get," I said. I wanted to sound strong, but my voice was shaking just like my knees.

"True. But my job is to make you respect us and train you. Typically, my family would just make the girl scared. So scared that the thought of running away or trying to escape never crossed her mind. Usually, they would beat her to show that they had total control of the relationship. I wasn't going to do that. I was going to give you a fair chance and show you that life here isn't bad. But you kind of blew that chance. You should have told me about your career as a slut before I had to find out at dinner."

My lip started to quiver. He was going to hurt me. He wasn't going to kill me, but I was about to feel a lot of pain.

I needed him to like me. I needed him to feel sorry for me. If I tugged on his heart strings the right way he wouldn't hurt me. If I went along with whatever he would trust me and believe that I respected his family. He would think that we were in love and stop locking the door. It would be the perfect chance to escape.

"I'm sorry," I told him quietly.

That caught him off by surprise. His cocked his head to the side and let his lips curl into a faint smile.

"What was that?" he asked me curiously.

"I'm sorry," I repeated. "You were right. I was being rude. I'm use to acting that way. It's how I always had to act at work."

"Why would you work at a place like that?" he asked. His voice was still stern, but a hint of warmth was growing in it.

Play the sympathy card, play the sympathy card, I kept telling myself. I've done that enough times. My great acting skills came in handy when I came home late or the social workers would get mad at me because another family was bringing me back. If I made them feel bad for me then they always went easier on me.

"It was the only one I could get. I barely passed high school. The only reason I didn't drop out was because the social workers didn't let me," I told him. I started to let a tear grow in my eye, it was one of my many acting gifts. "Once I was eighteen they weren't responsible for me anymore. Who would care for a brat like me if they didn't need to? It wasn't my first choice. I tried getting other jobs, but no one would hire me. Being a stripper was the only way I could survive. I didn't like the job at all. I hated it. Tommy's right, I don't like anyone staring at me. Knowing guys were looking at me that way was terrifying."

Jimmy now looked at me with his warm eyes and it told me that the sympathy card had worked. I had to fight the smile that wanted to appear on my lips. I may have been out of the orphanage for over a year, but I still had it.

I let the tears run down my cheeks and I wiped it away with the sleeves of my shirt. Jimmy came up to me and tightly wrapped his arms around me. He had me crushed up against his warm chest. My hands were still up by my face and I continued to try and wipe away my tears. He pressed his lips against the top of my head.

The smile safely appeared across my lips, I knew that Jimmy wouldn't be able to see it. I know how to play these people now. I just needed to get their sympathy. Soon they would trust me and escape will be in my reach.