WI #20 - THE CAMBRIDGE CLUB, Adult Thriller

Title: THE CAMBRIDGE CLUB
Word Count: 99K
Genre: Adult Thriller

System of Oppression: Classism
Author Identity: Middle Class

Query:

Devon Wang is a MIT student with a supercomputer for a brain. She’s also a member of the most elite gentlemen’s club in Boston. When bodies start piling up around the Cambridge area, and fingers start pointing back in Devon's direction, there’s not a book in sight that can get her out of her mess.

Born into a life of prostitution, Devon financially supports her siblings so they won’t face the same ill-fated lifestyle that’s been passed down in her family for decades. But when Devon flees from her troubles in Boston, she’s horrified to find out things are much worse at home. Her sisters are missing, and sources on the street lead to a dangerous biker gang notorious for child trafficking.

Devon is distraught, but refuses to give up. She has a plan to rescue her sisters, until a Boston cop, Michael Cooper, tracks her down in her sister's Queens, New York apartment, offering to help her in exchange for testimony in court against the gentlemen’s club. Devon’s skeptical of Michael’s motives after he reveals his romantic involvement with one of the women linked to the club. With all of Devon’s street smarts and book smarts, she can’t figure this guy out. She just hopes she can solve the equation and save her sisters before it’s too late.

First 250:

I never looked at their faces, because they were always easier to forget that way. His whiskey breath and soiled laundry smell wouldn’t be as easy to dismiss, alcohol and filth rising up to greet me with every motion. This one didn’t move the entire time I rode his lap. I focused on the wall over his head. Hanging there was a broken crucifix and a paint-chipped Jesus.

After he was finished, I quickly slipped on my black wrap dress, the silky fabric chilling me to the bone. The chill wasn’t from trading the sweat off one man’s back for some cash so my siblings and I could eat—that was my everyday. It was the foreboding feeling in my belly that something else bitter and dark was coming for us.

I carefully strapped my holstered knife back around my thigh and slipped on my knee-high boots. The tens and fives were wet and bundled at my feet in a wormy rubber band.

“Ugh,” my customer grunted, rather than spoke, as if the very act of tossing the wad of bills at my feet had been taxing to him. He pointed to the door, so I slammed it in his face as I exited.

An icy rain began to pelt. The drop in temperature and bruised-colored clouds had been threatening to downpour all day. It was time for me to get out of there, but something stopped me.