#Chapter 19 - Daddy's House

“Please,” I say, clutching the phone and trying to explain the situation to my landlord. “You don’t understand, this is an angry former client who has no grounds for this harassment – “ My boys are at Victor’s house, meeting Amelia, thank god. I don’t want them to hear any of this. “It doesn’t matter to me, Ms. Ortega,” my landlord’s tinny voice zings through the phone. “It doesn’t matter to me if the client’s vandalism is unfounded – what matters is that my tenant is putting me in a situation where my home is being vandalized!” I slap my hand to my forehead. Overnight, Emily came back and spraypainted WHORE LIVES HERE all over my front windows. It was everything I could do to get it scrubbed off before Victor picked up the boys, but I guess I wasn’t fast enough. “You have six weeks,” she says, prim and cruel. “Then I’m renting to someone else, someone who doesn’t do sex work to pay my mortgage.” I exhale, clenching my teeth against the rage that builds