My First Night Cost $27,000

My first time sold for twentyseven thousand dollars. I didn't want to be poor anymore, so I stayed with that man for nine years.

When he finally threw me out like trash, nobody was surprised. Least of all me. Chapter 1 I met him on my knees, buckling a shoe onto his girlfriend's foot.

To Damien Yin, I was probably just something he could call over and send away.

And I had to stay down there while the two of them went at each other over why he hadn't picked up her call. That was the whole fight. That was it. She lost it at the end.

Slapped him across the face in the middle of the store and screamed that they were done. Maybe he had all that stuck in his chest with nowhere to put it.

Maybe a shopgirl on the floor was the easiest place. He picked up the crystalbuckle heels she'd been trying on and asked if I wanted to come with him.

Come with him, and I could have shoes like that. As many as I wanted. Those shoes were twentyseven thousand dollars. Three years.

The line at the paper mill, waiting tables, Jimmy Choo. Every dollar I didn't spend. It came out to the exact same number. Mom said she was holding it for me.

Living expenses, for when I really got into college. I went home yesterday. Part of it was on my brother's feet. Brandnew sneakers. The rest was gone too.

He'd gotten drunk and put his hands on some girl, her parents came to our door, and we paid them off. All of it. Twentyseven thousand.

Damien rolled off me and I caught his arm. "Daddy. You promised. Twentyseven thousand." He lifted his eyes at me.

Whatever was sitting in them went straight through me and out the other side. He pulled a stack of bills out of his wallet and tossed it at the foot of the bed.

I grabbed it and ran. He leaned back against the headboard and tapped his ash. "What. You're not going to count it?" I didn't answer.

I folded the stack twice and pushed it into the inside pocket of my coat. The side that sat against my chest. Then I noticed my hands hadn't stopped shaking.

Back in the rented room I curled up on that narrow bed. My roommate tossed a few duck necks at me and said her new boyfriend ran this block.

Next month he was getting her a real apartment. She said I should get with one of his guys. I said no thanks. She came off her bed and slapped me across the mouth. "Ever Zhao.

Who exactly do you think you are? You had your chance the easy way. Sitting there hugging your sad little books all day. Ooh. College. So pure. So special." Blood filled my mouth.

I wrapped the duck necks back up in the plastic bag, exactly the way they came, and set them on her nightstand. I didn't say anything. My phone rang. Damien.

I picked up and two words landed on me. "Come down." Downstairs, I noticed for the first time how narrow the alley behind the projects really was.

Damien's black Bentley barely fit in it. The paint was so deep it looked heavy, and it sat there scraping past the gray wall, wrong against all that dirty water and wet paper.

My roommate had come down too. She leaned on the wall chewing gum. "Well. A Bentley. Didn't see that coming, Ever Zhao. You really did land yourself a sugar daddy.

You're the same as the rest of us. So what's all the acting for?" Damien read the whole thing in one look. He put out a finger and knocked twice on the hood. Slow. "What's this.

My little sister needs to go find herself a sugar daddy?" My head came up. He opened the passenger door, bored with all of it. "Come on, Ever.

You've been playing runaway long enough. Got enough life experience yet, or does your big brother have to beg you to get in the car?" Inside, I kept nodding and saying thank you.

Thank you for leaving me a little dignity, down there in the mud. He handed me a bottle of water and a pill. Plan B. He'd driven out here just for that.

I put it in my mouth without thinking about it. His hand came up and stopped me.

His fingers pressed down on the edge of the box. "Since you're taking it either way," he said, eyes half open, "we might as well go a few more rounds." Chapter 2 Later, people who knew a little of the story painted the thing between Damien and me as a straight cash transaction.

They said I was some kind of snake. That I got my hooks into him back when he was a junior and still green, and he lost his head over a pretty face.

All I can say is they thought too little of him. And way too much of me. Damien Yin was the only heir to Yin Group.

At six he was flying to Sri Lanka with his father, Warren, standing in the tea gardens watching them fire and roll the leaf.

A little older and he was walking job sites and reading the books. Older still and he sat in on board meetings. Calverton. Four languages. He wasn't some rich man's slow son.

He was what an entire family had spent everything to build. The one who would hold the whole thing together. The year I met him, I was eighteen.

He took me to Iceland for the northern lights. I looked up and the whole sky was running. He wrapped a down jacket around me from behind and rested his chin on the top of my head.

Green and purple. Broken light all over the ground. He took me on a lion hunt on the African savanna. Opentop truck, foot flat on the gas, no thought for anything at all.

When the truck came off a rut I went up out of the seat and came down screaming into his arms. He held on to me and laughed. Wild, like the whole thing belonged to him.

In the time it took to light a cigarette he handed me the rifle and tipped his chin at the far grass. "Try." I brought it up. Sighted. Pulled. The lion took it in the eye.

He shouted yes, threw the cigarette down, and pinned me in the truck. The more I screamed the further he went. My neck and the hollow of my shoulder came away covered in marks.

And I was like that lion lying in the dust. Shaking everywhere. Even my breath tasted like blood. It's funny.

I went most of the way around the world with Damien, and all those mountains and lakes from the textbook turned into places I had actually stood. Geography got easy.

A few months later I went and took the GED by myself, then signed up for the SAT. Fifteen eighty. Calverton. I was supposed to be there. That part was always true.

The year I finished middle school I was top of the whole district. But there was no extra money at home, and I was a girl, so of course I stepped aside for my brother.

Mom used to walk me around like an exhibit. Look how pretty my Ever is. She'll marry well, no problem.

There's a second cousin of hers, and if she's willing he'll put up sixtysix thousand for my son's tuition. Bad leg, though. We can do better than that.

A daughter marries, a son studies, and that way both my kids end up fine. We treated them both the same. So I dropped out sophomore year. I worked everywhere.

The line at the paper mill. Waiting tables. Jimmy Choo. I worked and I read. It cost me an extra year. I wanted to fight my own way out.

At eighteen I honestly believed that if I saved enough, if I never took a dollar from home, everything would be fine. Later my brother took the SAT too. Eight eighty.

And got himself in trouble again. That was when I understood. People are not the same. They were never going to be. I never had many friends. School, chores, work, school.

Without Damien my life would have looked like that washedout gray shirt I wore everywhere.

The day my acceptance came I stood there scrolling every name in my phone, and the only one my head handed me was his.

And then I was thinking about those nights, and my heart was going hard, like I had a hot candy tucked behind my ribs. Maybe wanting something badly enough works.

I looked up and there it was at the curb. The black Bentley. A vanity plate that read 8888. I went for it like a moth to a flame.

Chapter 3 And caught him with his girlfriend backed against the rear of the car, one hand cupped under her head like he was holding something that could break, kissing her that carefully.

He sighed and said, Annie, you're still like this. That temper. Some of it's on me, I don't make enough room for you. I stood there. They hadn't broken up.

Her whole face went red and she pushed out of his arms, muttering. "I said somebody would be back here. This is your fault." Damien cut a look at me. "What are you staring at.

Never seen two people together before?" He handled his voice perfectly. Exactly the way a man sounds when a stranger walks in on him.

It turned me into a dog somebody had thrown a rock at. 8 I walked over to the mall with a bad smile on my face. A kid outside a sushi place was handing out flyers. "Hey, pretty.

Come try it, we just opened." I almost went in. It was automatic. Then I almost laughed. Look at that. Damien had made me expensive. A place like that.

As if someone like me could eat there. I smiled and turned into the Lucky Wonton next door and ordered the house special. They set the bowl down.

I lifted one out and the steam came up into my face and my eyes just went. The thing is, before, I couldn't have eaten these either. They're twenty dollars.

Damien was six two, built the way you'd draw it, wide through the shoulders and narrow at the waist. His face came out of a comic. High straight nose.

When he smiled one corner went up first, and there was something bad in it that came free with the rest.

If his girlfriend hadn't blown up and walked into Jimmy Choo that day, someone like me would never have gotten a finger on his sleeve. Not in this life.

How was I supposed to not love him. That was eighteenyearold me, seeing a mountain for the first time. My phone lit up. Bank alert. One and a half million dollars, deposited.

Expensive breakup. I closed my eyes. Maybe that's just how it works. Some people are born on the high seat. Some are born in the dust.

I finished the wontons, went outside, and pulled my jacket closed. That was the first time I looked straight at what I felt for him.

And at the same time I knew, very clearly, that this was the best life I was ever going to be able to earn myself.

All those northern lights coming apart overhead, all that color, enough to make a person dizzy. A borrowed dream. And me? Only ever Ever. 9 Money had hurt me.

So money was the only thing I wanted. I had no big dreams. I was in it for the cash, so I studied whatever paid most. Computer science.

Junior year I put together my own team and my own company. A few friends and me, building a roleplaying game app. Just a demo.

Then I took it to Cloudwhale Capital to pitch their deal lead, Preston Xu, for a seed round.

For the meeting I wore an ashgray skirt suit and pinned my hair up so tight nothing moved. Waiting outside, my palms went wet, so I got up to fix myself in the restroom.

I came out and walked straight into Damien. He'd grown up. The student thing was gone. Sharp suit, a lot more finished. Only, thinner. He glanced at me and his step caught.

He checked that the hall was empty, then took my arm and put me against the wall. Chapter 4 "What's this. You're coming to my company now? Dressed up like that, too.

Run out of money?" His company. Cloudwhale Capital was his. I didn't even get to decide whether that was good news. What was sitting in his eyes went into me first, and it stung.

Was this how a man looks at something that won't go away? A problem he can't shake? I got embarrassed and started to explain, and the assistant called from the hall. "Ms. Zhao.

You're up." I pushed at him. "Mr. Yin. I have somewhere to be. Please." He let go. He went past me. 10 The pitch went well.

That demo was three and a half months of my team's life, and it was solid in a way most of what was out there wasn't.

Preston asked careful questions, closed his laptop at the end, nodded, and said it was good. Then right before we broke, like it had only just occurred to him. "Ms. Zhao.

You wouldn't happen to know our young Mr. Yin, would you?" I wanted to say no. I believed in what we'd built. Even without that connection, we might have gotten the money anyway.

But I thought about all those nights my team had put in, and I wanted one more layer of insurance.

So I nodded and smiled. "He's been kind enough to give me a few pointers in the past, that's all. Business is business. A project our size isn't going to be on Mr.

Yin's radar." Preston smiled and shook my hand and said I was young and going places. On the way down, Damien's assistant caught up with me and handed me a keycard for the Fairmont.

He didn't say much. Just pressed my arm, lightly. I understood him. I took the card. And I went. I wasn't Annie Zhu.

She could cry, she could make scenes, she could set her jaw and say the thing I love isn't your money. I couldn't afford to be difficult.

I was going to grab every rope that went up. And I really did love money.

In the room, while I waited for him, I sat down and searched everything about him for the first time, really searched, and started peeling back the tip of Yin Group. Yin Group.

Warren Yin at the head of it. He'd started out buying tea, from Taiwan all the way to Sri Lanka, and that was the first real money.

Then he caught the merger wave in the eighties, and Yin spread into property, resorts, logistics, finance. In San Francisco alone, thirtyfour companies.

I smiled at the screen and none of it reached me. So. If I wanted to stand up in San Francisco, I was not getting around him.

I took my makeup bag into the bathroom and touched myself up. Brows, then lips. A girl of twenty already has good skin. A little work and the mirror hands you back something bright.

I adjusted my bra and got the line of it right. I knew I was beautiful. The door clicked. I set the pencil down and went to meet him.

Damien came in, kicked the door shut behind him, put me against it, and pushed my skirt up.

Outside the window the fireworks went off huge, and in all that flashing he caught my lip in his teeth and said, muffled, "Ever Zhao. You're really something.

They let you into Calverton." My throat was open, breathing. "That's all Daddy's teaching. I just learn from the best." He laughed out loud and said my mouth was sweet.

I hooked a hand around his neck. "Then taste it, Daddy. See how sweet it really is." He laughed harder. "I've got a lot of people under me.

Not one of them talks like you." I laughed too.

When we moved to the bed I pushed up on one arm and laid my fingers over his mouth. "That's because I'm not one of the people under you, Daddy.

I'm Daddy's woman." He swore under his breath and rolled me down. I woke up to full daylight