[COMPLETED] I Kissed a Stranger for $500—Then Six Men Called Him Boss and Asked for Me by Name

"They asked for you by name," Ben repeated.

His hand was still wrapped around the bar telephone. I could hear someone talking on the other end, but I couldn't make out the words.

"What did they say?"

Ben swallowed. "Mr. Moretti wants you to leave the money where it is. And he says you were chosen before you ever walked to his table."

I looked at the five hundred dollars lying beside Sophie's empty tip jar.

For a moment, I couldn't understand what either sentence meant.

"Chosen for what?"

Ben listened again. His eyes flicked toward the security camera above the rear exit.

"He says somebody recorded more than a kiss. He wants you to go home with someone you trust. His people won't approach you."

The call ended.

Around us, the bar began making noise again. Glasses touched tables. Someone laughed too loudly. Music returned to a volume that felt almost insulting.

I was still standing in the same shoes I'd worn for fourteen hours.

"Sophie," I said.

My coworker was holding a towel she had no reason to be holding. Her face had gone pale beneath her makeup.

"What?"

"Whose idea was the dare?"

"All of ours. You heard us."

"Who put up the money?"

She glanced at the notes and then at the door.

"A customer gave us a tip. I thought it would be funny."

"Five hundred dollars is a strange amount to spend on funny."

She didn't answer.

I had known Sophie for nearly two years. We covered each other's shifts when we were sick. She'd brought soup when my brother first came home from the hospital. I knew the sound she made when she lied about a bad date and wanted to believe herself.

That was the sound of her silence now.

Ben reached beneath the counter and took out his phone.

"I'm photographing the money," he said. "Then I'm calling the owner. Nobody spends it tonight."

"You sound like you believe him."

"I believe somebody wanted you sitting at that booth. And I believe I warned you for a reason."

I'd thought his warning meant Adrian was dangerous.

Maybe it meant somebody else was.

The shift ended at one in the morning. Ben offered to drive me home. I accepted because my knees were shaking, and because the bus stop outside had never seemed so far away.

We passed the corner booth on our way out.

Adrian's bourbon was gone. The glass had been collected. The dark leather seat looked ordinary again, as though nothing had happened there.

But I could still remember how completely he'd gone still when I touched his shoulder.

I'd kissed him without asking.

That fact sat beside every other mistake I'd made that night. The dare didn't erase it. Neither did the money I needed.

Ben stopped outside my building, a narrow brick apartment house with a broken lobby light.

"Lock your door," he said.

"You make that sound easy. The deadbolt sticks."

"Call me if someone bothers you."

I thanked him and climbed two flights to the apartment I shared with my brother.

Jonah was awake at the kitchen table, doing exercises his physical therapist had written down after his leg injury. At seventeen, he tried hard to pretend he didn't need help. He was losing that argument with his crutches propped against the wall.

"You're late," he said.

"So are you. You're supposed to sleep."

He looked at my face. "What happened?"

I put my handbag down. Forty-three dollars in my account. Rent on Monday. A ridiculous kiss. Six men in dark suits. None of it sounded like something that had happened to the same person who'd made Jonah scrambled eggs that morning.

"I did something stupid for money," I said.

He put down his exercise band.

"Did you get the money?"

"No."

"Then it was definitely stupid."

I laughed once. It hurt more than I expected.

I told him the harmless parts first, then the rest. When I said the name Adrian Moretti, he stared at me so long I wondered whether he was waiting for the punch line.

"Mara," he said, "please tell me you're making that up."

"I wish I were."

He didn't ask whether the man was rich. He asked whether I'd been threatened. Then he asked whether I'd apologized for kissing someone who hadn't agreed to be kissed.

That was my brother. Young enough to need me to pick up his prescriptions. Old enough to tell me when I'd crossed a line.

"Not properly," I admitted.

"You should. If you ever see him again."

I promised I would.

At two-thirteen my phone lit up with a message from an unfamiliar number.

There was no name and no photograph. Only a sentence.

You should have taken the five hundred. Now you don't get to decide what happens next.

I read it twice.

Jonah saw the color leave my face.

"What is it?"

I showed him. He reached for his own phone.

"We need to save that."

We took screenshots. I forwarded it to Ben and wrote down the time on the back of an overdue grocery receipt. It seemed ridiculous, keeping evidence like somebody on television. Then I remembered the men who had entered the bar and the way every conversation had died.

"Don't answer," Jonah said.

"I won't."

I slept for less than three hours. At six I checked the locks. At seven I called Ben. He had already spoken to the bar owner, who had instructed him to preserve the security footage. The manager, Grant, had argued that the cameras had been broken for months.

"They aren't broken," Ben said. "I watched the footage on Tuesday when somebody broke a glass near the rear door."

"Why would Grant lie?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out."

He hesitated before speaking again.

"There's another thing. The camera facing the booth was angled differently when I opened this morning."

My stomach tightened.

"Could you see who moved it?"

"Not from the screen. But the front register camera records the corridor to the office. I'm making a copy before anyone gets here."

I looked toward Jonah, who was preparing his breakfast with one hand while balancing against the counter.

I had done the dare because I was afraid of losing our apartment.

Now I was afraid that a stranger had known exactly how much it would take to make me do it.

"Ben," I said, "tell me something. Did Adrian Moretti really ask for me by name?"