Chapter 1: The Price of Freedom
Karen’s POV – The Proposal
It had been months since I joined Red Angel, a luxury escort agency, and every day felt like a sacrifice I wasn’t sure I could keep making. My old job as a secretary barely paid enough to cover food, let alone the mountain of bills stacking up around me.
Gabriel’s boarding school was draining my bank account, and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing custody of him. Our parents were gone, leaving us nothing but heartache—and bills I could never pay on my own.
I had no choice. The day Child Protective Services threatened to take Gabriel away, I caved.

It wasn’t easy to turn my back on my principles, but desperation had already started clawing at my soul. A friend from college introduced me to Mary, the owner of Red Angel, and though I initially resisted, the cold, hard reality was that I needed money. Fast.
I hated myself for it, but at least I could keep Gabriel in his school and off the streets. My heart ached every time I saw his smile, knowing how much of his childhood I had sacrificed for the sake of survival. But there was no other option.
Then came the suspension. Three months of silence. The result of a momentary lapse in judgment with a colleague—a man I had no real feelings for but who somehow managed to turn a harmless fling into a dramatic spectacle. The worst part? He wasn’t even the one leaving for New York, as he’d claimed. No. He was running away, and I was left to pick up the pieces.
The phone rang, jerking me from my thoughts.
“Hello?” I answered, my heart still racing from my last conversation with Mary.
“Karen,” she said, her voice icy but oddly comforting. “I should ignore you for a few more months, but luck seems to be on your side. Don’t make me regret this.”
She explained that an influential business person would pay an obscene amount for a week with me in Portofino, Italy. My stomach flipped. This could pay off the last of my bills, the tuition fees, and the endless mountain of debts I had barely started to chip away at. It was the chance to breathe and finally step away from Red Angel.