Darkness in the Neon Lights (H2OVanoss)

Chapter 50

*Four days earlier*

*Mike's POV*

"I hope you realize just how much we appreciate you finally agreeing to come forward," I say as my partner and I sit in front of the scared man in front of us. 

He looks away from us before he says, "You guys didn't give me much of a choice... Is Evan safe?"

"I think you know the answer to that," my partner replies, coldly.

The man in front of us looks down and sighs. "Yeah... I do... Alright, let's get this over with so you guys can take that bastard down."

"Easy there," I say, not wanting to ruin our chance with his anger. "Let's take this one step at a time. From the beginning. What is your name and how did you come into contact with Anthony?"

He takes a deep breath and calms himself down. "My name is Ryan. Ryan Werker, formerly known as Ohmwerker. And as for how I met Anthony, well, I was homeless. Been homeless for a year. He found me looking through his trash, trying to find something to eat, and he offered me some food in his club. Once in there, he talked about how the club will make all this money, but he didn't have reliable strippers. He offered me a deal."

"What was that deal?"

"If I worked for him, I could live at the club. However, the deal was better for him. I would have had to work for free and give him half of my tips... But I took it anyways. I had spent a year sleeping in the backseat of my car... And his couch looked so comfortable."

"So you started working for him that night?"

He nods. "I didn't really know what I was doing, but I managed to get a lot of people's attention. After that night, I worked nightly. Saved up as much money as I could to eat regularly, get a costume together, and by the time I had enough to rent my own apartment, I had fallen in love with the club life... Until we got bigger.
Once we got bigger, the shitheads started coming out. The rich assholes that thought we were below them in life, the grabby assholes that would grope us every time we walked by them. And the monsters... The bastards that would try to fuck us in front of everyone, or drag us away to do that.
I begged Jigglesworth to ban them from the club, but he refused to do it. Saying if he did that, then we'd lose out on so much money."

"I'm sorry, but Jigglesworth," I ask, knowing that we needed to be as clear as day with this.

"When he and I first started to work together, I would call him Jigglesworth. His stage name at his first club was JigglyPanda because he was a bigger guy. After getting drunk one night, the name came to be, and it stuck. After a while, I stopped calling him that, but if I needed his full attention, the name would come back up, and he would snap back to me."

"Alright," my partner then says as he writes everything down. "Let's continue forward. How did the apartments come to be?"

We see Ryan's face scrunch up at the mention of the apartments. "The most disgusting part of the job," he then says before he slides his elbows onto the table. "People started going to Panda, begging him to let them fuck us. A lot of them even threw money at him to get him to say yes. And that greedy bastard broke. After we started hiring security guards, he got everyone together and told us he was going to hold our checks for the next month. He ended up buying the first apartment building he could afford and had us all live there. I thought it was meant to be just somewhere nice for us all to live, but then he shattered that illusion.
He went to everyone, one on one, and told us that he did this so that he had somewhere to send the fuckers that wanted us. Told us if we said yes to fucking them for pay, we'd get more time on the pole, more work days, and we'd get to live there for free."