Blue eyes slid down to the baton, unimpressed. She’d take that any day over his words. Fuck him and his poisonous words.

The brothel almost seemed easier. Almost. But there? If she’d just been tall, she might have had it made. She might have had it made if she’d been better at playing herself down. If her arms were just coated with a thin layer of flesh, rather than capable of crushing bone.

The circus … was not worth it, involved some of the same work but more degradation and less pay, and she didn’t want to leave her family behind. Her family knew what she’d done, before this new life. Her mother had done it, too, and her father had often been the one to negotiate it.

Unsurprisingly, she was silent. Let Wesley orally masturbate to his own voice: she’d get the last laugh, one way or another.

She hoped.

But Fanny knew a thing or two about putting on a friendly face. It was the work she’d sought to escape, after all.

Francis shrugged his arms wide, standing tall. Fuck, at least Fanny loved being able to do that casually.

“Alright, wise guy. Fop me up.”