Nightmare at the Private Apartment: When my own... appeared in the door

Ema – known as Mia at the apartment – followed these rules with absolute precision. Every Friday afternoon she took a train from Prague, got off in Pardubice, and turned into someone else in a rented apartment near the station. Black bob wig, red lipstick, tight corsets. She was doing this for less than a year. The reason was banal and terribly ordinary. Huge debts from the failed business of her boyfriend David, because of which the baliffs were breathing down their necks and making their life a hell. David knew nothing. He thought Ema goes for weekend shifts as a supervisor in a logistics center.

Everything went according to plan. Money was coming, debts were disappearing, and Ema already started counting down the last months before she stops this double game forever. But then came that fateful Thursday.

On her work phone popped up a message from a new client who booked a two-hour session through the agency under the name "Karel". He wrote that he will arrive exactly at two in the afternoon and that he pays extra for absolute discretion.

Outside was shining a bright September sun, which forced its way through the blinds and ruined Ema's plans for a merciful darkness. She quickly put on her wig, adjusted her makeup, and checked the door lock. Exactly at two, the doorbell rang. Ema put on her professional, seductive smile, pressed the handle, and opened the door wide.

The bright light from the hallway blinded her eyes for a second. But when her vision focused on the man standing on the threshold, her smile froze on her lips immediately. Her heart skipped about three beats at once and a cold chill spread in her stomach.

There was not a stranger standing in front of the door. In an expensive suit, with a leather briefcase in his hand and a slightly nervous expression, there stood Professor Milan Mares, Ph.D. The father of her boyfriend David. Her future father-in-law. A respected man whom she until then saw as a moral pillar of the family, and with whom she was supposed to sit at a family dinner on Sunday.

The next three seconds of silence were endless. Milan Mares looked at the girl in front of him. He saw the black bob wig and a ton of makeup, but the sharp afternoon sun was brutally revealing the contours of the face that he knew very well. He looked straight into her eyes. At that moment, the leather briefcase fell out of his hand and hit the floor with a dull thud.

"Ema?" whispered the respected professor's mouth. His voice was shaking.

Ema felt cold sweat running down her back. Her first instinct told her to slam the door and pretend she doesn't exist. But it was too late. They were caught in a trap. Both of them.

"Come inside," Ema said with a cold, strange voice that she didn't even recognize herself. She stepped aside. Milan crossed the threshold like in a trance and she turned the key in the lock behind him. The sound of that click sounded like a definitive sentence.

They stood in the middle of the living room, which was dominated by a red light and a big bed. The contrast between a fifty-year-old man who lectured about morality and philosophy at the university, and a girl in a lace corset could not be crazier.

"What... what are you doing here?" Milan stammered, refusing to look into her eyes.

"The same as you, Mr. Professor," Ema turned to him. The fear in her was suddenly replaced by a pure, cold desire to survive. She realized that she holds the cards that can destroy the lives of both, but in this room, she was at home. "Actually, no. I work here to pull your son out of trouble. You came here to enjoy yourself. Karel."

Milan turned so pale that it looked like he might faint any moment. He sat down on the edge of the bed, buried his head in his hands, and started to shake uncontrollably. "This cannot be true. This is a bad dream. David... David will go crazy. If he finds out..."

"If he finds out?" Ema interrupted him and walked to him. "David will be destroyed when he finds out how I pay his debts. But do you know what will destroy him more? When he finds out that his perfect father, who gives him lectures about family values all his life, secretly goes to private apartments. And that the girl who will serve him soup at the table on Sunday knows your darkest secret."

A freezing silence ruled the room. It was a chess game where every next word meant the absolute destruction of the whole family. Milan raised his head. In his eyes was pure terror, but also a flash of a wild survival instinct. He knew the price of his reputation. He knew the price of his marriage and career.

"What do you want?" he asked quietly.

Ema looked at the man whose authority just crumbled into dust. She knew that from this moment, nothing will ever be like before. That every next family dinner will be the biggest psychological hell of her life. But the fear completely left her. It was replaced by a cold, rational calculation.

"I want you to stand up now, take your things, and leave," she said slowly, and her voice didn't shake at all. "And I want you to remember one thing very well. From this second, we hold each other by the throat. You won't say even half a word to David about where I spend my weekends. And I won't say a word to your wife about how you spend Thursday afternoons. We will just continue to play our perfect family."

Milan Mares slowly stood up from the bed. It seemed like he aged ten years in those few minutes. With shaking hands, he picked up his briefcase from the ground, straightened his jacket, and without a single word, he walked to the door. When he pressed the handle, he stopped for a second, but he didn't turn around.

"We understand each other, Ema," he whispered, and the door closed behind him.

Ema stayed alone in the room. She pulled the black wig off her head, threw it on the bed, and looked in the mirror. On Sunday, exactly in three days, she and David are supposed to come to his parents for a traditional roast. Milan Mares will open the door for them, smile, hug his son, and kiss her hand to welcome her. And she will have to smile too.

The secret was safe. The family stayed seemingly whole. But the price they both paid for it was higher than any amount of money she ever earned at this apartment.

I am sorry for my imperfect English, but I am improving myself this way.