Chapter 1

Joseph frowned when he came into his kitchen, "I wish you'd have breakfast in your own home," he grumbled causing his employee to look up from the borrowed newspaper.

"Yeah, and that means I would have to buy my own bananas," he replied with a smirk, peeling the yellow fruit and taking a big bite. "And anyway, no-one else eats them except me."

"I should bloody charge you. A pound a banana, every day for a year, it'll be close to two hundred and fifty." There was a teasing grin as the tall, well-built man picked up a box of cereal and looked for a clean bowl.

"Honestly, one banana," came the response. "Look at this article, people in the world starving to death and you are concerned about a single tiny banana." Joseph glanced at the article with a sneer and poured himself some cereal.

"Yes, but you are not starving to death, you are pilfering my bloody fruit."

"Ahhh, but I would be starving to death if I didn't pilfer your bloody fruit," he replied with a cheeky grin. "Think of it as charity." Joseph snorted, but before he could reply his daughter, and eldest child, Katerhine appeared in the doorway, dressed only in a flimsy nightie.

Katherine was a few years younger than Matthew, his star employee who lived nearby and who he gave a lift to work every day, and he nodded towards the young lady with a cursory nod. "Shouldn't you be dressed?" he asked and Katherine shook her head, her bosom-length dark brown hair becoming ruffled until she swept it back.

"No classes 'til ten," she replied and sat down at the table, grabbing the orange juice carton and squeezing the last few thimbles of juice into an empty cup, sighing dramatically and looking accusingly at her father.

Joseph scowled at his daughter, he did not believe that her erratic timetable encouraged her to work hard at her studies as she never appeared to be actually at school and she downed the orange juice oblivious to the frown. In his day, he would have to be at college every day all day!

Katherine leant across and put a couple of slices of bread in the toaster and yawned loudly. "Tired?" Matthew asked, a smirk on his face and Katherine smiled and nodded.

"Was up until 1am playing on the ruddy PlayStation," Joseph thundered and Katherine scowled at him.

"I am nearly eighteen, I can stay up past your bedtime," she replied and caught the toast as it flicked her lightly browned bread into mid-air, buttering it and sitting down opposite Matthew. "I am not as old as you, I don't get tired as easily."

"Yes, nearly eighteen. You can do that when you are eighteen," came the response but Katherine wasn't listening.

"What's that?" Katherine asked and took the centre of the newspaper. "Oh my God, look at that dress," she shrieked and Matthew looked over see a pretty musician wearing a short, garish dress. "She is such a slut. I wouldn't be seen dead in that."

Matthew's glance fell off the bottom of the page to see the schoolgirl's cleavage down her nightie and he felt a twinge of guilty pleasure but couldn't tear his eyes away from the pert teenage bosom. "You can have that back," Katherine told him passing him the newspaper as she finished reading the article and set about furnishing her toast with jam, oblivious to where Matthew was looking. "Oh and Dad, tell Mum that I am going to Sam's afterwards so don't do dinner for me."

Joseph grunted and his eyes narrowed, he did not like his daughter's boyfriend any more than the young man in question liked his girlfriend's father. Joseph regarded Katherine's relationship with Sam as an unexplained mystery, failing to appreciate exactly what his smart and beautiful daughter saw in the downtrodden boy. Few people expected Sam to go to University, and it was touch and go whether he would finish his A-Levels, such was his lacklustre work ethic. As far as Joseph was concerned, he was destined to struggle through life just like his mother and elder brother, but there was something about him that his daughter just adored. Katherine was smart, beautiful and warm, and as far as the biased father was concerned, the mirror opposite of her partner, but nothing Joseph could say would make her change her mind.

"What time will you be home?" he asked coldly and Katherine got a sinking feeling in her stomach.

"I'm an adult," she whined. "I will be home before midnight."

Joseph spluttered. "You are not eighteen for another week. 10pm at the latest," he warned her and got an annoyed grunt in return. Katherine knew her father did not approve of Sam, he had made that perfectly clear, but she loved him, he was her first love and the man she had allowed to steal her innocence. "It is a school night," he used as an excuse.

"Dad, please," Katherine pleaded. Sam would be home alone until 11pm at the earliest and they had every intention of using the empty property for immoral purposes. "He only lives ten minutes away."

"Ten thirty," came the response. "And not a second later." Katherine barely accepted this as a compromise, and glared at her father.

They were still bickering across Matthew when Charlotte, Joseph's wife and Katherine's mother appeared in the doorway, dressed in a brand new exercise tracksuit with her arms folded. She didn't work: Joseph expressly forbade it, and instead she occupied herself with some volunteering work, housework and gym membership, something her husband moaned about paying for, but nevertheless very much enjoyed the toned body she had worked for. Charlotte was very good for her age, a mere 42 years old, but looked younger with her pert bosom and slim body.

"What's going on here?"

"Dad!" Katherine moaned. "He is being unresonable." Joseph groaned at the accusation and then summarised the argument, with Katherine dismayed to find her mother agreeing with the aforementioned dictated curfew. Joseph cuddled her as Katherine stormed off and she kissed him, his hands slipping up her tracksuit top.

"I can give you ten minutes," Matthew offered when Charlotte glanced over but she patted her husbands arms out of her clothing when she glanced over at the clock.

"You'll be late," she warned and detaching herself from her husband walked over to get herself a bowl of cereal, disappointing the amorous Joseph. Charlotte watched as Joseph left the room to get ready and sat down to talk to her husband's employee. She rarely knew or understood what happened at the company and the odd time she got to speak to Matthew without her husband listening, got to find out titbits of information that Joseph should really have told her – like the fact that there were some business meetings in London the following week and Joseph was planning on going with his co-director.

"It's up to Paul really," Matthew nervously said, repeating a conversation in the car the previous day. "It depends on whether he thinks they both need to go. I don't think they will want them both out of the office, I swear they think us workers are just work shy and lazy." Charlotte smiled at this, and they waited for the businessman to finish geting ready for work.

Charlotte waited for the door to close and the car to leave the drive and ran into the front room, loading up her laptop. She had been told of a great new site from her friend at the gym and unzipping her tracksuit jacket, typed in her login name and password.

"Clever Jackpot" loaded in a few seconds, a garish front page enticing visitors to open accounts and gamble and as Joseph's car drove away to earn money, Charlotte began to spend it.

"Fuck yeah," screamed the short rotund gentleman as he hooked the note in the scarlet stocking. The girl shook her curvaceous rear in his face and he took a swig of the Champagne bottle in his right hand, nodding towards her as she looked at him coyly. "Lookin' mighty fine, babe."

She smiled at him and spun around, shaking her body at his eye-line and wiggling her bosom at the appreciative man. He snorted and pulled out another note, that he tucked into her other stocking top and she unclipped her flimsy bra so her breasts dangled in front of him.

He whistled in enjoyment and sighed as she ground her hips into his lap with a guilty smile. Paul Mason was the co-owner and director of the mobile software company he ran with Joseph Wilson and spluttered when the girl thrust her unfettered bosom in his face.

"If you want some more fun," she whispered as she leant over. "I finish in twenty minutes. Two hundred for a fuck." The girl had earmarked Paul the moment she had clapped eyes on him: alone, well-dressed and drinking expensive drinks. She knew, from experience at working at the strip joint, that men like Paul often wanted something a little extra to finish the evening, and where there was a need, there was money. Paul whistled and watched the eighteen year-old run her hands down his chest and stop at his groin.

"One fifty," he told her in return and she raised her eyebrows blowing him a kiss.

"Two hundred and I'll let you stick it anywhere," she replied, her eyes not leaving his gaze. She slid her finger seductively into her mouth and watched for a reaction.

Paul's grin turned to a smirk. She was certainly older than his preferred choice of partner, but he would not find girls younger than the beautiful Cherry at such establishments and she nodded. "Deal," he told her and straightened his shirt, looking at her in the eyes.

Cherry was a first-year University student, who had turned to stripping, dancing and prostitution as a way of funding her studies. Her new flatmates had strongly discouraged her from doing so, and she knew her parents would be disgusted if they found out, but she was doing a medical degree and it cost money, lots of money and this was a quick, simple way to build up some cash reserves.

Cherry had always had a voracious sexual appetite, and although she didn't enjoy the sex or the work, she felt working one night in the club was preferable to working all weekend at a supermarket.

Cherry, or Alicia Reeves, was waiting for Paul at the end of the night, dressed in skirt and T-Shirt. She nodded towards the two bouncers and subtly slipped the tallest gentleman a ten pound note as she left, her arm looped around Paul's. For this, he would take the registration number of Paul's car and ring her in fifteen minutes if she hadn't contacted him. If she didn't answer, he would wait ten minutes and then call the Police with the said registration number should he fail to get the "safe word." It was lucrative money for the bouncers – a couple of girls a night could increase their wages by a few hundred pounds a month.

Paul pulled out of the private car park in his pristine Jaguar and drove the mile from the club to the luxury hotel he had booked into. Alicia allowed him to feel her up in the lift, but gasped as he opened the door to the penthouse suite and she ran to the window, her short skirt riding up as she ran.