Every Girl Has Her Price [Republish first chapter]

[Danielle]

Every Girl Has Her Price
A Retelling by Danielle, Inspired by Maria Gonzales’ Original (1999)

Author’s Note

This retelling draws inspiration from the themes first explored in Maria Gonzales’ provocative Every Girl Has Her Price, originally published on the Cronenberg Academy Stories Archive in 1999. That story followed Juana's slippery moral descent—her choices, compromises, and the shadowy forces surrounding her—as she navigated the complex terrain between desire, survival, and corruption.

In this modern reimagining, the essence of that descent remains, but the world is darker, sleeker, and more saturated with neon reflections and late-night bargains. Juana becomes someone new: a sharp, impulsive, insatiable twenty-something woman caught between a hardened man with blurred ethics and a city that preys on vulnerability. Noir pulses through every decision she makes—choices that pull her deeper into a seductive yet unforgiving world where self-worth is a currency, and the cost of wanting more is always steep.

At its core, the story still poses the same haunting question: How far is too far before you lose yourself entirely? And just as in the original, the answer is never easy, clean, or kind.

______________________________

[ Reedit the original and make it better ]

[Danielle]

Chapter 1: The Man in the Suit

My name’s Juana Mitchels. I’m twenty-four, a college dropout clinging to just enough ambition to keep from going under, and armed with enough sarcasm to alienate strangers in under thirty seconds. For the past year, I’ve worked at a place called The Burger Baby—a diner that smells like burnt grease, stale hope, and ketchup older than most of our customers. The uniform? A maroon polo two sizes too big, an apron that smells like fryer oil, and a crooked name tag that might as well say: Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.

Tonight, the fluorescent lights overhead buzzed with the kind of slow death only corporate lighting can manage. My head throbbed, my feet ached, and the lull after the dinner rush wrapped itself around the place like a held breath. I tugged absently at my name tag—Juana Mitchels, slightly chipped plastic cutting into my collarbone like punishment for surviving another shift.

That’s when I saw him.

He stood at the counter like a ghost who didn’t belong to this world. Mid-forties, maybe. The charcoal-gray suit, silver cufflinks, shoes polished to a shine that didn’t match the cracked tile beneath them. He looked like he'd stepped out of a glass office tower and accidentally wandered into fast-food purgatory. He didn’t belong—and he knew it. His eyes swept the room like he was assessing property value, and finding it depressingly low.

I gave him my finest dead-eyed fast food stare and recited the sacred employee scripture in a flat voice. “Would you like fries with that?”

He looked up at me—cool, analytical. “No thanks.”

His gaze dropped to my name tag. He lingered on it. On me. Just long enough for discomfort to ripple under my skin.

Then he reached into his coat, pulled out his phone, and tapped something. I braced for a digital coupon or some rich guy complaint about service times.

Instead, he slid a sleek black business card across the counter.

Underneath it, folded neat as origami, was a crisp bill.

I hesitated. The air tilted slightly sideways, like the moment before a thunderclap. I looked around—no one was watching—then snatched both. The bill vanished into my front pocket; I didn’t even check the amount. The card slipped into my back pocket like I’d done it a hundred times.

Between customers, I pulled out the card and looked.

It was thicker than the paper had any right to be. Black, minimalist, sinister in its silence.

Five words in stark white print:

Every Girl Has Her Price.

My stomach did something sharp and sideways.

I flipped it over.

Centered. Clean. Like a dare etched in glass:

Meet me in the lobby to name the price of your bra.

I stared.

Then I looked up.

He didn’t smile. Didn’t flinch. Just picked up his tray, smoothed a hand down his lapel, and walked away—unhurried, like he already knew exactly what I’d do.

He didn’t look back.

But I felt his presence echoing behind my ribs long after he disappeared into the lobby.

That was the moment it started.

Not with a kiss.

Not even a smile.

But with a card.

And a question I’d never been asked before.

It wasn’t romance.

It wasn’t even flirtation.

It was an offer.

A test.

A trap, maybe.

And whether I wanted to admit it or not…

I was already reaching for the answer.

He sat on a bench near the far wall of the lobby—just out of sight from the counter, but impossible to ignore.

The clock above the fryer blinked at 9:17 PM in blood-red digits. I wiped my hands on a towel and turned to Gloria, our manager—mid-thirties, coffee-fueled, and long past giving a damn.

“Can I take my break?”

She didn’t even glance up. “Clock out. Don’t be long.”

I nodded, unfastened my apron, and walked toward the time clock. I was supposed to grab a sad burger, slump into the break room, and scroll dead-eyed through my phone until my thirty minutes died.

But I didn’t.

I kept walking—past the kitchen, past the break room.

Into the lobby.

My pace slowed.

He was still there.

I sat at the table farthest from him—part caution, part curiosity I couldn’t name. The vinyl seat was cold against my thighs, cracked at the edges. I didn’t look over.

I didn’t have to.

He stood.

Like he’d just been waiting for his cue.

And approached.

No hesitation.

“Excuse me,” he said, voice smooth, surgical. “Mind if I ask you something?”

He sat down before I could answer.

“My name is Kyle Thomas,” he said, like it mattered. Like it was a key he’d just slid into a lock.

I answered without thinking. “Sure.”

He folded his hands on the table. “Can I talk to you when you’re off work?”

The question slid across my skin like ice.

This place—this nowhere town—was halfway between the college I dropped out of and the neighborhood I grew up in. I never meant to stay. The only reason I was here at all was because my high school best friend begged me to be her roommate and split the rent in an apartment that cost both of us more than our dignity.

My mouth moved before my brain caught up. “I have a boyfriend.”

It came out flat. Rehearsed. I didn’t believe it.

Kyle smiled—small, sharp. “That’s not what I’m asking. I’m not trying to take you on a date. I’m offering you the chance to make quick money. No strings. Just a conversation.”

I hesitated. “I get off in an hour and a half.”

“I’ll wait,” he said simply. “Right here. I’ve got a car outside.”

“A car?”

“A limousine,” he corrected, like it was nothing. Then he added, “I think you’ll find the ride worth your time.”

I blinked at him. Then, quietly, he asked, “Did you look at the bill you pocketed?”

I pulled it out. My fingers stiffened when I saw the denomination.

One crisp hundred-dollar bill.

He smiled faintly, then pulled out another—a fifty—and laid it on the table. “Now,” he said, tapping the business card I’d set down between us, “what do you think your bra is worth?”

My cheeks flushed. I glanced at the card again, then at him.

He pulled out another fifty. That made two hundred dollars. Just sitting there.

His burger sat untouched. He leaned back, measured, and said, “I’m a very wealthy man. I don’t tell you that to impress you. Just so you understand—anything I offer you is real. It’s legitimate.”

“So what?” I asked. “You just throw money at random girls in diners?”

“Not random,” he said. “I’m selective. And time is valuable. You agreed to talk. That alone deserves compensation.”

He slid the bills toward me.

I stared at them. Then, slowly, picked them up.

“This is just for listening?” I asked. “You’re not expecting me to… sleep with you, right?”

He gave a soft laugh. “I wouldn’t insult either of us with that kind of transaction. No, Juana. You’re being paid to hear an offer. If you accept any part of it, I’ll be grateful. But if not? You keep the money. No harm done.”

I looked at the business card again, the words gleaming under the fluorescent lobby lights.

Every girl has her price.

Maybe.

But tonight… I was about to find mine.

                                              __________________________

I took the last bite of my lukewarm burger, swallowed, and looked him dead in the eye.

“Okay, Kyle. What business propositions do you have for me?”

He smiled—not wide, not warm, just that thin, precise thing he did that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Slow down, Juana. I’ll get to that,” he said, voice as calm as a sermon. “But let me explain why I chose you first.”

I raised a brow, skeptical. “You chose me?”

He nodded slowly. “I did. For many reasons. You’re an attractive woman. But it’s more than that. You have something in your eyes. Some defiance maybe, or hunger. I’m not sure what to call it. But I recognized it.”

I tilted my head, uncertain if I was being flattered or dissected. “You lost me. Can you run that by me again?”

“Don’t worry about the words,” he said, waving it away like it wasn’t important. “Let me keep going.”

I nodded, cautiously.

“I have a theory. A lot of people have it—I just made it my hobby to prove it,” he said like we were sipping wine instead of sitting in a half-dead diner under flickering lights. “You’ve heard the phrase, ‘Everyone has a price,’ right?”

I nodded again, slower this time.

“Well, I like to test that theory. Push people to their edge. See what they’re willing to do… when the number’s right.”

I let out a breath, part laugh, part disbelief. “So let me get this straight. Do you want to pay me to do things? Weird things? Just to prove you can?”

“Exactly,” he said, without apology. “And I always pay in cash.”

I leaned back in the booth, arms crossed over my chest. “You think you can buy me, right?”

“No,” he said. “I think you’ll decide whether it’s worth being bought.”

Silence stretched between us.

Then he reached into his coat again and pulled out another bill. A fifty.

“Here’s my first official business proposition, Juana,” he said. “Fifty dollars. For your bra.”

I blinked. “You want me to give you my bra? Right now?”

“Yes,” he said, unfazed. “Right here at the table.”

I looked down at myself, at the thin fabric of my button-down shirt. I could see the faint outline of the lace underwire. My bra wasn’t thick. Without it, I’d be putting on a show whether I meant to or not.

“I can’t,” I murmured. “You’ll be able to… see everything.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “That’s sort of the point. I’ll double it. Two more fifties.”

One hundred fifty. For a bra.

I glanced around. A couple of bored teenagers by the soda machine. An old man nursing a coffee in the far corner. But no one was looking at us.

“Do I have to do it here? Or can I go to the bathroom?”

He leaned in slightly. “I’d prefer you take it off here. But fine—you can use the bathroom. As long as you come back with it in your hand.”

I hesitated.

He pulled out another crisp bill. One hundred more.

My heart skipped.

“I’ll be right back,” I said, voice lower than I meant it to be.

I stood, my legs a little shaky, and walked toward the restroom. The hallway felt longer than usual. My skin buzzed, blood humming under the surface with the kind of adrenaline that only comes from doing something you probably shouldn’t.

Inside the stall, I unbuttoned my shirt slowly. The cotton slipped down my shoulders. I draped it over the door and reached behind my back. The bra was unsnapped easily. I pulled the straps from my arms and held it in my hands.

It felt strange to be bare under my work shirt, vulnerable. My nipples tightened in the cold air. I could already imagine what I looked like.

I dressed again, fastened the buttons, then stood at the sink and looked at myself in the mirror.

The effect was… obvious.

The fabric clung. My breasts shifted freely with every movement. Dark circles teased through the pale cotton, and my areolas—darker than I remembered—were visible beneath. My chest rose and fell faster than normal. I looked wild. Like I’d just crossed a line and wasn’t sure how far I’d go next.

I let my hair down and ran a brush through it, softening the frizz from my shift. I touched up my eyeliner and added a dab of lip gloss. For some reason, I wanted to look good when I walked back out there.

Wanted him to see it.

When I stepped back into the lobby, Kyle was still sitting exactly where I’d left him—like a man with all the time in the world.

His eyes flicked up to me.

A flicker of satisfaction passed across his face, subtle but undeniable.

“Very nice,” he said, as I slid into the booth and laid the bra down on the table. “I like your hair down. And the way your tits bounce under that shirt—it’s very sexy.”

I didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure if I was angry, embarrassed, or turned on.

Maybe all three.

He handed me the promised cash—four crisp fifties. Two hundred dollars. I tucked it into my pocket without counting it.

“You have beautiful nipples, Juana,” he added, almost clinically. “Dark. Bold. They show through perfectly. Ideal for my next proposition.”

I glanced at the clock above the fryer. 9:48 PM. My break was over.

Before he could open his mouth again, I stood and grabbed the cash. “I need to clock back in.”

He didn't try to stop me. Just nodded, calm and content, as if this whole exchange had gone exactly according to some internal script.

I walked away with the bra still in his possession and two hundred dollars in mine, my heart pounding louder than the buzz of the lights overhead.

It wasn’t just about the money.

Not anymore.

Something else had shifted.

And I had no idea what Kyle Thomas was going to ask next.

But deep down, I knew one thing for sure:

I was going to say yes.

Every step I took from that booth to the time clock felt heavier than the last.

The moment I passed the counter, I felt them—eyes on me. Customers, coworkers, even Gloria. Some stared outright. Some quickly looked away like I was radioactive. But all of them noticed. Because it was obvious.

My breasts bounced freely under the thin cotton of my work shirt. My nipples, hard and dark, showed through like they were trying to send Morse code. It was impossible to hide.

And they all knew something was off.

I tried to keep my face neutral. Professional. But my heart was racing like I'd just stolen something. Which, in a way, maybe I had.

I was halfway to the time clock when I saw it.

A young woman—a customer—was handing something to Gloria. At first, I thought it was a receipt or a complaint. But then I saw it. That same sleek black rectangle. The same heavy paper.

Another business card.

The same five bold words on the front:
Every Girl Has Her Price.

And fresh handwriting scrawled on the back.

My stomach dropped.

Gloria turned slowly, looked at me with a strange calm, and walked me straight into her cramped office, shutting the door behind us like we were about to talk about overtime hours—not prostitution-adjacent transactions.

She didn’t say anything for a while. Just studied me. Me, standing there braless, shirt clinging to every curve. Holding another one of his cards.

When she finally spoke, her voice was low. Controlled.

“Juana Mitchels,” she began, “you’re one of my best workers. I know this job barely scrapes minimum wage and the tips have been garbage lately. I also know what that man is doing. He’s offering you something most people wouldn’t admit they’d even consider.”

I didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

Gloria stepped closer, folding her arms. “You’re an adult. You’re making adult choices. I get that. But just know this—while you’re in here, you represent this place. So if you plan on wearing… less than the uniform requires, let me or one of the other supervisors know. I’d rather not have the health inspector getting a free peep show.”

I opened my mouth to defend myself, but she held up a hand and plucked the business card from my fingers.

She read the back.

Her eyes didn’t widen. She didn’t gasp or make a face.

She just nodded like it was a grocery list and handed it back.

Two new lines were scrawled across the back:

Two hundred for the panties. Spill water before the end of your shift. Discreet. Bring the panties to Gloria.

Gloria raised a brow. “If you go through with this, go all the way. Don’t half-ass it. Keep your head, stay sharp, and remember—he’s playing a game. Don’t lose yours.”

I didn’t speak.

I just… moved.

My hands went to the front of my pants, fingers trembling slightly. I unzipped them, slowly, reached inside, and tugged my panties down. They were already damp with sweat and nerves. I didn’t want to think about anything else.

I paused.

“Do you have scissors?” I asked.

Gloria handed me a pair from the desk drawer without flinching.

I clipped the waistband, making it easier to pull them free without drawing attention when the time came. Then I punched them up, warm and soft in my hand, and stuffed them into the deep pocket of my apron.

The silence between us was heavier than the panties in my pocket.

I pulled my pants back up, buttoned them, and smoothed my shirt.

Gloria opened the door.

Back in the restaurant, the air felt different. The buzz of the lights was louder. The sound of a customer stirring their drink with a straw grated against my ears. Everything was sharper. More vivid.

Because now I wasn’t just braless.

I wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

Every move I made sent soft friction between my thighs. Every step was a reminder that I had something in my pocket worth two hundred dollars—and maybe my dignity.

Kyle was still sitting at his table, cool as ice, sipping from a soda cup as none of this concerned him at all.

He didn’t even look my way.

But I knew he was watching.

Always watching.

And somehow, the next move was mine.

For the rest of my shift, I stood behind the register like a mannequin made of nerves.

Every breath reminded me I was bare underneath my clothes.

No bra. No panties. Just thin cotton separating me from the air, from the eyes, from the judgment I could feel radiating off everyone in the diner.

The customers were subtle—but not subtle enough.

Their eyes dipped to my chest. Some lingered longer than others, and every time they did, I fought the instinct to cross my arms. I didn’t. That was part of the game now. Mine and his.

And my coworkers?

They didn’t say a word.

But I felt them watching, whispering behind trays and fry baskets. The fryer sizzled like a hiss of warning. Still, I kept working. Still standing. Still serving.

Still choosing this.

Eventually, the counter cleared. The late shift lull returned—quiet and electric, like the hush before a storm.

We all wiped down the front. Gloria handled the drawer. One of the new girls stacked cups. I moved like I always did, muscle memory and habit, except this time every movement came with bounce, jiggle, sway—and a heat creeping up my neck that had nothing to do with the grill.

Then, with the last few minutes of my shift ticking down, I reached for a small cup, filled it with ice and water, and walked toward the back—where he was still seated. Patient. Precise.

Waiting.

His eyes flicked to mine. No smirk. No triumph. Just a silent invitation to take the next step.

I stopped in front of him and reached into my apron pocket.

The panties came out warm and wrinkled, bundled into my hand like a surrender.

I set them on the table with the ice water.

His gaze dropped to the offering. Then back to me.

“I’m willing to play your game,” I said, voice low and steady. “Under one condition.”

He waited.

“You return me home tonight. My apartment complex. No detours. All the cash you hand me stays in my purse. Whether or not I’m wearing anything by the time we get there is my decision. And once the night is over, I’ll decide if we play again.”

A single eyebrow arched slightly as I’d just offered him a very unexpected bonus round. But he didn’t argue. He simply gave a small nod, deliberate and solemn.

“Agreed.”

Then—calmly, cleanly—he stood, took the cup of water, and poured it slowly down the front of my blouse.

The ice hit first—sharp and shocking.

The fabric clung instantly to my chest, going see-through in seconds. My nipples tightened against the wet cotton like a live broadcast. The apron offered almost no cover now, soaked and drooping.

But I didn’t flinch.

I just met his eyes and let the cold sink in.

Behind me, I heard Gloria’s voice—low and dry as ever.

“You’re clocked out.”

No judgment. No warnings this time.

Just a line in the sand.

I turned, grabbed my bag from under the counter, and walked beside him to the door.

My clothes were plastered to my skin. My purse was heavy with cash. And for the first time in a long time, I felt the gravity of choice—of deliberately walking into something that could break me, or change me, or both.

The night was just beginning.

And so was the game.

[Somebody]

Absolutely intriguing. A power play for the ages. I am curious, since you are adapting someone's old story, have you, well I would think, doubled the amount of money he offers, so that it's the same amount in the age of phone scrolling?