Natalie sipped her drink nervously and checked her phone for the fortieth time of the night, wondering where the hell Jen was. Clad in a long sleeve black minidress and suede grey over the knee boots, she blended in quite well in the bar she currently sat in, her purse sitting on the seat beside her as she waited for her friend. “May I sit?” 

“Jen!” 

Jennifer was a tall, no nonsense brunette and a police detective, who was dressed casually in black knee boots, jeans, and a zipped up leather moto jacket. Natalie hugged her longtime friend and got a drink ordered for her. “So why did you want to meet here of all places? We haven’t been here since we were in school.” 

The Chinese girl nodded. “So you know how I work in labour.” 

Labour was one way of putting it. Natalie worked for a maid service that specialized in sending girls dressed up as maids to clean rich peoples’ homes. It was degrading and usually to satisfy rich fetishes, but it paid extremely well and Natalie didn’t mind the attention. Jen nodded. “Recently, one of the girls I worked with let it slip that she wasn’t doing the work willingly. Not sure if it was blackmail or human trafficking or something, but I poked around and it looked like there’s a pattern. And some things like how there’s a collar as a part of the uniform but some seem to be locked onto the girls that are much more timid and introverted.” 

Jennifer leaned closer. “So you think they’re using illegals and threatening them? Or something else.” 

Natalie shook her head. “I’m not sure, some of them are definitely American, could be kidnapped, could be those working off debts. I don’t really know but I’ve seen enough that I’m beginning to get scared and wanted to tell you about it.” 

“I can look into things on my end but I won’t be able to do anything without proof.” Jen looked around the full bar. “And you can’t tell anyone else right now, if they’re really doing what you think they’re doing they’ll have eyes everywhere and people will find out.” She looked Natalie in the eye. “And you’ll vanish.”

Natalie gulped and nodded. “Maybe it’s better if I just find a guy here tonight to forget about things until I’m back in work.” 

Jen looked around the room. “Well there certainly are some good looking prospects, but I’ll leave you to pick up some college hunk and look into this then. Talk to you tomorrow?”

She finished her drink and the two girls hugged before Jen departed. Natalie swirled the rest of her drink around for a few more minutes, wondering what exactly she was going to do and if she had done the right thing before a football player looking guy approached her and soon she was very distracted. 

Behind the bar, the bartender picked a phone out of his back pocket and sent off a couple of text messages, glancing at the pretty Asian girl before getting back to work. 

- - -

Two days later, Natalie was assigned to another rich home. Large mansion, isolated property, the normal client that was rich and enjoyed seeing the dressed up maids wander around his house. Morgan had been assigned with her, a young blonde girl barely out of high school who was far too innocent to be in this business but the pay was great and she was funding her school through it so go her. Both girls were dressed in classic French maid outfits with the black dress, white apron, stockings, and heels as well as the collar that was standard for their work. To their surprise, no one was even home when they arrived, instead the door was remotely unlocked and they were given instructions on where to clean. Given that there were two wings of the house, the girls agreed to split up to do the work. 

To Natalie’s surprise, the place was relatively clean already. The kitchen seemed barely used, but she cleaned all of it anyways and was wiping down the counters when there was a crash from the other end of the house which caused Natalie to jump. “Morgan?” Natalie called. “You ok?” 

There was no answer so she turned off the vacuum and headed down the hall. “Morgan?” She tried again with some more urgency. 

She entered another large room that seemed to mainly house a grand piano and saw Morgan collapsed behind it and a shattered vase on the floor near her. “Morgan!” 

Her hands flew to her mouth before she raced to her friend’s side. “Morgan wake up!” 

Distracted by her unconscious friend, Natalie did not see the man step out from behind a cabinet with a white cloth in hand until he had grabbed her from behind and clamped the soaked cloth down over her face. “Mmmmmph!?” She cried in surprise as an arm snaked around her waist and pulled her against a hard body, trapping her arms at her side. “Nmmmmm!!” 

Caught off guard, she’d inhaled several rounds of the fumes before realizing it was chloroform. Her struggles began to get weaker and her eyelids heavy as she began to succumb to the drug. “Time to learn consequences, snitch.” A voice growled in her ear as she faded into unconsciousness. 

Natalie awoke to a crashing headache. “Mmmmnn.” She groaned, before noticing her mouth was filled with some kind of cloth. And the fact that she had duct tape wrapped all around her head over her hair, pulled tight enough that her cheeks were twisted sideways. Opening her eyes, she was greeted with the sight of Morgan tightly bound to a kitchen chair. Still clad in her maid uniform, although a bit dishevelled now from struggling and tears streaming down her face, she was tightly bound with duct tape to the sturdy chair. Legs spread apart and taped to separate legs, her wrists were also bound to the side of the chair, keeping her rigidly in place. Bands of tape at the chest, waist, and thighs kept her from getting out of the chair. Natalie looked down and saw she was similarly bound, her breasts thrust out from how her shoulders were forced back and she moaned in fear behind her gag. 

Then a masked man dressed in black emerged from one of the other rooms and walked behind Morgan. “Hello Natalie.” He said in a deep voice as he placed his hands on Morgan’s shoulders, causing her to whimper in fear. “Welcome to consequences.” 

Her gut went cold. The words spoken to her before she blacked out had not been her imagination, he was here because of her snooping. Which means she was correct! She moaned in fear at what that might possibly mean, her eyes following the man in black as he circled behind her out of her field of view. Then she felt something get pressed against her thumb. She realized after a second it was her phone when the man returned into her view typing out something. He hit send on a message before turning it around to show his captive. Found something concrete. Address is 2 Adelaide Boulevard, come asap. 

The message had been sent to Jen and Natalie screamed behind her gag as she realized her friend was walking right into a trap. “It’s a real shame Natalie.” He said as he reached out and groped her breasts through her uniform. “Morgan here was innocent, truly a hardworking girl with big dreams. Dreams which, thanks to you, are now gone down a black hole. She is going to disappear, along with you, and your detective friend Jen, since we do run a white slavery ring and the three of you are destined for new lives overseas.”

Natalie could feel tears welling up in her eyes. This was the consequence of her nosing around, too curious for her own good. They’d known, probably as soon as she started poking around, and now Morgan was going down with her. And Jen. She was reminded vividly of this as the man moved behind Morgan and reached down the front of her dress to grope her breasts, eliciting a whimper and sob from the poor girl. The torture continued for another half an hour or so, they were groped and pinched and violated and could only strain against their tape bonds as they sobbed. Finally, after what felt like years, they heard the front door open. “Natalie?” 

Natalie’s head shot up. “NMMMMM! MMMPH MMM TRRRRMMMMPH!” 

Her unintelligible warnings only hastened Jen’s doom as she appeared in the kitchen doorway with her pistol drawn. “NATALIE!” 

“GGMMMM HMMMMMPH!” Natalie cried, but the moment of hesitation was too long and from behind Jen, the man in black appeared with a pistol pushed into her friend’s back. 

“I would drop that if I were you, detective.” 

Caught off guard, Jen looked furious as she dropped her pistol off to the side and kept her hands raised. With her hands up, she was completely unprepared for the chloroform cloth that clamped down over her face that quickly rendered her unconscious. The man then got to work with his roll of silver tape, very quickly rendering her helpless with bands at the wrists, elbows, chest, waist, thighs, knees, and ankles. A cloth was shoved into her mouth and she received a matching gag to the other two girls, who continued to sob as they watched their one hope of rescue get dashed. “Well, another one added to the list.” The man said as he finished wrapping Jen’s hands in duct tape to turn them into helpless mitts. “Who knows what your fate will be? Maybe you’ll be given a serving tray and carry drinks. Maybe you’ll get a ring gag and be forced to serve. Always the option for labour.”

He loomed up over Natalie. “Welcome to the consequence of your actions.”