by Vivi Paige
“What do you mean, why not? It’s not appropriate to say such things.”
“Not appropriate?” He tilted his head to the side.
“Don’t be dense.” I turned toward him, crossing my legs in case my skirt rode up too high. My torn panties were the elephant in the room. “Those are the kinds of things you say to someone who you’re… who you’re…”
My hand grasped at the air, trying to pluck the right words and transfer them into my brain.
“Someone you’re what?” he prompted, that damn dimpled smile driving me up the wall with its willful obtuseness.
“Someone you’re going to want to see again,” I finished lamely, dropping my hands into my lap.
“Well, then it is appropriate because I do want to see you again.”
“Damn it, Peter. You know that’s not possible.” I stood quickly, my body trembling with equal parts anger and restrained desire. I wanted him so badly, like an addict who’d had their first taste. “Stop saying things that will just torment us both, and let’s accept what happened upstairs for what it was.”
“Amazing?” Peter suggested, his brows going high on his handsome face. “Fantastic? Mind blowing?”
“No, you idiot,” I snapped. “A fluke. A one-time deal. It was… it was pretty damn good, but it can’t ever happen again.”
Peter stood as well, thrusting his hands into his pockets and staring at me with an inscrutable expression etched onto his young face. “So, that’s the final word, is it?”
I sighed, hating to disappoint him, but even more so hating to disappoint myself. “That’s the final word unless Crenshaw Hook keels over of a heart attack suddenly and I’m out of a job.”
“Morbid.” Peter reached out and brushed a lock of hair out of my eye, his touch tender. “You know, no one has to die for us to see each other. You could always just quit.”
I stiffened, anger boiling in my belly. “Just… quit?” I asked, but Peter missed the ice in my tone.
“Yeah, sure, I’ve got plenty of money, doll. I’ll treat you like a princess.”
My teeth clenched, biting back a fiery torrent of vulgarity. All of a sudden I didn’t feel so special—I felt like just another one of his conquests. “Gee, thanks, Prince Charming, but I’m afraid I don’t need to be rescued.” I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. “This isn’t a fairy tale, and I’m not a damsel in distress. I’m a grown ass woman with a successful career.”
“As a fixer for a mobster.” I could tell he regretted the words the moment they left his mouth.
“Look who’s talking.” My eyes narrowed. “I studied you, remember? Do you really want to compare who has more skeletons in their closet? You know what, just leave. Get out of here, and take your ‘crew’ with you.”
“You… you want me to leave?” He seemed genuinely hurt. Peter put his hand on my shoulder. “You don’t really mean that.”
I slapped his hand away. “Yes, I do. Leave, now.”
“If you want me to leave, you’re going to have to throw me out.” Peter crossed his arms over his chest defiantly.
“That can be arranged, buddy,” I snapped.
He followed me, apologizing frantically as I headed out of the office, but I was no longer listening. I told Starkey what I wanted, and the security staff sprang into action. Peter was lifted up into the air by his arms and legs, and unceremoniously carried toward the exit.
“Can we talk?” he blurted as the doors swung wide open.
“Can you fly?” I asked. Then I gestured toward the bouncers, and they hurled him into the street. Peter tucked and rolled and managed to get back to his feet with keen nimbleness, straightening his dirtied suit and glaring daggers at me.
I let the doors slam shut on him and then turned away, storming off on legs stiffened with rage. Yet, I had the feeling I hadn’t seen the last of Peter.
As usual, I wound up being right.
Chapter Nine
I picked myself up off the street and glared in the direction of the Jolly Roger’s front entrance, but the doors had already banged closed. I didn’t even get a final look at Belle before they shut me out.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I sputtered, staring down at the ruin of my suit. Maybe Mel could get the oil stains out, but what about the gigantic hole in the knee? Or the seams torn from the armpits by Belle’s goon squad? Those were beyond his kind of help.
I waited for a few minutes, expecting the Boyz to come flying out after I did. But they never came. That’s what really stung. I had assumed she would kick all of us out, and at least I wouldn’t be alone. Misery loves company and all of that jazz.
After a while I grew frustrated and called Nibs, but I figured it was too loud inside the club for him to hear his phone. Dejected and angry, I sauntered into the rear entrance of Lost so I wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of my walk of shame.
I’ve heard of trysts ending in disaster before, but I’ve avoided that trap my entire life. Until Belle. What the hell did I even say? Things were going great, and then all of a sudden she got so pissed off.
I shook my head to clear it, but it didn’t help. I tried to think back to what had occurred right before things got ugly.
Belle had been saying we would never work as a couple on account of being on different sides in a slow burn, cold turf war. And really, that part of my mind—the teeny, tiny part—that considered things logically realized she was right. To trample a cliché into the ground, we were sort of like a modern Romeo and Juliet.
As soon as that notion occurred to me, I grew quite angry with myself. One round of bumping uglies and I was waxing poetic and referencing Shakespeare?
I slunk through Club Lost’s back of the house area, cooks and wait staff turning curious glances toward my disheveled appearance. None of them offered comment, however.
Good on them.
My shoulder slammed into the door to my office, banging it open loudly. I plopped heavily into my chair and then proceeded to sit there and fume. I felt abandoned by my friends and spurned by a woman who I was—though I didn’t admit it at the time—crushing on hard. And to put the icing on the shit cake, my new threads had been ruined.
I pulled open the drawer to my battered mahogany desk—it had been here as long as the club, and I didn’t want to break with tradition—and rummaged through it until my fingers closed around the neck of a bottle of Wild Turkey. Lots of folks go on and on about fancier brands, triple distilled or what have you, but for my money there’s no better whiskey than the Turk.
With an adroit twist, I spun the lid off with one smooth motion and shoved the neck in my mouth. I took three long pulls, about the equivalent of four shots, and slammed it down hard enough that a spurt of amber brown fluid landed on the desk.
I was nursing both the whiskey and my own petulance when a knock came at my door. Annoyed, I ignored it, instead taking another pull on the bottle.
The knock came again, more insistently. I glanced sharply at the door and snapped, “Piss off.”
I nearly exploded into rage when the knob jiggled and the door swung wide open. But I bottled it up fast when I spotted who had come calling—my uncle Lucian.
Six foot two, built like a cross between a ballroom dancer and a linebacker, Lucian was devastatingly handsome in spite of—or perhaps partially owing to—graying temples in his otherwise jet-black hair.
While Lucian tended toward joviality, he could switch attitudes like a true Gemini. At that moment, he was not jovial. Not even close. His square jaw worked silently as his eyes ran over my form.
“Uncle Lucian,” I said, standing up quickly. “Sorry. I didn’t know it was you knocking.”
“Peter.” His tone was cool, his eyes inscrutable. “You look like you got into it with a grizzly bear. Are you all right?”
“Nothing hurt but my pride.” I shrugged. “What can I do to assist you? Did you want to look at last week’s numbers?”
Lucian reached into his breast pocket and took
out his silver engraved cigarette case. I’d never picked up the habit, thank goodness, because it’s kind of disgusting. But Lucy had a way of making smoking cigarettes seem elegant.
He extracted a thin cig from the case and then closed the lid with an audible snap. As he lit a match, his eyes flared with dramatic light, boring into my soul.
“I ain’t here to talk about numbers, kid.” Lucian came over and sat himself down in my seat, which I of course offered no complaint about. He puffed on the cigarette and let out a plume of smoke that drifted toward the ventilation shaft overhead. “So. You chose to go bar hopping and, for some reason no one at the firm can fathom, decided to partake of the Jolly Roger’s watered-down drinks and thong-flashing floozies?”
I struggled to keep both the shock and the fear off my face. “So, you heard, eh?” I asked, scratching behind my head sheepishly. Lucy had a way of making me feel like I was ten years old in the principal’s office all over again.
“Oh yes, I heard.” Lucy puffed on his cigarette, red light flaring across his chiseled features as he glared. “I heard about you causing a scene at the front door—”
“Define ‘scene.’ All I did was schmooze a little and try and bribe my way in.”
Lucy continued undaunted, as if I hadn’t spoken. “—and I heard about you breaking a glass and then picking up the pieces with your own hands.”
“Curly did that, and I was just trying to help—”
“You made the family look weak by sullying yourself in such a manner. But I can forgive all of that, chalk it up to the naiveté of youth.”
A chill ran down my spine. Lucy was pissed about something, and when Lucy got pissed about something, and you happened to be the cause of his ire… Well, your best bet was to leave town and buy yourself a new identity.
“But you know what I can’t forgive, Peter?” The red light flared as he hit his cigarette again. “You, a Mayne, getting busy with some low-class trim because she rubbed her ass all over your dick on the dance floor.”
“Low-class trim?” I sputtered. “Uncle Lucian, with all due respect, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t refer to Belle in such a manner.”
“With all due respect?” Lucian arched his brows. He jabbed his cigarette at the air, as if stabbing me in effigy. “You want to talk about respecting me after you got a wild hair up your ass and went and tried to start a turf war?”
“We’re already in a turf war. Belle—”
“On a first name basis, I see.” Lucy sighed, shaking his head sadly. “You know, Peter, I like you. I really do. A lot of folks in the firm, even your own brothers, didn’t think you could handle Club Lost, but I knew better. You’re clever, sharp, a natural leader. But this stunt is making me reconsider my earlier opinion.”
I bristled, not so much because of the dressing down, but his casual insults toward Belle grated. “Hey, Uncle Lucian, I get it. I fucked up. All right? I shouldn’t have gone inside the club.”
“That’s right, you shouldn’t have.”
“But who I do or do not sleep with is my business. Capisce?”
Lucian blew out a long puff of smoke and regarded me silently for a time. His eyes glittered like dark jewels, and for a moment I could see why so many people posited the theory that he was the devil made flesh.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Pete. Anything you do reflects on the firm. Reflects on the family.” He leaned forward, eyes narrowing to slits. “Reflects on me. Sleeping with the literal enemy is bad enough. But if that’s all that had happened, I wouldn’t have bothered driving down to the pier in the middle of the night.”
“Then what’s the issue?” I demanded when he didn’t elaborate.
“The issue is this. Your little tramp threw you out into the street and fucked up your fancy new suit.”
“Belle is not a tramp.”
“Son, you don’t know nothing about her. Don’t get up on your hind legs and sass me. Ever.”
With effort, I bit back a retort that would probably have had me sleeping with the fishes and let him continue.
“Belle Barrie is a nobody. Her father was a two-bit scum-sucking lawyer who failed the bar exam three times, and her mother was a stripper. What? You think you’re the first guy she spread her legs for? Please.”
I knew she wasn’t a blushing virgin, of course, but Lucy’s assessment still stung.
“But I digress. The issue, as I said, isn’t where you get your dick wet. It’s her disrespecting you, a Mayne, by tossing you out into the street. It makes us all look bad, everyone in the firm.”
“I don’t know what to say, Uncle Lucian.” I spread my hands out wide.
“How about you start by telling me what your response is going to be. Aren’t you going to do anything about her ruining your fancy new threads?”
I looked down at myself, and then I stood up a bit straighter and squared my shoulders. “Of course, I am,” I spoke with conviction.
“That’s the spirit! How are you going to respond to this slight on our honor?”
“I’m going to bill her for my dry cleaning.” My tone firm, I slammed my fist into my open palm. “That’ll show her.”
Lucian rolled his eyes and stood swiftly. “For the love of—fine. I should have known better than to trust this to a punk kid. All right. You just sit your little love-sick ass back down and mope. I’ll get Navajo Joe on the line and he can handle this matter.”
My heart leaped into my throat. The thought of Joe—a man with few morals and even fewer compunctions about hurting people—getting his massive mitts on Belle sent me into a panic.
“No!” I shouted. Lucy arched a brow and puffed on his cigarette. “I mean… please, Uncle Lucian, let me handle it. It’s my mess. I should be the one to fix it.”
Lucian stared hard for a long moment before nodding.
“All right. I’ll leave this matter in your hands. But if you fail to make her answer for what she’s done, well… maybe the club needs new management.”
Lucy crushed out his nearly extinct cigarette in a glass ashtray I kept in the office just for his use and headed for the door. “Be careful, Peter. Your brother Will almost got himself killed over a skirt. Keep that in mind.”
“Of course. Thanks again, Uncle Lucian.”
He departed, and I sank into my seat, deflated. Great. Now I was going to have to do “something” about Belle besmirching our family honor—something big enough that it would please Lucian but nothing so extreme that Belle would come to any harm.
Talk about rocks and hard places.
Chapter Ten
Once I had a chance to cool off a little in my office, I regretted my rough treatment of Peter.
Sure, he’d spoken out of his ass, but I don’t think he did so deliberately. A man like Peter—part of the Mayne family dynasty—was probably used to the idea that everyone wanted to be like him. The thought of someone wanting to stand on their own seemed to me as if it might be an abomination to a Mayne.
In fact, the further I worked into the wee hours of the morning, the less anger I felt. Maybe his boyish charm, a mix of innocence and mischief, made it hard for me to think of him as being capable of malevolence.
Or maybe it was the fact that he’d rocked my world in the VIP lounge. That had to be a factor too. I’m not going to lie. The best sex I’d ever had? Maybe. Just maybe.
With shock I realized I wouldn’t mind a repeat performance just to be sure.
Perhaps because I was feeling guilty about tossing Peter out the door, I didn’t instruct Gentleman Starkey to evict his Boyz as well. They continued to party on without seeming to give a care for their missing leader. Some friends.
Then I thought about the fact that at least Peter had friends. There were folks I wished happy birthday to on social media, a couple of girlfriends who texted now and again, but no one I saw on a regular basis just because they liked my company.
It was hard making and keeping friends when you worked for a gangster. Crenshaw Hook was lik
e cancer in that he ate away at your support structure until nothing was left. My father had been consumed trying to keep up with Crenshaw’s dark desires, and I feared I would be in the same boat.
Sometimes I wasn’t entirely sure Hook even trusted me or thought I was competent. I guess you could say he didn’t seem to believe in me. I was grandfathered into my current job because it was convenient, not because he thought I was the best person for the role. Or at least, that’s what my anxiety and self-doubt whispered into my ear.
The club closed around 3 a.m., two hours after last call. I sat in the office pretending to do paperwork, but really, I just pined for Peter. I was already considering ways I might offer an olive branch without seeming too desperate or obvious when Wendy burst into the door.
“Old man Hook is on his way,” she warned, her eyes wide as dinner plates.
“Oh shit,” I groaned as my heart sank into my gut. “Do you think he knows about the incident earlier tonight?”
Wendy pursed her lips and shot me a dark glare. “He knows about everything. Nothing happens under this roof that he’s not privy to.”
I arched an eyebrow at that. It sounded an awful lot like a warning. Or a threat. But Wendy disappeared out of the door before I could call her out.
I took a moment to clean up the office prior to my boss’s arrival. Somehow, I felt him coming. Crenshaw Hook had a presence some described as a numbing chill. I definitely felt a shiver go down my spine right before he waltzed into my office.
Hook stood six and a half feet tall, with curly dark hair—a dye job—hanging to his shoulders. A big handlebar mustache graced his upper lip, which only added to his highwayman-esque appearance. Despite his age of sixty-plus years, Hook had the build—and grace—of an athlete.
But his cold eyes, lancing out at me above his thin nose, were the most compelling. Eyes like a serpent, coolly sizing you up and not just deciding if he wants to eat you, but contemplating when and if he can get away with the action. Hook had come from a society function and still remained clad in his sharp, classic black tux.