by W Winters
I prefer a suit. Jase prefers to blend in. Each method has its advantages.
“Welcome back, sirs,” Jared greets us as we step into the club, the music at full volume and the smells of alcohol and sex appeal hit me instantly. With the dark red paisley wallpaper that lines the walls and black chandeliers hanging from the sixteen-foot-high black ceiling, The Red Room looks like a nightclub of sin at first glance.
As the alcohol pours throughout the night and the bodies grind against one another, sin is an accurate description. The money flows as easily as the liquor.
Walking past the grinding bodies and kitten eyes from several women holding drinks in one hand and their clutches in another, I ignore it all, listening intently to what Jared has to say.
I stopped everything to come down here with my brother. All because Jared, the club manager, and head of business while we’re away, said he had a girl who would talk.
“You sure it’s her?” Jase asks him.
“Yeah,” Jared nods as we pass the second bar and make our way around the edge of the dance floor to get to the backroom. “She comes in every week asking for it.”
“What’d you tell her?”
“Nothing. Just that the delivery is on a delay.” The DJ starts a new set and the dance floor roars so loudly the ground shakes as the steel doors to the backroom push open and then close softly, finally silencing the distractions of the club.
“Thanks for waiting for us,” Jase tells the two men in the back of the room. Mick is one of them; I don’t know the name of the other, but Jase does. This is Jase’s place to run. Everyone knows him, and he knows everyone, so I let him lead and stay quiet.
Quiet is dangerous, and that’s exactly how I want them to see me.
“Of course, Mr. Cross,” Mick says and nods his head at Jase then quirks a smile at me as he adds, “and Mr. Cross.”
The small girl seated at the lone table in the room grips the plastic cup of a pink drink that’s probably got just as much sugar in it as alcohol. Her lips part open with a hint of disbelief and then she licks them, smiling although it’s thin and withered. Just like the state of her body under the too-tight tube top.
“You’re waiting for the delivery?” Jase asks, looking to the left and right as if he doesn’t want to say it out loud and get caught by someone. I’d laugh at him and his display, but he’s damn good at what he does, and I do enjoy a good show.
The girl imitates him, looking over her shoulders at the two hired men of ours in The Red Room t-shirts and black jeans before she nods. “You guys have the best sweets.”
“Sweets?” I ask, and she grins at me like she knows a secret she can’t wait to tell me.
“It’s what the streets are calling it now,” she says and bites down on her lower lip, letting her body sway. Jase and I pull out our chairs across from her, the legs scraping across the floor. Sweets. Plural. Because that fucker Romano has his version out. I keep the small hint of friendliness firmly in place. But I’m nothing but pissed at the reminder
“Sweet Lullaby, you mean?” Jase asks, lifting an eyebrow. And again, she nods.
“You’re buying a lot of this stuff,” Jase tells her although it comes out a question. Her nails scratch down her arms as she glances all around us. She’s jittery and the chair legs beneath her keep rasping on the floor.
“I just need it, okay?” Her words are rushed. The air changes around her instantly.
Noting her hollow cheeks, dead eyes, and pale lips, the humor, and vibe that she’s down to have a good time have vanished.
“Is it really what you need?” Jase asks and leans forward to stare into her eyes. “’Cause we’ve got some other stuff you might want?”
She’s in need of a hit. That’s for damn sure and if I had to guess her drug of choice is heroin. Maybe coke.
“I just need to grab it and get back,” she answers, but her voice is breathy and uncertain. I wait a moment, glancing at Jase as we both hear her swallow over the muted sound of the music playing in the club.
“I think we have some coming, sorry about the wait, miss…?”
“Jenny. Jenny Parks,” she answers him and then reaches into her purse for her phone. The two men behind us make a move for their guns, and the little blonde doesn’t even notice.
“Fuck, it’s already past nine,” she says and her face crumples with a mix of anxiety and fear.
As she slips her thumb into her mouth to chew on her nail, Jase asks her, “Hey, is there anything I can get you while you wait?”
“Anything to calm you down a little? Another drink or something stronger?” I add.
Her breath comes out harder. “Yeah, maybe,” she replies as her eyes dart from me to Jase. “I just wanted to come in and get the stuff. It’ll be here soon?” she asks again, looking down at the phone to check the time. “Like, how soon.”
“It could be a bit,” Jase says and shrugs, looking at Mick and she watches him shrug too. “We’ve got other stuff while you wait,” he offers but she’s already shaking her head, still biting that thumbnail.
She speaks over the finger in her mouth. “I need the sweets first.”
The problem with a junkie is that they have a one-track mind. They want the drug. And it’s obvious that she gets hers when she delivers our drug to the real buyer.
Jase shrugs again. “An hour, maybe?” He glances at me and I nod my head.
“Fuck,” she mutters and cradles her face in her hands.
“You want us to drop it off somewhere else?” Jase asks, and she peeks up through her lashes. We’re getting the address of where this product is going. Either from her telling us or from us following her. Whatever the fuck we have to do.
“I have to get back. I’m sorry,” she rushes her words as she slides her phone off the table and into her purse.
“We can get you something to take the edge off while it comes in and we can talk a little?” Jared suggests to her from where he’s standing guard by the steel doors. She seems to get it then. The reality of what’s going on hits her like a ton of bricks and she’s shit at hiding it.
“It’s just… it’s my brother. You know? He needs it, and he doesn’t like me to be late.“
“Your brother?” Jase questions and I glance at Mick, standing behind the seated blonde, who shakes his head once. Little Jenny doesn’t have a brother.
“Yeah, and he doesn’t like people to come around, you know?” Again, her words are rushed and she looks at the men behind her then at us.
“I can just come back another time,” she mumbles. Her breathing is sporadic as she pulls her purse to her chest.
She takes a second to stand up, but Mick’s hand on her shoulder makes her pause.
A second drops between us all, heavy with the consequences of what’s to come.
She’s buying for someone else and lying to cover it up. Someone who keeps her doped up and someone who scares her enough to give her the strength to resist her next hit from us.
Her head turns slowly so she can see Mick’s large hand gripping tighter onto her shoulder. The fear that drifts from her is palpable and sickening.
“You tell your brother we’re sorry we couldn’t get it to him tonight, Jenny,” Jase speaks up and instantly Mick’s grip on the girl loosens.
I can practically hear her heart beating as she looks at Jase wide-eyed. She’s frozen still until he leans back in his seat and tells her with a wink, “We’ll have it for you next time.”
“You let us know if you want to talk anytime now, you hear me?” Jared says as he opens the door to the club and the music flows into the small back room.
Jenny nods her head furiously, stumbling into the empty chair next to her before taking off out of the room without another look back.
“Follow her,” I tell Mick and with a single nod he’s gone. Jase’s blunt nails tap against the table as the door closes and the sound of the nightlife beyond it is muted once again.
“You let her off easy,” I say qui
etly under my breath.
“Girls don’t need to be dragged into this shit.” That’s his only answer and he doesn’t bother to lower his voice like I did.
The same table he’s tapping, I’ve covered with blood in the past. It wouldn’t have come to that with the blonde, but a little lie to get her talking wouldn’t have hurt her. Showing our cards that we know she’s buying for someone else, well that might have gotten a word or two from her. Maybe a name.
“Maybe he’s sending girls because he knows you’re weak for them,” I suggest. All of us have our limits. And women happen to be the common thread between us.
“Fuck you, I’m not weak,” he tells me although I can see him considering it. It’s in his eyes.
The corners of my lips tip up into a smirk as Jared lights up a cigarette. But with a puff and the words that come out of his mouth, the smile vanishes. “With the Talvery girl shit, they should know we aren’t pussies when it comes to women.”
The silence stretches in the room for a moment with neither of us commenting.
“The Talvery girl,” I say beneath my breath and it gets a comment from Jared, but I don’t bother to listen to him. “She’s mine,” I tell him, cutting off his joke or whatever the fuck was coming out of his mouth.
I stand abruptly, letting an anger I haven’t felt in a long time dictate my words. Staring into Jared’s eyes, the words rip from my mouth, “The next time someone refers to her as that, the Talvery girl,” I practically spit out the name, “you tell them, she’s all mine.”
My teeth grind against each other so hard, I swear they’ll crack.
Jared doesn’t speak, doesn’t move. I don’t think he’s breathing, although the cigarette in his mouth stays oddly still with the glow of amber making his expression look even paler.
My muscles coil, waiting for him to call her that again. She’s not the Talvery girl. She doesn’t belong to them.
“What’s her name?” I ask him, tilting my head and that cigarette wavers in his mouth. “Take out the fucking cigarette and tell me what the fuck her name is.” My eyes pierce into his as he drops the cigarette from his mouth, barely catching it between his fingers and swallowing thickly. The cords of his neck are tight, and I can hear him swallow.
“I—I—” he stutters, and I lean in closer to scream in his face, the words of my question scratching and ripping their way up my throat, “What’s her name?”
“I don’t know,” he says in a quavering admission.
“It’s Aria,” I say then pat his shoulders with both of my hands as he struggles to look me in the eyes. The anger wanes as I feel his sweat beneath my hands.
“It’s Aria, and she doesn’t belong to the Talverys anymore.” My words are calm, eerily so.
“Of course, she doesn’t,” Jared shakes his head slightly, his lips turning into a hesitant smile. “She’s yours. Aria is yours and she’s called Aria.”
He won’t shut the fuck up, the poor prick.
“You let anyone who calls her otherwise know,” I tell him, nodding my head once toward a spot on the brick wall. The bricks are redder, newer and don’t blend in.
“I’d hate to lose it and have to blow some fucker’s poor skull open because he pissed me off.”
“Yeah,” Jared’s answer is a whisper of fear. “Aria, and she’s yours.”
Jase’s hand hitting the back of my shoulder is the only thing that rips my gaze away from Jared’s.
“Keep up the good work, Jared.” Jase adds, “Good job tonight,” and pushes the door open to go back out into the bar.
He holds it open for me and I move around Jared, still very much stuck in his place and only nodding his response as if he’s scared to speak. As I take a step to leave, I glance down at him, the disgusting smell of piss overriding the scent of cigarettes. The fucker pissed himself.
I wish I could smile or feel any sense of pleasure from knowing how deeply rooted the fear goes. But all I can think is that these assholes are calling my Aria, the Talvery girl.
She’s so much more than that.
“You’ve got to back down with that,” Jase tells me as we walk side by side through the club. There’s no one around us that could hear, but still, I want to tell him to fuck off.
“I don’t have to do shit,” I respond in a grunt, the rage still looming, but even as the words are spoken, I know he’s right. They could use her against me. She could so easily become known as my weakness.
“What’s the point of doing that?” he asks me, cutting off my train of thought.
But I don’t have an answer ready. There’s always a reason. Everything I do has a purpose. It takes the entire walk through the club for me to respond, and not until we’re out of the front doors where the cool air greets us, and the moonlight lingers over the parking lot.
The wind whips against my face, and Jase slips his hands into his pockets as the valet pulls our car up to the curb. “The point is that they’ve forgotten she’s mine when they call her a Talvery. I won’t have anyone forget she belongs to me.”
Chapter 26
Aria
Carter had me drink a glass of whiskey with orange bitters but somehow it tasted like chocolate. I don’t know what it was exactly, but it’s still humming through me. He left me with a second drink in his office and it’s the second one that did this to me.
Even as I stand in the kitchen, busying myself with something to take my mind off everything that’s going on around me, I can feel the alcohol numbing the pain. As if I’m spared from what’s going to happen, and it’s everything else that’s moving. I’m just standing here.
But I hate it. I don’t want to be helpless and beg for mercy from a man who won’t show it. I don’t want to seem helpless, but I have no choice.
The refrigerator is full of nearly anything I could want. Fresh eggs, deli meat, fruits, and vegetables. Most of the meats for dinner are frozen, but there’s plenty to satisfy me.
I’m not hungry in the least, but Carter told me to eat and so here I am.
It took me a while to get started, long after Carter had left.
Instead of doing anything at all, I stared at the door. And then each of the windows I passed. And the windows to the garden. I wish I could leave and tell my father they’re coming, but I’m sure he knows. That’s the only comfort I have in this powerless state. My father must know they’re coming for him.
The knife slices through a tomato. It’s so sharp the skin splits instantly without any pressure at all. I suck the taste of the whiskey from my teeth. I can’t do anything, but I need to do something.
The thunk of the knife on the cutting board is the only thing I hear over and over again.
“What are you making?” A deep voice from behind me makes me jump. The knife slips from my hand and I’m too scared to jump away from it as it crashes to the floor. I stand there breathless with anxiety shooting through my veins.
“Shit,” the voice says as my heart races and pounds in my chest.
It’s Daniel. I’ve seen him before and I know that’s his name. But he hasn’t said a word to me. He never even looks at me. Yet, now I’m alone with him, and Carter’s nowhere to be seen. In dark jeans and a black t-shirt, he runs his hand through his hair with a shameful look on his face. “I should’ve come from the other direction, huh?” There’s a sweetness about him, but I don’t trust him. I don’t trust any of the Cross brothers.
“I’m just keeping an eye on you,” Daniel says easily, and his lips quirk up into a half smile. “A salad?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say, but my answer is a whisper. It’s odd to be a prisoner yet remain free to move about. Even odder to have a conversation with someone as if there’s nothing at all wrong with my position.
I force myself to swallow and bend down slowly, keeping him in my periphery, to pick up the knife. My body trembles as I turn my back to him just enough to walk to the sink and rinse it off. “Avocado, tomato and Italian dressing. I was craving something like it,”
I tell him as the water pours down onto the sharp edge of the knife. The light reflects in the water and my heart thumps again.
“Salt tooth?” he asks me, and I nod, eyeing him but trying to just have a conversation. I wonder what he thinks of me. What he thinks of Carter for keeping me here.
All I can look at is the knife in my hand, the alcohol is thrumming, my nerves are high, and I don’t know how to survive anymore.
The idea of an escape plan is forming, but the anxiety is so much higher.
His footsteps give him away as he walks to the other side of the counter, closer to where the chunks of avocado and freshly cut tomato wait for me. My mind is highly aware of where he is. And who he is.
He knows how to get out of here. He could be my ticket to freedom.
“Did you find the bowls?” he asks me as I turn around to face him, the knife feeling heavier in my hand.
With the water off, the room is silent. Eerily so. Or maybe it’s just because of the thoughts running through my mind. The counter is hard against my lower back as I lean against it to keep me steady as I watch him open a cabinet and pull out a bowl.
He smiles at me like he’s my friend or my companion, and not a guard to keep me here. And he lets me hold the knife. He doesn’t even look at it. I have a weapon and I’m a prisoner here, yet he doesn’t care in the least. Why would he, you weak girl? the voice in the back of my head taunts me and laughs.
“Thank you,” I say, and my voice sounds small and weak. Gripping the countertop behind me, it feels so cold, so unforgiving in comparison to how hot my body is right now.
The ceramic bowl clinks as it hits the countertop and Daniel smiles at me. A handsome, charming smile with his hands up in the air as he says, “I’m not going to hurt you; I promise.”
I’m the one with the knife.
I keep thinking it as I take each small step toward the counter.
My bare feet pad on the cold floor.