by Eden Myles
“No,” Lachlan said, cutting me off. His broody green eyes narrowed and he reached through the window to take my hand by the wrist. I felt a spark of electricity in his touch. “Not tomorrow. Not the DA. Tonight. Just you.” He unlocked his door and opened it. “I make the deal with you, Charlotte, and no one else.”
***
Why did I get into the limo with Lachlan Swann? The job, I suppose. A chance to put away the bad guy.
That’s what my dad would have wanted.
But you don’t get into a car with a bad guy, do you?
It felt like a tight fit with the two of us on the back seat together. I’d forgotten had big Lachlan was. He was huge, a virtual mountain of a man as compared to my lean, petite, five-foot-even self. I’d always hated how small and puny I was as a kid. It made me a moving target. Were it not for Lachlan, I knew I would have wound up with a few broken bones along the way. But now, I could find no vestiges of that skinny kid who had broken his knuckles on Billy Stanley’s face all those years ago. Then again, he was descended from big, rugged highland stock, and my dad had been a whopping five-foot-three. Really, what did I expect?
He loomed over me, big enough—and broad enough—to be a professional wrestler. But no wrestler I’d ever seen on TV looked like Lachlan Swann—and my dad and I had watched a lot of wrestling on TV, growing up. Lachlan’s dark suit was all fitted, razor lines, obviously custom made, because a man like he was could never buy off the rack. He was simply too big, too broad, which is partly what made him so successful as the Castellano enforcer. He could be mean as hell, but he didn’t have to be. He just walked into a room and no one in their right mind wanted to give him a problem.
He looked so different from when I had known him. His face was rugged and shadowed by a dark beard, and there was a long scar down one cheek, what looked like a good right hook by an opponent who had probably been wearing a ring. He wore his cashmere suit fitted to disguise the rig and enormous handgun in his pancake holster, but I still spotted it. His skinny tie and slicked back dark hair made me think of gangsters in old Edward G. Robinson movies, and his eyes were breathtakingly wolfish in their intensity. Yet he would never be called handsome from a still photograph. His face was a little too hard and cruel for that, and his old man had broken his nose for his tenth birthday, so it had always been a little crooked.
Despite these things, I had to command my heart to stop pounding so furiously I was afraid he would hear it.
He put one long, heavily muscled arm up on the seat behind me. Blue prison tattoos crawled out of his sleeve and down over his knuckles. He smirked at me and said, “It’s been too long, Charlotte.” His voice had always been a deep, melodious baritone, even as a teenager, but I heard little, if any, of his old Brooklyn accent in it. Like his fancy, uptown clothes and ultra-expensive car, he’d managed to scrub that away too, like he was doing everything he could to distance himself from his lowly beginnings.
I swallowed hard. If it had been anyone else in the car with me, I’d have had no problem responding with a flaming ball of sarcasm. But this was Lachlan Swann, and I always wound up a little shy and tongue-tied with him. Dammit, I was again that quiet little girl at school he had to protect. “Yeah, it has.”
“You look good.” His voice faintly rumbled and his eyes coasted over me in a not-so-discreet way. “Police work agrees with you.”
I’d always been the shrimp growing up, the smallest, scrawniest girl on the playground, but these days I worked out religiously at the gym, and I had a purple belt in karate. I’d put muscle over my girl frame, and no one pushed me around anymore. You had to have a few mad skillz if you wanted to fight the bad guys.
I looked Lachlan over, realizing he probably never had to work out for a body like that, which kind of pissed me off. I felt like saying, “You too, asshole. As always.” But something stopped the words. This wasn’t a social visit and I knew his diversion tactics a little too well. I lifted my head and pinned him with a suspicious look. “Tell me about Michael.”
He smirked and looked away. “You don’t change, do you, Charlotte?”
“What do you mean?”
“You always have to be the cop, the one calling the shots. I remember when we were little, you were always the cowboy, and I was always the Indian. You still have to be the white hat with your horse and gun, riding into Dodge City.”
His words infuriated me. “Someone has to be the cop.”
“But you were never the girl. I remember. That day I put Stanley down for you, you got all pissy with me, punch me. You couldn’t just be little Charlotte Hu, could you?”
Little Charlotte Hu had been bullied as a kid. She was a wimp and a long time dead with no regrets. Charlie Hu, on the other hand, took shit from no one. “I am a cop,” I stated imperially and indicated the lush interior of his limo. “And if my boss or my partner saw me with you like this, they’d be afraid I was on your payroll.”
“But they’re not here,” he said, sounding a little too pleased about that.
The way he invaded my space, his presence and the scent of his cologne, made my head swim. I didn’t want to be this close to such a dangerous man from such a private place in my past, and fear made me angry, as always. I crossed my hands defensively over my bosom. “Let’s get this over with, all right, Lachlan? What do you have to put Castellano away?”
“A lot.” He watched me, his eyes never leaving my face. “I have so much dirt on Castellano, I could put him away for life with just one deposition.”
“So why not come back to the station with me?”
His voice faintly growled. “Because my deal is with you, Charlotte. Not with your superiors.”
“I’m not authorized to deal with…men like yourself,” I retorted, getting really angry now. “I don’t have that kind of power.”
He turned his head and did that smirk thing I remembered from our childhood. It wasn’t so much a sign of pleasure as of derision. He’d used it as he was pummeling Billy into the ground. “You have no idea how much power you have.”
I was about to ask him what he meant by that, but then I realized we were heading out of the city and into the ‘burbs. “Where are we going, Lachlan?” I demanded with a sigh. “Are you kidnapping me? It’s been a long week and I’m tired from collaring men like you.”
He looked back at me and I felt the edges of my will wilt just a little. Fear. Excitement. Anticipation. Shit, why did he have to look at me that way? “My place. I guarantee you won’t be tired for long. And no, Charlotte, I will never kidnap you…” He smiled cheekily. “Unless you ask me nicely.”
***
Lachlan had a huge, ten-bedroom, custom-built monstrosity in nearby Westchester County. It was a quiet, elegant, white-picket neighborhood with rosebushes on every block, nothing like we had grown up in—nothing that I could afford on a cop’s salary. I suspected that was why he had chosen it, to prove some point of his, which only made me angrier. I felt totally out of my element.
As we drove down the winding, neatly kept street, he pointed out the various doctors and lawyers whose houses dotted the landscape. “My next door neighbors are Drs. Dorian and Damian Michaels, the famous plastic surgeons. And a few doors down live Malcolm Sloan, the CEO of Harper House, and his partner, Devon.” He said all this with enormous pride as if to say, Look at where I live. Look at the empire I have built.
If it wasn’t blood money, I might almost have been impressed.
His chauffeur parked the limo in an elaborate garage that was three times as big as my apartment back in the city. Lachlan guided me inside his home, never straying too far from me, and I was a little embarrassed by the appreciative noises that immediately came out of my mouth.
The living room was huge, posh and elegantly rustic, with cathedral ceilings and one whole wall of Plexiglas that looked out over the rolling, manicured hills of his estate. Enormous, elk-antlered chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and there were soft, red leather wrap sofas, animal fur ru
gs, and a huge stone hearth where a fire was already lit, presumably by the help. The clean, modern angles of the home made it seem elegant but without turning it cold and antiseptic. The whole place reminded me of an expensive hunting lodge or resort. It was cheery, warm and manly all at once. The only thing missing were the animal trophies on the walls, but I knew Lachlan wouldn’t have those; even as a kid, he’d been a huge animal lover.
A big bull mastiff came charging out of the back of the house and raced up to Lachlan. He dropped to one knee and gave the dog a playful squeeze while the dog enthusiastically licked Lachlan’s face. “This is Desiree,” he said, introducing us. Desiree bounced around me, eager to lick my face as well, which she almost could, she was that big. I remembered that Lachlan had always wanted a dog growing up, but his family was so poor, they could barely afford to feed themselves, never mind a pet.
I played with Desiree while Lachlan poured us some scotch from the decanter at the wet bar. “I like to take Desiree down the street to play with Malcolm’s dogs when he and Devon are up here and not in the city. They have a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue, as well. It’s made me so jealous, I’ve been looking into an apartment myself…”
He turned to see me standing by the sofas, giving him a narrowed-eyed look. “What’s wrong, Charlotte?”
“Why did you really bring me here? To show off your mansion and dog and rich neighbors and perfect lifestyle?”
“I don’t have a perfect lifestyle,” he growled, and I saw darkness lurking behind his eyes, some unhappiness that even all this luxury had not fixed in him. “I don’t think anyone does.”
“You’ve seemed to have done all right for yourself,” I pointed out.
He looked around the vast room, shrugged, brought me my scotch. I set it aside on a glass end table and crossed my arms over my chest once more. I knew I was showing my insecurity by doing that, but I couldn’t help myself. Even in a big room like this one, I felt shut in with Lachlan. Threatened. No one made me feel threatened, not even the endless parade of scumbags that Roddy and I collared every day.
“Tell me about the deal,” I said.
He indicated the sofa. “Sit.”
“I’d rather stand, if you don’t mind. Now tell me about the deal.”
“You’re just going to be a defensive bitch all the way down the line, aren’t you?” he said, sipping his drink.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s me: Charlie the Defensive Bitch.”
Lachlan sighed at my display while Desiree decided the sofa was hers and stretched out on it. He turned and walked across his plush white carpeting, his glass in hand. Without turning, he said, “Is that what they call you down at the precinct? Charlie?”
“It’s what my friends call me,” I answered, hoping he got the hint.
“Does it make you feel tough to have them call you that, Charlotte?”
I felt my blood boil. “I just don’t like using Charlotte. Too girly, and girls get no respect on the job.”
“Respect being very important to you. Very important to the job.”
Was the sonofabitch mocking me? “Look, Lachlan, why am I here? What do you want from me?”
He turned, then, and eyed me in a way that made my heart stick somewhere in my craw. “I want you to be my courtesan.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just so. It’s the price for ratting on Vinnie. If you agree to be my courtesan, I’ll give you enough information to put him away forever. I would, however, like you to try and cut a deal with Michael, if possible. He’s Vinnie’s stooge, but salvageable, and if you send him to prison, there will be no hope for him at all…”
I held up a hand. “Back up a moment. The hell’s a courtesan?”
He smirked in that way that made my heart skip a beat. “You were always better in English than I was. I shouldn’t have to explain it, Charlotte.”
It took me a moment to think it through. He’d really thrown me for a loop. “You want me to be your whore? Are you fucking serious?”
“Courtesan,” he said, pronouncing it very carefully. “Not a whore.”
“They meant the same thing.”
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as if exasperated. The gesture infuriated me even further. “Have you ever heard of the Dollhouse Society?”
“No.” I reached for my glass and took a swig, thinking I’d probably need it now. “What is that, one of your stripper clubs? Because I don’t wear heels, take off my clothes, and I’d be no good as a stripper…”
“Stop talking and listen to me,” he roared.
I stopped talking. Something about his tone had shut me up.
He explained slowly and in great detail about the Dollhouse Society, a secrete sex society over three hundred years old, and he told me all about what being a courtesan entailed—essentially, the kept woman of a wealthy gentleman. The way he explained it, it sounded a little like being a fancy sub to a powerful dom in an expensive suit. I thought maybe he was making things up, or that he was on drugs or something. What he was saying was crazy shit. But slowly, as he went on, I realized he was perfectly sober…and serious. There was no way Lachlan Swann was making this stuff up. He was a good brawler, and a pretty good businessman, but he’d never been one for making stories up. Creativity wasn’t his strong suit.
I drank down the rest of the scotch, enjoying the burn in my throat, before sitting down—too fast, because Desiree had to shift to give me room. I looked up at this man—one of the most powerful mobsters in New York, and my former lover—and said, “You must be fucking kidding me. Are you out of your fucking mind?”
He offered me a look that said he was definitely not kidding. “Malcolm and the rest of the gentlemen granted me full membership to the Society some months ago. I never thought it would happen, but it did.” He said it like he was very proud of this accomplishment, like this was one of the most important things he had ever done. “I was very honored, as you can imagine.”
A headache was forming at the back of my skull—the scotch, this insanity. “Exactly how did you come across these…gentlemen?”
He shrugged one broad shoulder. “I was down in Namibia, doing business…”
“Selling guns, you mean.”
“Doing business…and it was there I met Wolfgang Beck, one of Africa’s biggest oilmen, and a longtime member of the Society. He introduced me to his wife and courtesan, Rachaela. I learned about the Society from them, and Wolf put in a good word for me when I got back to the States.”
He couldn’t be serious, he just couldn’t. “Does Wolf, and these other ‘gentlemen,’ know what you do for a living?”
“Charlotte, they don’t judge. As long as you follow the rules and treat your companion with honor and respect, any man, or woman, of proper status is allowed to join the Society.”
Of course, it was all about status with Lachlan. “I know of one companion who was not treated with much respect,” I parried, thinking of that poor, pretty, dead girl in the alley. “She was cut up and thrown off the top of a seventeen story building…”
His face darkened. “I told you…I had nothing to do with that. That was Vinnie’s business…”
“One of his girls wouldn’t work the streets? She gave him lip, or wanted to go home, so Vinnie has his half-wit nephew murder her? That what you telling me?” I stood up as my blood boiled over. “She was fucking sixteen years old, Lachlan! She’s dead now! She’s dead because of you…and Castellano!”
“And I told you I was never a part of that!” he shouted, stomping closer to me like an angry giant.
Desiree whined, climbed off the couch, and bolted from the room.
Lachlan seethed. “I was never part of Vinnie’s filthy business,” he went on in a softer voice, and I could see the strain in his face, the rage contorting it, the years his association with Castellano had carved into it. I knew he was telling the truth. “I had nothing to do with him and his shit. Why do you think I’m ready to turn his ass over a
barrel, Charlotte?” He was almost right up against me, hissing into my face. “I have never hurt a woman or child, even for Vinnie. I have never allowed a woman or child to be hurt on my watch!”
I stuttered in a response, because what he was saying was true. Lachlan had never been connected to any of Vinnie’s girls, or to any prostitution or porn rings that I was aware of. It was the line he wouldn’t cross. I shook my head slowly. “That may be true,” I said in a soft voice, “but when you lay down with dogs, you get fleas, Lachlan. You know that. Vinnie Castellano made you his dog…”
“Yes,” he said, softer, interrupting me. “I know that. And I’m finished.”
“Finished?”
“With him. With this life. I want out.” His voice rang in the room with finality. “I only ever got involved with this shit to support my brothers and sisters. I’ve done that. I’m done now.”
“So just turn him over to the police. Do the right thing.”
His smirked then, and again I felt my heart trip. I wish it would stop doing that. “I mean to, Charlotte. But only if you agree to my terms, be my courtesan.”
A part of me wanted to tell him to go to hell. But then I thought of that teenage girl who was dead now. I thought about putting Castellano away for life. No more girls being turned out on the streets or being drugged up and forced to do porn—not that I had anything specially against porn, but Vinnie’s girls were just that, girls. He specialized in the “barely legal” stuff. The sick and perverted stuff. He crossed too many lines. And yes, I was reacting emotionally. I admit this was personal. Were it not for my dad—and Lachlan, who’d looked out for me—I might have wound up one of those unfortunate girls instead of going into law enforcement. God knows I had been naïve back in the day.
I breathed deeply before raising my head and pinning Lachlan with a hard look. “I wouldn’t make a very good courtesan.”
Lachlan’s face remained hard, but his eyes softened, became almost playful. “That’s for me, as your gentleman, to decide.”
“You said, as your courtesan, that I would need to be obedient.”