by Zoey Parker
“I’ll let you get ready, I’ve got a couple of other things to check out,” I told him, after we’d shot the shit for a little while. I needed something more—I needed pictures, something beyond just what people could say they’d seen.
For all I knew, Sadie was getting pictures somehow too, but I thought—I hoped—that if we had enough evidence on our side, both of us, that Micah couldn’t just ignore what was going on. I know I’m a morose bastard, but Micah had given me a chance when no one else in town would, and on top of that at the bottom of things he was genuinely kind of a good guy—in a certain sense. Sure, he’d send someone after you if you did him wrong—he’d sent people after Bamber, and the other guys Manny’s friends had stolen from—but he’d also give someone a fair shake, and more than once he’d fronted me money when I came up short, even before I started working for him.
I could’ve screwed the guy over ten ways to Sunday, but I never had, and I would have thought Micah could appreciate that. Sadie could have done him wrong too—but she was too new. Getting her to go to him had been the wrong move, even if he liked her.
I checked the time when I got to one of Manny’s friends’ houses, and opened my glove compartment. What I was about to do was dicey as fuck, and I wanted to be as in control of the situation as possible. I took the gun out of my glove compartment, checked to make sure it was loaded. I put my phone in my pocket and slipped my gun in the waistband of my pants and tightened my belt a bit to make sure it would stay put until I needed it.
I got out of my car and looked around to make sure no one on the street would notice me. In and out. Just get it done. I walked up to Benji’s front door and knocked on it as quickly as I could.
The door opened and Benji looked at me; his eyes widened immediately for just a second. “Hey, Rob—you looking for Manny or something?”
I lifted the bottom of my shirt so that Benji could see my gun. “Nah, man,” I said, keeping my voice as chill as possible. “Let’s talk.”
He hesitated for a bit and then opened the door wider. “Okay, man, just keep cool,” he said, stepping back.
“I’ll keep cool,” I told him. I stepped into his house and closed the door behind me. “We need to chat about what you’re doing with Manny.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Benji said, shrugging. “Can I get you a beer or something?”
“Nah,” I told him. “Look, dude: I already know what you’re doing. I want you to tell me about the arrangement.” I put my hand on the gun, just touching it.
“It’s no big deal,” Benji said. “A couple of us have just been having some fun with the girls. Manny covers the breaks.”
“Not what I’m talking about,” I said. “I’m talking about ripping off the runners.” Benji’s eyes went wide again. “Don’t make me take this thing out. I don’t like to take it out without shooting it.”
“I get you,” Benji said. He sat down. “Okay look—it was just an easy money thing, you know?”
“Tell me the details,” I told him, taking my phone out of the pocket on my other hip. I opened up the camera app and started recording video.
# # #
Micah
Brody pulled into the parking lot at Vagabond and I looked out through the window to see if anyone else was around. I had no fucking clue why it made me nervous to see Sadie again; I’d kicked her the hell out of my office, I’d made it clear who was in charge of my fucking organization. I should be amused at the thought of her meeting with me, the same way I’d felt when she’d strolled into my office to try and get me off of her brother’s back.
It’d been a couple of days since I’d blown up at her over Manny and I had started to think maybe I was overreacting. I mean after all: why should I think that she was trying some brilliant move to discredit one of my most loyal guys? Maybe someone gave her some bad intel to try and discredit her instead, but because she didn’t know who to trust and who not to trust in my org, she took it as the gospel.
I could talk to her about the business, and maybe make a deal, keep things strictly professional for a while, and then bang her again once I was sure she knew her place in the scheme of things. You gotta admit, she’s the hottest fucking lay you’ve ever had. It wasn’t like I didn’t have options, either. The night I’d thrown Sadie out, I’d gone to visit the girls; they were always only too happy to see me, happy to give me a little service since I was keeping them from having to work the streets without protection. I visited one or two of the girls who’d been—at least as far as I remembered—the best, but even though I’d gotten off, it wasn’t as good as it was with Sadie,.
That was what was freaking me out, I thought; the fact that Sadie had been so fucking hot, so goddamned good, that I wanted her in spite of her stupidity about Manny. Well, if she wanted to talk business, then I could do that; I could forgive her about Manny if she apologized, and maybe we could work something out later on, once she’d earned back my trust a bit.
“We’re here, boss,” Brody said, taking me out of my head.
“Yeah, I know,” I told him. I got out of the car and Brody did too; he was a good kid, and I thought maybe I could get him in on the escort business, give him a chance to make a cut of it, once Sadie turned it over to me, gave me her contacts. If Rob was right about her idea, then it would be more profitable than ever—no reason not to bring someone else in on the operation. And Brody looked and sounded like the kind of high class guy who could pull it off. Manny was a lot of things: loyal, smart, good with the girls; but he wasn’t the kind of guy I’d want to talk to a bunch of rich businessmen or bankers about the girls. Come to that, I wasn’t even sure if Rob would be the right guy. But Brody had that polished look—like he’d gone to Harvard or something—and he could turn it up when he needed to.
Rob was standing at the back entrance to my club, and Sadie and Bamber were there with him. The fuck she bring her brother for? I tried to remember if Rob had mentioned Bamber in the call, but I couldn’t. Keep everything right in the professional, I told myself as Brody and I walked up. Almost right away it was next to impossible; Sadie was looking hot as ever, her hair pulled back from her face, just enough makeup on to look professional. I bet she looked like that almost every day at work—and all I could think was how is she not getting plowed every fucking day over the copier?
I pushed the thought out of my head and kept walking. I’d learned years ago how to keep a poker face going, so I just kept it on. “Okay,” I said. “Looks like we’re all here. Brody, you got the keys?” Brody nodded and unlocked the back door to Vagabond. I couldn’t help looking Sadie over again; just seeing her made me remember all the times I’d fucked her, the way she’d felt wrapped around my cock, the sight of her bent over my desk, sprawled on her own bed, or straddling my dick. Business, man—business. I followed Brody into the empty club and the five of us went up the stairs. As we got closer to my door I thought about Bamber and almost snickered to myself. The dope probably had no fucking clue how many times I’d railed his sister in my office, even though I was pretty sure there was no way he didn’t know about me fucking her in her own bedroom.
There wasn’t room for all of us to sit in the office; but Brody was going to stay outside the door anyway, make sure no one eavesdropped. “You mind if Brody keeps the door open, boss?” Rob said to me. I raised an eyebrow at that. “I mean, no one’s in the club.”
“He might as well,” I said. “I’m looking to start him in the business a bit, anyway.” Rob nodded, and I looked at him, Sadie, and Bamber. What was he deal with Rob and Sadie anyway? A hot jolt of something like jealousy spiked through my brain and I wondered if Sadie had been seeing him too. After all, she’d been working with the girls; she had to know Rob, and she knew Manny. Maybe she’d gone to him after I’d thrown her out. I tried not to, but I pictured that morose motherfucker comforting Sadie, maybe taking her home, pouring her a drink. Fuck no, nothing like that happened. You’re losing your cool—stop. “So what�
��s this about?”
“We have proof that Manny is stealing from you,” Sadie said.
“What the fuck?” I stood up out of my seat and nearly tried to jump over my desk—both at Sadie and her brother and at Rob. “What is this bullshit? I thought you’d put this fucking foolishness behind you and wanted to talk business.”
“Boss,” Rob said.
“It’s not foolishness and we do want to talk business,” Sadie told me, her cheeks going red as she raised her voice to shout over me. “Manny is set to rob you blind and you’re going to be the laughingstock of every other boss in town once word gets out, if you don’t do something about it.”
“Listen to me, bitch,” I said. “I didn’t send anyone after you because I was pretty sure you were smart enough to learn your lesson, but if this is the kind of crap you’re going to pull…”
“Boss!” I looked at Rob. “You know I’m loyal to you, right?” I was still pissed, but I had to admit that apart from the suspicions I’d been starting to have about him, Rob wasn’t in the job I’d given him for no reason. “I would never—never—screw you. And I know you trust Manny like a friend, but Sadie’s right.”
“Yeah? And you’re backing her up, is that what this is?”
“Actually, she’s backing me up,” Rob told me. “I came to her and told her about what Manny was doing.” I stared at him.
“You went to her instead of me? What the hell, dude?” Rob shrugged.
“I went to her because I thought you and she had—like—a rapport or whatever,” Rob said. “But I know you can’t just take my word for it, not with it being Manny.” He took his phone out of his pocket and glanced at Sadie.
“I talked to a few of the people who got jumped and stolen from,” Sadie said. “Like Chris. Chris, tell Micah what happened—in detail.” I had to admit I was curious what the three of them had cooked up.
Chris looked nervous; way more nervous than Sadie looked. He told me the story: how he’d been working like any other night, running drugs to the girls in the call rooms. “These guys jumped me,” he said. It wasn’t any different—then—from what Sadie had told me when she first brought the story to me and tried to convince me to let her earn back the money Bamber had lost. “I noticed that they were some guys who I’d seen around—they’d been with a couple of the girls a week before or so, friends of Manny’s.” That made me start to feel pissed again, but I pushed the feeling aside to at least hear the guy out.
“Chris described them to me,” Sadie explained. She took her phone out of her pocket and unlocked it, started playing a recording. The guys Chris was describing in the recording did sound like a couple of the dudes I’d seen hanging with Manny at the bar. “I’ve also got descriptions from a couple of the other guys who’ve been jumped.”
Rob looked impressed. “What do you have to say about this, since you brought it to her?” I glared at him.
“I’ve got some stuff of my own,” Rob told me. He took out his phone and played back something from one of Benji’s friends.
“Manny made us a deal—me, Jeff, Kevin, Mario. We’d figure out which guys were running by hitting up the girls, ordering from them. Once we had a target, a couple of us would jump him at the end of the night, grab the cash and whatever drugs. We kept the drugs, Manny kept the money and gave us a cut.”
“I knew about it before,” Rob told me, “I’d heard from some of the girls that shit was shady, and I tailed Manny one night without him knowing what I was doing.”
“Why didn’t you bring this to my attention?” Rob shrugged.
“I figured as much as you trusted me, you were in deep with Manny,” Rob said. “I thought if it was me that brought it to you, you’d just figure I was trying to muscle him out.”
I didn’t know what to think. I really thought that there was no way that Rob and Sadie could both be in on trying to muscle Manny out of the picture for no reason other than putting themselves ahead. Brody poked his head in. “I can just say that I’ve seen Manny more flush that I thought it made sense to be,” Brody told me. “I haven’t seen anything really obvious, but it’s been fishy as fuck.”
I started to relax and really think about it as Rob and Brody kept talking; Sadie had gone kind of quiet, and I was going to ask what else she wanted to talk about—if she had anything at all to talk about on the subject of expanding the girls’ business. But before I could do anything about what was going on in my office, her phone rang.
“It’s one of the girls,” she said, frowning. I had to admit—I was confused too. The girls wouldn’t have any reason to call her so early in the day, and I didn’t think they were friendly with her.
“Take it,” I told her. Sadie scowled at me.
“I was going to even before you said to,” she said with a prissy voice. She tapped ‘accept’ and put the phone to her ear. “Hey, Adrienne. What’s going on?” I saw her face go pale as she listened. “He did? Fuck...Okay—okay, Adrienne, I’m with Micah, I’m going to put you on speaker, okay?” She looked at me and then took her phone away from her ear.
“Oh god, Sadie it’s...Manny…” Adrienne was one of my best girls; she was rock-steady, and had defended herself against some of the abusive Johns even without backup from Manny or Rob more than once. Over the phone though, she was sobbing. “He came and said—he said—since I ratted to Rob on him…” more sobbing. “He beat the shit out of me! There’s so much blood and I can’t see, Sadie. Please—Micah, if you can...I can still work the street…”
“Adrienne, calm down,” Sadie said. “Micah heard what you said, and I’ll be there soon. We can talk more about what happened. Manny left, right?”
“Yeah, he’s gone,” Adrienne said, starting to calm down a bit. “He...god, Say—he was…”
“I know, sweetie,” Sadie told her. “Look, I’m leaving in ten minutes.” Sadie looked at me and her eyes were hard. “Micah knows about Manny.”
“I’m coming too, Adrienne,” I said. As I thought about what Manny had done to one of my best girls, any doubt in my mind about what Sadie and Rob had accused him of just died.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sadie
As soon as I hung up with Adrienne, Micah exploded. “That fucking asshole!” He stood from his desk and brought his fists down on it, and in spite of the fact that I knew that it wasn’t directed at me, I felt my heart beating faster in my chest all the same. How twisted is my brain that this kind of turns me on a little bit? The idea of Manny beating up Adrienne wasn’t hot, but Micah’s reaction to it was. “Fuck!” Micah brought his fists down again and took a deep breath. “Bamber, you get your ass comfortable right here because you are not moving a fucking inch.” He looked at Rob. “Go back to the bar, but be ready in case Manny tries to pull something.” Rob nodded. Micah looked at Brody. “You know those friends we have in the next town?” Brody nodded. “Tell them Manny’s status is BD, and if he shows his face out there, the person who brings me his hands gets fifty G.” Brody nodded and took out his phone. Micah looked at me. “Sadie, you’re coming with me. I want to see what that motherfucker did to Adrienne with my own eyes.”
I’d wanted to go to Adrienne on my own, but I had to admit that if Manny had left anyone behind to watch the girl’s place, it made sense to have Micah with me. “Fine,” I said.
I followed him down the stairs from his office with Rob hot on our heels. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, and every nerve in my body tingled. “We’re taking my bike,” Micah told me, not even looking at me. I wanted to argue, but I knew better by now. I could only hope that Micah would drive a little less erratically than my brother. Rob veered off and went to his car, leaving Micah and me alone.
Micah’s bike was obviously sweet, even to my untrained eyes: low and wide but somehow sleek, with a BMW logo. The back end had two big compartments attached to it, and Micah opened one of them, grabbed a pair of helmets. He held one out to me and I took it, trying not to show how the prospect of riding on his bik
e with him made me nervous. Before he closed the compartment, I could see a few other things—pipes, gloves, and I was pretty sure a knife or two. I tried not to think about it as Micah swung his leg over the bike and settled himself in the seat.
There was just enough room behind him for me to fit, and I realized with a mix of dread and excitement that I was going to be pressed right up against the boss himself. “Come on,” Micah said, looking at me over his shoulder. “Get on and let’s get out of here.” I took a quick breath and put the helmet on, fumbling with the straps for a couple seconds. My heart felt as if it was going to bust out of my ribcage as I tried to swing my leg over the bike behind Micah.
I was just starting to settle into the seat behind him when Micah turned the engine on, revving it quickly to get it going properly. I bit back a yelp and resisted the temptation to jump off of the bike as it roared around me. Over the grumbling, rumbling roar of the bike, I heard Micah shout back, “Hurry up, Sadie! Plant your ass in the seat.” I looked on either side of the bike to make sure that I wasn’t putting my feet on an exhaust pipe or something and sank down behind Micah. The motorcycle vibrated so hard underneath me that I wasn’t sure where my trembling ended and the machine’s shaking began; I could feel it between my legs, almost up against my pussy. Micah took his hands off of the handgrips and twisted in the seat to face me. “You’re going to have to be closer than that,” he shouted over the idling engine.