by Zoey Parker
My hands were still in front of me, holding the gun, when Micah appeared at my side. “Holy shit, girl,” he said; I could just hear him through the ringing in my ears. His hands closed on mine, and eased my grip on the gun. Manny was down, and I saw the light leave his eyes as he died. I felt cold all over.
“Look at me. Look at me, Sadie.” My ears were still ringing, but it wasn’t as loud, and I turned my head to look at Micah. He was smiling, almost looking proud. “I cannot believe you pulled that shot off,” he said.
“I kind of can’t either,” I said, smiling weakly.
“You just did it,” Micah said, shaking his head.
“He was going to shoot you,” I told him, by way of explanation; I almost felt bad about it, but when I thought harder, I couldn’t come up with a reason why.
“Good girl,” Micah said. “Let’s get you inside. I need to get someone to take care of that body.”
I let Micah lead me into the bar and straight through to the back room, where his second office was. It wasn’t as nice as the office at Vagabond, but I was pretty sure that just like at Vagabond, we’d be left more or less alone there. I heard Micah call an order for a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of champagne, and he called for Rob to come with him, but I was too numb, too shocked at what I’d just done, to think about it.
Then I was seated at Micah’s desk, a shot of whiskey in a tumbler in front of me. “Drink up, Sadie—you need it.” I couldn’t argue with that. I reached out. I could still almost feel the gun in my hands, but I shook off the sensation and wrapped my hand around the cool glass, and brought it to my lips.
The whiskey burned all the way down, and it actually helped. I came back to myself—a little bit—with a jolt, and looked around to see Rob in the office with Micah and me. “She shot the asshole,” Micah said, his voice full of pride.
“You did? Kick-fucking-ass,” Rob said, grinning at me. I thought it was the first real, big smile I’d ever seen on the guy’s face, and it suited him.
“I need more whiskey,” I told them both, not caring who served me as long as I got more alcohol.
“You need another shot and a glass of champagne,” Micah informed me. “You can have the whole fucking bottle if you want.” He poured about two fingers of whiskey into the tumbler, and I knocked it back without even thinking. The second shot helped even more than the first, and I felt as if some kind of frostbite had finally fallen away. I couldn’t—really—feel bad about shooting Manny. He’d been a cheating bastard, he’d beaten at least one woman, and he was going to shoot the man I loved, whether or not he knew who it was he’d taken aim at.
In spite of my recovery, I just listened as Rob and Micah talked business. “Get the guy I brained out of the alley, I want him to talk,” Micah told Rob.
“What do we do about Manny?”
“Cut his hands off, take ‘em to that guy we know—Dylan, what’s his face,” Micah said. “Other than that, make him disappear. Inform our guy at the PD that Manny’s no longer with us.” What was Micah going to do with Manny’s hands? I thought about what I’d read somewhere, about gangsters taking “trophies” on occasion, and the significance of it being Manny’s hands—and the fact of Manny having stolen from him—made me certain that I didn’t want to know the specifics.
Someone brought my brother into the office and Micah clapped him on the shoulder. “Your sister made her bones tonight,” he said, beaming proudly. Chris looked at me in shock.
“I shot Manny,” I told him, and part of me like the spurt of fear I saw shoot across his face. “He was going to shoot Micah.”
“We’re rounding up the other guys in the group,” Rob said. “So far we’ve got four—two more left according to everything we’ve heard.”
“Put it out on the street that if they come to me of their own will, they’ll get better treatment,” Micah told him. Some other group of people was sent to Manny’s house to get the money he’d taken, and someone else was supposed to get Percocet for Adrienne, and take the girl that had been roughed up by the guy Micah took out to be checked over.
I wasn’t sure if it was too soon or too late when the office was empty, with just me and Micah in it. “How are you holding up?”
“Better than I thought I would, the first time I ever killed someone,” I said, smiling at him. My head was starting to get swimmy, from the champagne and the whiskey. I felt warm all over, which was an improvement from the deep cold of shock.
“You did the right thing,” Micah told me. “That guy would’ve shot me.”
“I know,” I said, nodding.
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Bamber,” Micah said. “I knew that just about the first time we met—at least by the end of that meeting.”
“That meeting where you got me to let you fuck me senseless to take off a thousand dollars of my brother’s debt?”
“The fact that you were willing to do it helped me get that impression,” Micah said with a little grin. “And the fact that you were determined to do whatever it took, and smart enough to come up with something.”
“And then the fact that I was able to get money for you from some dealer?” I smiled a little more at that memory. If the guy I’d accosted had known that I’d never shot anyone before, he probably wouldn’t have been quite so eager to cooperate with me.
“Hell yeah,” Micah said. He chuckled. “You know, between you and your brother, you’re clearly the one meant to have something to do with this business.”
“Excuse me?” I wasn’t sure whether to be offended or flattered.
“You’re smart, you’re tough, you’re willing to do whatever it takes,” Micah said. “I’m shocked you haven’t managed some kind of fucking coup at that bank you work at.” I had to laugh at that.
“I was trying to be a respectable person,” I told him.
“Well, you’re wasted in the respectable office world, I’ll tell you that,” Micah said. “With guts and brains and toughness like you’ve got...I could use five of you.”
“Five?” I sat back in my chair, looking up at Micah. In spite of the shock of killing someone—even someone who really deserved it—I could feel myself responding to Micah’s presence, feeling a kind of low, humming heat beginning to stir in my body.
“Yeah,” Micah said, grinning. “With five of you I could have a tri-county drug and prostitution ring. I could make fucking billions off of it.” I rolled my eyes.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got a one-track mind?” Micah nodded.
“I decided to make it into a virtue,” he told me. “Besides, you’re one to talk. All this came about because you just had to get your brother out of trouble. You’ve ruined me.”
“Ruined you? Are you kidding me?” I gestured around the office. “I got your cheating asshole lieutenant taken out. I brought you a new level of business. I am the fucking golden goose of your entire life.”
“Exactly,” Micah said. “You ruined my ability to just enjoy what I’ve built. I’m going to have to keep pushing the limits. And now I’m going to have to find someone to replace Manny, and then someone to add to that lineup.” He shook his head, sarcastically clucking his tongue against his teeth. “You’ve made me into an even more ambitious man.”
“You’re going to need some help then,” I pointed out.
“I was getting around to that,” Micah said. “But before we talk business, I think we need to go back to my place.”
“I can’t promise anything,” I told him warily, though just the suggestion of going back to Micah’s place was enough to make the heat meandering through my body intensify.
“We’ll see where it takes us,” Micah said, holding out his hand to me. I took it and let him lift me out of the chair. I thought I was probably out of my mind, but there was nowhere else I wanted to be than in Micah’s arms that night.
Chapter Thirty
Sadie
“We’re sorry to see you go, Sadie,” one of the managers said,
giving me an insincere smile. I knew I was getting out of my banking job just in time; while my soon-to-be former coworkers loved me enough to pay me all the bonus cuts they owed, whispers about what I was doing had started to escape the people who helped fuel my arrangement with Micah, and before too long it would reach the wrong ears.
I had decided to plunge fully into the business with Micah after working with him another two months; it had been long enough to get the bonuses I’d been promised, which would be enough money to tide me over until I started really earning from Micah and the girls. The escort end of the business was booming—and I’d started making my own contacts among businessmen, taking referrals from the guys Nate and the others set up with for their own purposes.
Micah had been thrilled when I’d told him, the month before, that we needed to start recruiting more girls specifically for the escort business. We’d both managed to pick through the girls who’d come up through the streets and the call rooms to bring up to work with the businessmen, and as Micah’s and my reputation grew we needed more. Micah had put me in charge of it, taking “applications” through Rob and then having me conduct the interviews, do the training. There were a lot of women who wanted into that line of business, unsurprisingly.
I’d hired on five more girls, for a total of twelve, and almost every night at least one of them had someone to meet with. I schooled my girls on the right way to look, the right way to dress, and how to act around the big-money businessmen. Micah had technically been in control, along with Rob, at first—but now that I was getting ready to leave my banking job, I was taking more and more command of the group of escorts, and I kind of liked the idea of myself as a Madame, arranging dates, taking my cut.
I didn’t like to work in the drug end of things; that was just a little too dirty for me, a little too risky. If my girls got caught escorting, and it came back to me, I could probably get away with saying that I didn’t know they were doing “extras.” But if I got caught with drug involvement, I would be screwed.
I wandered around the little going-away party that the bank threw for me, smiling at my coworkers. They were still going to come to me for their clients’ needs, just like their clients would come to me for their clients’ needs, but I had gone beyond the need to work alongside them to get the deals. My girls were making enough to support me with my cut—I didn’t need any of the bonuses.
“Is it true you’re involved with Micah Rintley?” Nate looked at me with newfound respect; I’d never actually told him who my connection was, or how I’d gotten into the business in the first place, but I couldn’t fault him for figuring it out—at least part of it.
“Friend of a friend situation,” I told him. “Someone set us up.” I grinned at Nate, enjoying the look in his eyes as he stared at me. I’d taken to dressing a little more daringly at work, especially after I put in my notice.
“You are far more dangerous than I ever gave you credit for,” Nate told me, shaking his head. “Going to miss you around here—you kept things interesting.”
“If you want to grab lunch sometime, you have my number,” I told him.
I left the party as early as I could, and headed to my apartment. Micah and I had a standing meeting to talk about business—and then fuck each other’s brains out—every night at nine; I would have just enough time to get a shower, change clothes, and get over to Vagabond. I grinned to myself, feeling tingly all over the way I always did before meeting with Micah.
I thought about the way that my life had changed so drastically since meeting the mob boss. In a way, I thought I should probably be more grateful to my brother; if he hadn’t made the stupid-ass decision to get involved in drug running, and hadn’t gotten robbed by Manny’s friends, then I wouldn’t have found what had sort of become my calling in life. I had focused so hard on being upright, on doing the right things and making the right moves and being socially acceptable; getting involved with Micah—both in the business and romantically—had been completely freeing.
My phone buzzed in my pocket when I walked into my apartment. Got a special surprise for you tonight. I grinned to myself. After the night when I’d shot Manny, Micah had gotten serious about me, almost right away; I’d gone back to his place for the first time, and we’d spent the rest of the night having sex—alternating between rough and sensual, with Micah giving me everything I could possibly want or need. Ever since then he’d treated me as a real girlfriend, not just as someone he loved to fuck, and it was clear—to everyone in his organization—that I was almost as much to be respected as Micah himself.
He’d promoted Rob to his second-in-command, letting the guy take over part of the drug running business to supplement the situation with the girls. Late one night, after we’d gone for it for hours, Micah had said that he felt like he’d been wrong to keep the area of business separate—that keeping it distinct from the straight drugs and the prostitution both had been part of what made it possible for Manny to steal from him.
Brody had taken over Manny’s old position, watching over the girls and coordinating things. He’d brought his brother in—the only other person Micah would trust as much—and Mark watched the door of Micah’s office at Vagabond as well as his brother had.
I texted back to Micah to tell him that I was looking forward to the surprise he had for me, and plugged my phone in to charge while I stripped off my clothes for a shower. He knew about the fact that it was my last day at the bank, and I had rather thought that I’d get some kind of recognition from him on that score. I turned on the water in the shower and ducked out of the way to let it warm up a bit. I still got occasional chills when I remembered that I’d shot Manny, that I’d killed him. I never knew what Micah had done with the guy’s hands, and I didn’t want to know. But gradually I had come to accept that I’d done what was necessary. Manny would have killed Micah, or at the very least done his level best to kill him.
I showered as quickly as I could, resisting the temptation to touch myself while I was in there; just thinking about being with Micah again was enough to get the heat flowing through my body, enough to make me wish I was with him already. I didn’t bother washing my hair, since it would take too long to dry it, but I checked over my legs and my pussy to make sure I was completely smooth.
My parents didn’t know anything about what I was doing with my life—Chris was under threat not to tell them anything, as part of the conditions of his new job working for Micah. He handled money, but he didn’t have any kind of status in the organization; he’d already proved he wasn’t responsible enough to deal with that kind of work. So he was at the bar, handling the money the girls made, handing it off to Rob or Brody. It was the best I’d been able to do for him, since his name was pretty much mud in the town, at least as far as jobs that might come to him that would have to do with the crime syndicate. Micah had given him the job as a favor to me, since Chris obviously needed something to keep himself afloat, and legitimate work wasn’t going to cut it.
I was making almost twice as much working alongside Micah as I made at the bank, and I was more than certain that my earnings would increase. Micah had made it clear that he was going to treat me as his partner in every respect. I didn’t have much of an interest in the drug business, but we were taking the escort end of things higher and higher, and we were going to be straight-up partners in that. I’d managed—between the last time I’d seen Micah and our upcoming meeting that night—to secure a few more new clients, based on referrals, and I had just finished training up some girls to take over the work.
I did my makeup quickly, thinking about how strangely my life had turned out. Micah had turned me on from the very start, and I couldn’t deny that fact. That we’d somehow managed to turn out into good business partners as well as something more than just two people having sex was icing on the cake. Who would have ever thought that the man of my dreams was a mob boss who pretty regularly kills people? I knew I was going to have to square with that one day—it was morally and
ethically wrong—but for the time being, I kept out of that part of Micah’s decisions, and we were together in everything else.
I got to Vagabond and parked in the employee lot behind the club; they’d long since gotten used to me coming in to see Micah. I did the coded knock on the back door and it opened in a minute, one of Micah’s guys on the other side. “Boss is looking for you,” Billy said, giving me a quick smile.
“Of course he is,” I told him, breezing past and heading for the stairs to his office. My heart was beating faster as I moved closer to the door where Mark stood, guarding over the access to Micah. “How’s it going?”
“He’s in a good mood tonight,” Mark said, grinning at me. He knocked on the door and opened it a crack—even though everyone knew me, and everyone knew what I was to Micah, it was still the protocol—and called in, “Sadie’s here.”
“Let her in,” Micah said. Mark opened the door and I walked past him. I saw Micah seated at his desk, and my heart skipped a beat in my chest. Even though we’d been dating for months—really dating, starting from the time that we’d put Manny and his friends out of business—I still got tingly and giddy whenever I was around him.