The little girl paused in front of the Tin Man, her stomach feeling sick when she looked him in the eyes. They were black, like midnight, the gray all gone.
“I drew you a picture,” she said, holding out the paper.
“How sweet.” He took it, squinting. “Is this me?”
She nodded.
His eyes cut to her.
Use your words. He didn’t say it, but she heard it.
“Yes, Daddy.”
“And is this you with me?” he asked, holding it up, pointing at it.
Her cheeks grew warm as people all around them looked. She’d just meant to show him. “Yes.”
He turned it back around, studying it, still grinning. “It is perfect, kitten. I need to have it framed.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
“Of course,” he said, setting it aside, on the table, before patting his knee. “Come, sit.”
She wanted to say no. She wanted to go back up to her room, away from all of those people, away from the woman giving her weird looks from where she sat on the floor, but his expression left no room for arguing. She sat down on his knee, facing the side, and he wrapped his left arm around her. She used to sit on her mother’s lap all the time, but she didn’t much like sitting on his, wearing the white nightgown that still itched.
He smacked the woman’s shoulder, motioning for something with his hand, and she handed him a rolled up dollar. He gripped the little girl tightly, so she wouldn’t fall to the floor, as he leaned the whole way forward, nearly face-planting the table, and snorted a line of white powder.
Letting out a deep sigh, he leaned back in the chair again, his smile glowing.
“Do you love your Papa?” he asked, rubbing her back.
The little girl tensed at that question.
His stark black eyes regarded her. “It is okay, you are allowed to love me, no matter what your mother may have said. I am your father; my blood is inside of you. You might look like the suka, but you are half of me.”
Suka. The little girl knew that word.
It was one of the bad ones.
She still didn’t answer. She didn’t know how. What if she lied by mistake? Would he be mad?
After a moment, he laughed, hugging her to his thick chest as he ruffled her hair. “One day. Even your mother once loved me. It is inevitable.”
The little girl relaxed, her nerves easing. She didn’t know if she’d ever love him, honestly, but maybe, if her mother loved him and he found his heart, it could happen.
Everyone around them laughed and joked, growing louder as time wore on. The little girl watched them.
The Tin Man grabbed a bottle of that clear stuff, pouring some into his glass.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He held out the bottle, bumping her arm. “Try it.”
She just stared.
“Aw, my kitten is a scaredy-cat?”
People around them laughed, that ugly laugh, the mean one she didn’t like. Her face turned red as she took the bottle and put it to her lips. The second it touched her tongue, she gagged, her mouth on fire. It burned. Coughing, she couldn’t catch her breath, swallowing a mouthful before she dropped the bottle, spilling it all over herself. The Tin Man caught it, laughing, as he slapped her on the back.
“Breathe,” he said, slipping out of the chair, shifting her onto it alone. “Vodka is not for the weak.”
“You’re so cruel,” the brown-haired woman said, still sitting on the floor. “She’s just a little girl. She shouldn’t even be here.”
“She is my little girl. I say where she should be. Besides, what do you know about being a parent?”
“Probably more than you ever will,” the woman mumbled. “Poor girl.”
The moment those words were out of her mouth, something snapped. The Tin Man grabbed the woman, fisting her long locks, and yanked her away from the chair, her shriek loud.
The little girl tensed, tears in her eyes, as the Tin Man slammed the woman’s head into the table in front of them, over and over, white powder flying like dust all around, coating her face, as blood poured from her nose and her mouth. She choked on it, begging, but he didn’t stop.
BAM.
BAM.
BAM.
The woman went limp as he continued to grip her by the hair, raising her face up to look at her, whispering, “poor girl,” before dropping her to the floor in front of the chair.
Everyone around them watched, the other women disturbed, but the men acted like it was normal. The little girl shook and sobbed, wetting her nightgown as she clutched Buster to her chest, staring down at the floor.
The woman’s eyes were closed, as if she was sleeping, just like the little girl’s mother had been.
She’d wake up, wouldn’t she?
The Tin Man turned to her. His eyes were still black. He tipped back the bottle of vodka, taking a drink straight from it, before he pointed it at her. “Go back to your room, kitten. Be a good girl for Papa. Clean yourself up.”
The little girl stood, running from the room, going up the stairs as fast as she could.
Chapter Seventeen
I know what it’s like to be a teenage mother.
Okay, fuck, hear me out before you string me up.
I was only eighteen years old when I took custody of my little brother. He was two at the time, still in diapers. He doesn’t remember the before, doesn’t remember life with our mother, his father, but I remember every harrowing second of it.
I especially remember the sickening relief I felt when I watched them both bleed out...
At eighteen, I didn’t know shit. My mind had been warped, my face fucked up, and I might’ve given up on life if it weren’t for him needing somebody. I was all he had left in the world, and I vowed I’d make it right. I potty-trained him, sent him off to school, and helped him with his homework. I was there when he started kindergarten, and I was still there the day he graduated from high school. I taught him manners, gave him medicine, and made him eat his vegetables. I made the boy a man... the man I wasn’t. The one I’d never be.
So while I don’t really know what it’s like being a teenage mother, calling me his father isn’t enough, because you’d be hard pressed to find another ‘father’ who did as much as I did for that little fucker. I poured what was left of my soul into him.
“Don’t start with me,” I say as soon as I step into the living room, coming face-to-face with Leo, who is sitting on the couch. The duct tape patch is beside his head, blatantly obvious. I know he saw it. He’s smart, that kid. He can riddle out what happened while he was in bed, and I know he’s going to give me shit about it. “I’m not in the mood.”
“When are you ever in the mood?” he asks.
“Every other Friday and twice on Saturday.”
“It’s Saturday,” he points out.
“Yeah, well, try again later,” I say. “I’m not in the mood right now.”
He laughs, glancing at the duct tape. The son of a bitch never listens. “So I hear you put a hole in the couch.”
“Respect your elders,” I say. “Didn’t someone teach you that?”
“I vaguely remember my brother saying it,” he says, “but I mostly remember him telling me never to bow down to anybody.”
“Except for me.”
“I don’t remember any exceptions.”
“Your memory’s shit.”
“So is yours,” he says, “in case you’ve forgotten.”
He’s being a smartass, intentionally pressing my buttons. He’s the man I’m not, yeah, but there’s still so much of me in him.
It’s infuriating.
“I’ll get a new couch,” I tell him.
He sighs. “That’s not the point.”
The point being that I murdered a man right here in our living room. I told him I’d keep that part of my life as far away from him as possible. I didn’t promise, because I don’t make promises, but I said I’d make a conscious effort, and I have.
I used a suppressor, didn’t I?
I had it all cleaned up before morning came.
“I’ll get a new couch,” I say again. “I’ll patch the hole in the wall, too.”
“There’s a hole in the wall?”
“Yes,” I say. “It doesn’t count, though, because it’s the same hole. Sort of a through-and-through.”
He scrubs his hands over his face as he stands up. A stomping clinking noise echoes down the hallway, coming our direction. Melody, I’m guessing. She explodes her way into the room, kaboom, skidding to a stop when she spots me. “Whoa, Lorenzo. You, uh, I… whoa.”
She blushes.
“I’ve got clothes on, don’t worry,” I say, looking down at myself—black pants, black boots, white shirt, black coat. Exciting, I know. “I only rock out with my cock out when it’s dark out.”
“Well, that’s nice to know,” she says with a laugh, strutting over to my brother. I watch her, my gaze settling on her feet.
Red heels, damn familiar, because I’ve stared at them for a while on my dresser. “Are they Scarlet’s shoes?”
“Who?”
“Morgan,” Leo tells her. “He calls her Scarlet.”
“Oh, yeah!” Melody kicks her leg out, admiring the shoe on her foot. “Aren’t they gorgeous? She gave them to me before she left, said she never really wanted them, which is crazy. I mean, who wouldn’t want a pair of…”
Blah. Blah. Blah.
She just keeps on talking, telling me shit I don’t care about, answering questions I never asked.
“Well, then,” I say loudly, interrupting. “This has been fun, but I have business to attend to.”
I walk out. She’s still talking.
Maybe Leo’s listening, I don’t know.
Seven stands in front of the house, hanging out on the porch, quietly waiting for me to surface. I nod to him when I step out, wordlessly greeting him as I relinquish my car keys.
Being as I’m blind on the right side, I’m lacking in the depth perception department. I can legally drive, of course—not that legality matters—but I choose not to, unless I have to, because I’m likely to run somebody over. Human lives don’t exactly leave me feeling sentimental, but speeding cars are kind of like stray bullets in the sense that when your aim sucks, you might kill yourself by accident, and my aim is the worst.
Hence the hole in the couch.
And the wall.
And the annoyed little brother.
There’s not a hole in the last one... well, not one I caused, but he’s still a casualty to my disability.
Not that I’m disabled, because fuck you, I’m not. I like to think we’re only really limited by our lack of creativity, and I can get pretty creative.
“So what do you know about the Russians?” I ask Seven, pulling out my battered tin for a joint, lighting it as I wait for his reaction. He hesitates, eyeing me warily, which is never a good sign, having him afraid to share. Seven’s got knowledge, being as once upon a time, in a land far, far away (Staten Island), the man wore a different kind of uniform than his customary black get-up.
Seven was a cop.
He found himself on the wrong side of the law, serving time in Rikers for selling secrets to the devil. And prison, you see, it doesn’t rehabilitate men like him. It just turns them into men like me... hardened beyond reasoning.
“The Bratva?” he asks, like he needs clarification.
“Whatever they’re calling themselves over here,” I say, exhaling, smoke surrounding me. “I sure don’t mean the KGB.”
“Actually, a lot of the guys are ex-KGB,” Seven says. “Soviet collapsed, they had a certain skill set, so they moved to the private sector.”
“I appreciate the history lesson, Seven, but I don’t really give a shit. I want to know what you know about the Russians around here.”
He exhales loudly. “They work out of Brighton Beach. Unlike the Cosa Nostra, which has weakened—”
“You’re welcome for that,” I say, taking another hit, holding it in my lungs as he continues.
“—the Russians keep getting stronger. Smuggling. Diamonds. Black market-level stuff. Insurance fraud. Healthcare fraud. Credit card fraud. These days, their biggest payday is probably trafficking.”
“Drugs? Guns?”
“People.”
Human trafficking.
“Prostitution? Or deeper?”
“Prostitution, certainly, but it goes about as deep as it can possibly go. We heard rumors, back when I was on the force, that they were kidnapping girls and selling them off to the highest bidder.”
“Rumors, huh? Not really a fan of speculation, Seven. I heard a rumor once that I was trying to murder my own best friend, but that was complete bullshit.”
“I’d say the odds of this being false are slim. The Russians, they run that club—Limerence. I’ve never gone, the wife would kill me, but the guys, you know they go, and they talk. The women there?” He lets out a low whistle. “A lot of them probably wouldn’t be doing the things they do if they had other options.”
I finish smoking in silence, thinking that over, putting together the pieces of the puzzle that are starting to make up Scarlet. Mind your own business. I know. I fucking know. But she’s becoming my business. I’m making her my business, whether you like it or not.
“Well, then, Seven, I suppose that means a field trip is in order,” I say, slapping him on the back before tossing the remnants of the joint down, stomping on it. “Gotta check it out, separate fact from fiction.”
“Limerence?”
“Yeah, you need to get a permission slip signed by the wife or are we good?”
He doesn’t look like we’re good.
He’s looking a little green, actually.
Guess he doesn’t like my plan, huh?
“Do you think that’s a good idea, boss?”
“A good idea? Not likely. But that’s never stopped me before, has it?”
“No,” he says, “it hasn’t.”
Limerence.
It doesn’t look like much of anything from the outside, a nondescript dark building with the name written in red cursive on a sign above a tinted glass door. Red cursive. No flashing lights or neon signs. No promises of tits inside. No bullshit description like ‘gentlemen’s club’. It’s open to the public, sure, but they’ve got a specific clientele. The wealthy. The depraved. The kind that’ll pay a lot of damn money for a taste of their darkest fantasy.
No matter how dark, I’m hearing.
Enough cash, no questions asked...
Security stands guard at the entrance, dressed in black, wearing earpieces like they’re Secret Service. I have no doubt they have a direct line to whoever’s running things.
I stop on the sidewalk in front of the place, gaze scanning the Limerence sign in the darkness, softly illuminated from beneath. My guys, they filter past, moving around me, waltzing inside without missing a beat. Security doesn’t pay them any attention, too busy staring at me. Seven lingers behind, standing along the curb. My shadow, as always. He’s too damn scared of the missus to dare come any closer.
“You can wait out here,” I say, looking back at him, “unless you’re in the mood for a lap dance?”
He shakes his head. “I’ll pass.”
Figures.
I approach the building. Security eyes me warily, but no one says a word as I go in. Everything around me is golden with a red glow, the lighting dim and music soft, and slow, and surprisingly doesn’t make my head want to explode. Men pack the club, gathered at small tables, lounging in deep leather chairs as women dance around them. It’s tame out here. PG-13. Barely a hand job in a cesspool of insatiable fucking. Looking for anything more than the flash of a set of nipples and your ass better be shelling out enough cash to be escorted to a different room for a different experience.
My guys congregate in the far corner, away from others, attention already being showered on them. A pretty little brunette sits on Thr
ee’s lap, arms wrapped around his neck as she whispers who-knows-what in his ear, tits all up in his face, teasing him. Five is chatting up a brunette waitress, while the others are already long gone, probably in the back.
Took all of thirty seconds.
I slide into a chair at their table, slouching, folding my hands together against my chest. I’m not interested in partaking so much as observing, but damn if I couldn’t use a drink.
“Rum,” I say loudly, interrupting Five’s conversation with the waitress. “A whole bottle would be nice, but I’ll settle for the biggest glass you’ve got in this place. Straight up, no bullshit... the rougher, the better.”
Three mumbles some cliché that’s what she said joke, which makes the brunette throw her head back and cackle.
I wonder how much he pays her to pretend he’s funny.
The waitress stalks off, over to the bar, and returns with a glass of clear liquid, handing it straight to me before diving back into her conversation.
The glass is barely four fingers tall, but beggars can’t be choosers.
Or more like patrons shouldn’t kill waitresses.
Same difference.
I take a swig from the glass, grimacing, before interrupting them again. “This isn’t rum.”
The waitress looks at me. “What?”
“It’s vodka,” I say, setting the glass on the table, some of the liquor sloshing out as I shove it her way. “I asked for rum.”
“Are you sure?” She picks up the glass. “I mean, it’s clear.”
“So is water, but that doesn’t mean it’s what I fucking asked for, is it?”
“Uh, no, I guess not.”
“Rum. R-U-M. Say it with me. Rum.”
“Rum,” she says quietly, her voice trembling as her eyes widen a second before she averts them, looking at the floor. She seems pretty damn terrified all of a sudden as she scurries away, her reaction confusing until my men glance over, looking at me.
No, looking behind me...
“A man who knows what he likes and accepts nothing less,” a strong voice says, the words twinned with a deep Russian accent. “Cannot fault a man for that, can we?”
“No,” I say, “sure can’t.”
He walks around the table, past us, strolling over to the bar. Kassian Aristov. He slides in beside the waitress just as the bartender hands her a new glass. Before she can walk away, Aristov’s arm slips around her slim waist, securing her at his side, one hand on her hip as the other snatches the glass out of her grasp. Bringing it to his lips, he drinks every last drop, setting the glass down on the bar as he leans over, whispering something to her.
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