“Good. Please, keep me informed.”
“Sure thing, Boss.”
Chapter 2
Devi~
My feet were screaming at me, but I’d been so busy this week, I hadn’t been able to go to the store and buy new shoe insoles. Besides, you couldn’t get the good kind for less than fifty dollars, and the thrifty side of me winced at the idea of spending that kind of money on insoles when I had to replace them as often as I did. Expensive didn’t exactly equal quality.
However, my shift was almost over, and I only had to get through tonight before I could enjoy my first weekend off in months. Since I had a day shift tomorrow, the plan was to get off work, go home, clean my house from top to bottom, and then do absolutely nothing on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. I was going to catch up on my reading for three days straight before I had to face the real world again on Monday.
A small part of me cringed at how ungrateful my eagerness might seem, but I wasn’t ungrateful for my job. While waitressing hadn’t been my dream job growing up, it was a good job, and I happened to work in one of the few restaurants in town that didn’t take our tips into consideration as part of our pay rate.
The Opera was one of the three restaurants owned by the Vaudeville Corporation, and it paid well above minimum wage. Now, could I afford to lease a Lexus? No. Could I pay my bills every month and still afford to eat take-out twice a week? Yes.
I’d gotten the job four years ago, when I’d had no choice but to look for something that could pay more than the cashier job I’d had before. While I lived frugally, my brother often needed help and there were times where it had put a serious strain on my finances, but he was my brother. I had to help him.
Our parents had died in a boating accident while we’d still been in high school. I had been a freshman, and Keith had been a junior. And being minors, we’d been forced to go live with our father’s brother, Uncle Terrence.
Now, while Clarence and Bonnie Westland had been great people and parents, Uncle Terrence had been an entirely different breed altogether.
Keith and I had grown up in typical suburbia. Dad had been a corporate accountant and Mom had been a news station producer. We’d had a nice life, with no worries, great friends, and awesome neighbors.
Then Dad had surprised Mom with a cruise for their anniversary, and our entire lives had been irrevocably changed forever. Over six-thousand passengers onboard and our parents had been two out of the eighteen that had been caught up in a cabin fire in the middle of night. The only consolation when we’d been told was that they had both died of smoke inhalation before their cabin had caught fire.
It had been tragic, heartbreaking, and had left us orphans.
And if the death of our parents hadn’t been devastating enough, the settlement we had received had gone to our legal guardian, and Uncle Terrence had blown through every dollar in less than two years. Knowing Keith would turn eighteen soon, Uncle Terrence had burned through the money faster I thought would ever be possible for one person to spent six-million dollars.
When Keith had graduated from high school, all that was left of the money was some hundred-thousand dollars. But that money went quickly within two years after Uncle Terrence had kicked us both out, forcing Keith to become my legal guardian and see me through graduating high school.
Since then, we’ve been doing our best to live happy lives. Keith was a mechanic by trade, and I had bounced around, doing odd jobs, until I finally found this one. And while Keith had a tendency to get caught up in some unfortunate situations from time to time, I couldn’t complain much. Besides, who would listen?
“I did it.” I turned at my best friend’s voice. “I officially requested a meeting with the manager.”
“You did?”
Kimberly Alba was five-foot-three of vibrant sass. She had walnut-brown hair, dark brown eyes, and was too pretty for words. She was also thick where it counted and was the definition of voluptuous. I had shared a shift with her on my first day of work here, and we’ve been best friends ever since. Where I was too serious sometimes, Kimberly was living life while answering to no one. At thirty-years-old, Kimberly was probably the most fun thing in my life.
I loved her to death.
She nodded. “Yeah,” she muttered, trying to keep her voice low. “I need my job, but…not at the price of my dignity.” She gave me a sheepish grin. “Besides, keeping my mouth shut is killing me.”
I huffed out a muffled laugh. “I bet.”
Kim rolled her eyes. “God gave me spunk, so that I could fight for the underdog,” she said. “It’s my duty to right injustices, Devi.”
The injustice she was crusading against was our, sometimes, shift manager, Hugh Hamel. Now, while I’ve never had a problem with him, he’s made several advances towards Kim, and has even crossed the line a couple of times with his forwardness. Trying to hold onto her job, she’s been brushing off his inappropriateness and doing her best to just grin and bear it, but I guess something else must have happened since the last time he offended her.
“I’m not trying to stand in the way of making the planet a better place, Kim,” I immediately replied, letting her know I was always on her side. “I got your back. You know this.”
“I know,” she sighed. “It’s just…it’s going to suck if I lose my job over this.”
Forgetting about my aching feet, I pulled her aside for some privacy. Our shift was almost over, but we still fetched refills and checked on our tables until the bitter end. Pulling her behind one of the dividing walls that led to the public restrooms, I thought it best not to be overheard.
“Why would you lose your job, Kim?” I asked. “This isn’t the fifties. We’re in a new era where women’s voices matter. Decency is expected from your male boss.” I rubbed her upper arm in comfort. “And, I mean, have you ever filed a complaint before?” Kim shook her head. “Okay, so with as many years as you’ve worked here, and have never filed a complaint, how can they not take this one seriously?”
She waved a hand in front of my face. “You’re right.” I rubbed her arm again. “I know you’re right. I’m just dreading the whole he-said-she-said investigation, you know.”
I leaned back against the dividing wall. “What if other girls come forward and you end up being the best thing to happen to this restaurant. You coming forward could save The Vaudeville Corporation millions in lawsuits.”
“I’ll settle for the creep just leaving me alone,” she grumbled.
“Have faith, my friend.”
Kim cracked her neck and shook her shoulders loose, like a boxer getting ready for a fight, and flashed her straight white teeth at me. “Alright.” She jerked her head to the side. “Now let’s get back out there before we get fired for a legitimate reason, like not doing our jobs.”
I laughed. “Come on, woman. Everything will be fine.”
We finished out our shift with no more drama or seriousness, and I was lucky enough that we were ready to leave at the same time. About eight months ago, I’d had to sell my car to help Keith out of a bind, and I’ve been saving as much money as I could for another one, but even saving a couple of thousand dollars for a used car was tough. So, on the shifts I worked with Kim, she was usually able to give me a ride home, unless she was working a double, and I was grateful for it. The neighborhood I lived in wasn’t the worst, but it wasn’t the best either.
The entire ride home was Kim trying to convince me to go out this weekend and get stranger-laid, and me trying to convince her how staying home and reading was more satisfying than a fifty-fifty roll of the dices that the stranger-sex would even be good.
After winning the debate, Kim dropped me off, and my feet kicked off my shoes as soon as the front door shut behind me. Reaching back and engaging both locks, I leaned over, grabbed my shoes and headed towards my bedroom.
I rented a one-bedroom apartment on the South Side of Rockford, California, and while it wasn’t much, it was more than enough. The rent was cheap, the
building fairly clean, and my neighbors weren’t assholes. What more could a girl ask for?
Stripping out of my clothes, I decided on a hot bath before dinner. It was only early evening, but my feet really were throbbing. A hot soak was just what they needed. Besides, dinner was going to be nothing but heated leftovers, so it could wait.
Grabbing my bubble bath and a bath bomb from under the bathroom sink, I prepared my bath, making sure to run the water as hot as my skin could stand it. I wanted to soak for a while, and I didn’t want to water getting cold too soon.
I grabbed one of my paperback-because I’d never dare bring my Kindle into a tub of water-sank into the tub, let the bubbles tickle me up to my chin, and let out a sigh from deep within my tired soul. This was exactly what I needed for tonight and the next three days.
To hell with getting stranger-laid.
Chapter 3
Cassius~
While The Vaudeville Corporation had a legitimate office space in downtown Rockford, my preferred place of work was my office in back of The Tenor.
I owned three restaurants and two clubs, and those were my legal sources of income that Atticus made sure to keep aboveboard. When the IRS came knocking once a year, Atticus was the one who made sure all my taxes were paid, and all my permits and licenses were current.
Growing up, I started dancing on the side of illegal activity early on. My parents were complete shit, and whether ten months or ten years, Atty was still my little brother, and someone had to take care of him. And that someone had been me.
My hustles had been small, at first, but then after graduating from high school, I had taken every cent I had and placed a parlay bet on the NFL season playoffs and fucking won. With a little over two-hundred thousand dollars in winnings, I had purchased my first building from the owner who’d been going under and had been eager for straight cash. With the building being worth way more than what I had paid for it, I’d been able to take out a business loan, and had renovated into what is, now, The Tenor, the first of my two bars/nightclubs. The rest of the money had been used to send Atticus to college, and after he’d gotten his degrees in accounting and business management, I had hired him to keep me legal.
After The Tenor became successful enough to put me into a higher tax bracket, I had opened up The Alto, my second bar and nightclub. From there, I decided to go the restaurant route, and within six years, The Orchestra, The Symphony, and The Opera had been born. On paper, I was a successful businessman with my main focus on recreational entertainment.
Off paper, I was much more than that, and Atticus kept those books, too.
Within the underbelly of Rockford, California, I was known to have my fingers in a lot of pies. While the clubs and restaurants made me a pretty penny, they weren’t what padded my personal bank accounts.
Crime did that.
And it did it well.
My most lucrative business was money lending. Loan sharking, if you will. However, I didn’t run an ignorant, uncouth operation. My interest rates where structured in a manner that made it reasonably possible for people to pay me back. You couldn’t collect money from a dead man, and though I’ve killed my fair share over the years, it’d never been as a first result.
I also ran a bookie operation, but the people I lent money to were not allowed to bet on my books. I didn’t get off on exploiting people’s sicknesses. And it didn’t benefit me financially to having someone lose all the money I just lent them. I was about making money.
Period.
The door to my office opened, and I didn’t bother looking up from the tally sheets I’d been looking at. The only two people who had keys to the hallway door that led to my office were Atticus and Xavier. And since I knew Atticus was having dinner with Pryce tonight, it could only be Xavier.
Xavier was my best friend and pseudo-bodyguard. We had crossed paths seven years ago when I’d caught some assholes trying to jump him behind The Alto. As big as Xavier was, he’d been handling all four assholes fine on his own, but when I had noticed a glint of metal coming into play, I had jumped in and evened the odds.
After we had left them for dead in the back of the ally, I had Xavier follow me back into the club where I let him get cleaned up. I had been willing to call the police for him, but he had quickly declined and had wanted to just get the hell home. When I had asked him where home was, he had admitted to not really having one. He’d just been dishonorably discharged from the Army for nearly killing a fellow soldier who’d been racist as fuck, and since the military was supposed to have been his life, he’d found himself wandering.
I had offered him a job as a doorman at The Alto, to kill time until he figured out what he wanted to do next, but within two months, he’d become one of my only true friends, and it’d been easy to see his intelligence was being wasted as a doorman.
Six years later, he wasn’t only my best friend, but if Atticus was my right-hand man, Xavier was my left. I trusted the man with my life and everything in it.
“So, I found out what Kimberly Alba’s complaint might be about,” he said, manners and salutations not needed between the two of us.
I looked up from the tally sheets. “Oh, yeah?”
Xavier nodded. “You got a problem with Hugh Hamel.” Hugh Hamel was one of my shift managers at The Opera.
I leaned back in my chair. “How so?”
Xavier got comfortable in one of the armchairs placed in front of my desk. “The man doesn’t think sexual harassment in the workplace is a real thing, apparently.”
Goddamn it.
“Are you serious?”
Xavier nodded. “I hit up Lacey about how things are going at The Opera, and you know the woman doesn’t know the meaning of the word discrete.” I let out a soft chuckle because he wasn’t wrong. Lacey Filmore was a lonely middle-aged widow who loved to talk to whoever will listen to her. She was harmless, though. “Anyway, she let it slip that she overheard an argument between Hugh and Kimberly last week, and Kimberly was threatening to report him if he didn’t knock his shit off. When I asked Lacey what she thought that meant, she said Hugh was known for shopping close to home.” Xavier grinned. “Her words, not mine.”
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“He doesn’t work until tomorrow night, dinner shift, but Kimberly’s meeting with Kelsey is due to take place this evening, after Kimberly’s shift is over.”
“Since Kelsey will come to me immediately if Kimberly’s complaint is one of sexual harassment, I’ll know by tonight what we’re dealing with,” I said.
“If it is sexual harassment, then we’ll need to interview all female employees who have ever had a shift with him.”
I arched a brow. “The male employees, too,” I instructed. “In this day and age, we can’t assume too much or too little.”
“Good point,” he agreed. “Do we call in the employees who are off, or wait for them to come back?”
“Nah,” I leaned forward and put my arms on the desk. “I don’t want to ruin their time off. We can interview them when they come back on shift. Even if Hugh is gone by then, I don’t want any of them to think their input or experience with the man doesn’t matter.”
“No problem.”
“Also, let Atticus know what’s going on, and have him contact legal and fill them in on what’s going on. If we’re going to be sued, I need legal on standby.”
Xavier nodded. “Anything else?”
“If this does become the shitstorm I think it might, I’ll need you to sit in on the interviews for Hugh’s replacement.” Xavier looked like he was about to comment, but I beat him to it. “I trust Kelsey’s judgement, but if this is sexual harassment, there’s no room for error at The Opera after this.” I leaned back in my chair. “Hell, there shouldn’t be room for any type of that shit anywhere, but we really don’t need to make the mistake of replacing a douchebag with another douchebag.”
“So, we pick a woman,” he suggested.
“Women can be douchebags, too.�
�
Xavier just smirked. “I tell you, I miss the good, old days when you could just beat the fuck out of someone, and he learned his damn lesson. All this professionalism gets under my skin sometimes.”
I barked out a laugh. “Don’t act like your knuckles don’t get scraped regularly, X. I know better.”
He grinned. “And see? They learn their lessons, don’t they?”
I just shook my head. “Look, I gotta get back to the tallies, but…Larissa Eaton’s been trying to get an appointment with me again.”
All mirth left his face. Xavier’s brown eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward in his chair. “We don’t need it, Cassius,” he said. “Right now, shit’s nice, neat, and under control. Nothing fucks shit up like a woman in the mix. You know this.” He shook his head. “Look, I have nothing against hookers; everyone’s got to make a living. But dealing in flesh is bad news, and we don’t need the money.”
“Relax, X,” I replied smoothly. “I haven’t changed my mind. I was just letting you know in case she tries to contact you or Atticus.”
I could see his body visibly relax. “The woman’s trouble just waiting to happen.”
I smirked at that. “Aren’t all women?”
“Touché, Boss. Touché.”
Chapter 4
Devi~
Thursday night had been perfect.
Absolutely perfect.
After my shower, I had eaten my leftovers, had gotten comfortable on the couch, turned on the television for some background noise, and had finished my paperback. And when nine o’clock had rolled around, I had fallen asleep like a person who’d just swallowed an entire bottle of NyQuil.
I had blissfully slept right through my alarm and hadn’t gotten out of bed until a little past nine. I had slept for twelve hours, and I felt good.
Rested.
And the plan had been for my Friday to be just as unproductive, but Keith hasn’t been returning my calls for a couple of days now, and I was beginning to worry. It wasn’t that we had to talk every day, but he was really good about responding to my texts or calling me back, so that’s how I found myself at the bus stop, making my way to his apartment. Keith’s place was no better than mine, but he lived in a slightly shadier side of town, so if I was going to check on him, I preferred it be during daylight hours.
Dealing with the Devil Page 2