Chapter 17

The nightclub was on neutral ground, but I was still treated like royalty the second I set foot inside it. I sat down at a table near the bar and watched as the prettiest waitress—a blonde with a killer rack and an ass to match—headed straight for me.

“What can I get for you, handsome?” she asked, batting her pretty eyelashes at me.

“A whiskey, straight up, please,” I said then turned to watch the door, waiting for my men to arrive.

The blonde returned with my drink and a knowing smile, but if she was hoping for anything more than money for the drink and a hefty tip, she was out of luck tonight. It had been a long day, and I had one last job to do. My body felt sluggish, like I was trudging through mud with each step I took.

My men joined me at the table a few minutes later and didn’t bother ordering anything for themselves.

Last call was soon, and we needed the place empty.

Girls too young to be drinking and men too old for the girls finished off the last of their poison. The lights turned on and burned my eyes, like the start of a migraine. Seeing a nightclub under bright light, even an upper class one, didn’t feel right. It was filthy and seemed wrong without its dark and dingy atmosphere. Waitresses did the last bits of cleaning, turned the chairs over, and set them atop tables. They counted their tips for the day, some left looking defeated, and others like they were on top of the world. The ones brave enough to dress the most scantily were the happiest, and the blonde seemed the happiest of them all. She gave me one last hopeful glance, then turned away, tucking her night’s earnings into the bra beneath her low-cut shirt.

“Excuse me, uhm, sir,” a manager said. “We’re closing.”

“I know. We won’t be leaving,” I said, not bothering to make eye contact. I downed the rest of my drink. “It’s past two in the morning,” he said, stuttering.

“Then go home, chum,” I said. “We’ll lock up.”

When I finally looked up, recognition dawned in his face. His eyes darted between me and the four men sitting around the table. Sweat beading down his forehead, he scurried off without another glance.

“Right. Looks like everyone’s out. It’s time,” I said, standing up, as my lapdogs followed suit.

I started toward the bar, which spanned the length of the back of the club. Behind the shelves was a mirror, and I caught a glimpse of my reflection. Damn. I looked exhausted. The dark circles under my eyes made me look like I’d died a week ago. Oh well, dead men walking could still get a job done.

The door to the left of the bar led to a staircase, which went up to an office. The prick who owned the place overlooked the dance floor from his desk through double-sided glass. Voyeuristic creep.

He was still in his office, his back to us as he hunched over a sleek glass desk. The rest of the room matched with the modern centerpiece. Stainless steel artwork on the walls, graphite suede wingback chairs. It all seemed a bit pretentious to me.

The globe-shaped lights overhead glinted off the bald circle at the top of the man’s head while thin tufts of hair stood on end all around it. His sport coat was about two sizes too big for him, making him look like a balding child in adult clothing.

Bradley Miller had been causing problems in the community for as long as I could remember, beating up hookers, selling drugs to kids. I was a teenager when I first heard about some of the shit he pulled, and his name left a sour taste in my mouth.

I nodded at my men, and Marco, my favorite, who had the temper of a Rottweiler, took his baseball bat to a glass shelf against the wall. It shattered into a million pieces, and the sculptures, books, and trinkets crashed to the ground.

“What the fuck?” Miller screamed, nearly falling out of his chair. He spun around to face us and slammed his laptop closed.

My big Rottweiler smashed a vase off of a table, shattering the coffee table. “Bradley Miller,” I said.

“What the hell are you doing? Who are you?” he asked.

Any other day I would have been pissed that he didn’t know who I was, but I was in a giving mood so I wasn’t going to punish him for the disrespect.

I walked up to his desk, the glass crushing beneath my Cordovan shoes. I stopped just short of his desk. He probably had an interior designer who’d told him the glass would make the room feel bigger. It was smudged with fingerprints.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I said. “I don’t think you’re in the position to be asking me any questions right now.”

“What do you want? Money? I can get you money!” he whimpered. The buttons of his shirt looked like it was just about ready to pop off, while the loose skin of his turkey neck draped above his yellowed collar. If I didn’t have a stomach of steel, it would have made me gag.

I laughed, the sound so loud and boisterous it filled the room. Over the years, I had learned that it was one hell of a tactic to make people uncomfortable. Miller slicked back his graying hair with sweaty palms.

I wiped a fake tear from my eye when I stopped laughing. “Money? You think I want your filthy money, you piece of shit?”

My men walked up on either side of him while two stayed behind. Marco, my baseball bat boy, eyed the glass desk with such ferocity like it was a piece of meat dangling over a lion’s head. He really liked smashing things, and that’s why I’d gotten him that baseball bat with his name embossed on its sweet spot. It read “Marco” in cursive, and it was the last thing many men saw before it connected with their faces and knocked their lights out.

“Then what is it?” Miller mumbled. He was terrified, like a little Chihuahua, I would have said, but that would have been a disservice to Bullet’s recent bravery.

“You’ve been a bad, bad boy, old man. Word around town spreads fast,” I said.

“W-what? Is this about that incident with the waitress? I already handled that with HR!”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. How long was his list of sins, really? “Our women talk. And they’ve had a lot to say about you.”

His eyes widened as reality set in.

“Good boy. It’s finally clicking, isn’t it?” I said. He nodded his head limply.

“How many women have you beaten since you started using our services?”

“Your services?” Bradley said. “Fuck. You own the brothels, don’t you? Look, man, I can pay you for the damage. How much? Ten thousand? Twenty? Fifty? Whatever you want, I just need this to be kept silent.”

He thought he could buy me? What a fool. Nevertheless, I nodded to Marco to stand down just to see what Miller would do.

He stumbled across the room and yanked a painting off the wall. His fingers shook as he fiddled with the combination on the cheap-as-shit safe concealed there. His password was one-two-three-five-four. Dumbass.

Miller desperately pulled out stacks and stacks of hundreds. I could see the sweat that had beaded up across his forehead drip down his temples and over his bushy eyebrows. He tried to wipe the sweat away with one hand while he fumbled to gather the stacks of Benjamins in his arms. Some fell to the floor as he made his way back to us and dropped it onto the desk.

“H-here. Is this good?” he asked.

I picked up one of the stacks tied together with a rubber band. My fingers felt slimy just touching his dirty cash, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many women he’d exploited to get it?

I titled my head left to right, though I’d never had any intention of taking his filthy money. “No.” Bradley visited our brothels many times, beating and torturing our women, but he spaced it out,

rotating between dozens of brothels all over Queens, thinking he could disappear and never get caught. But I did.

The women who worked at our brothels deserved respect. The work was tough enough, and having the likes of Miller hurting our women wouldn’t stand. We didn’t operate our brothels like others did. We took a cut of the money, of course, but we paid for the women’s healthcare and taxes. In the eyes of the law, our girls were formally employed, and they would never be thrown in a cell because our grounds were heavily protected—thanks to Douglas.

I nodded at Marco to give him the go-ahead. I appreciated men like Marco who could understand what it was I wanted without having to say a word.

With a sinister smile, he raised his bat above his head and smashed it down into the desk. Miller backed off from the glass, his eyes wide with fear. If he didn’t want this to happen, he shouldn’t have been such a depraved piece of shit.