Chapter 49

I know her type. Not well, but I know it. Girls like Charleigh don’t hang out with guys like my brothers and me. In fact, our paths seldom cross. We usually end up with the bad girls, the dirty girls, who don’t care that we make our living doing illegal shit. They just want our money and the security that offers. They want to be with the guy with the most power so they can lord it over other women, their friends included. In return, they’ll fuck us day and night—even our friends, if we ask them to—and put up with the boatload of shit women in our world are required to. As long as the money keeps flowing, they don’t give a damn what they have to do.

But someone like Charleigh, she doesn’t know what to do about a guy like me—an admittedly dangerous and scary prick. Given the choice, she’d run in the opposite direction, were she to confront me in a dark alley. I represent everything she’s not. Everything that’s dark and forbidding and treacherous about the world.

Everything existing in a man who would hurt her father.

And God bless the man. Or damn him to hell, depending on your perspective. Just as my brothers and I were leaving his dump of a shop, he called after us, offering her. Yeah, he fucking offered us his daughter. Maybe not in the way we might have liked. But he put it out there when he suggested that maybe we have some work for her. Something that pays better than her little job at the shop.

Seems the man might be smarter than I give him credit for. Or at least more resourceful

I’m sure he had in mind having her serve cocktails or some such in the game room. I’m not sure he knows much about what we do in the rest of the club. But he knows enough. And yet he still dangled her out there in front of us, like a piece of meat to a hungry pride of lions. He’s seen enough beautiful women come and go in the club, for a variety of reasons, to know that his Charleigh would fit in just fine here.

Whether she wants to or not.

That fact, he does not give a shit about.

Given the work I do, I hang out with some scumbags. Hell, sometimes I’m a scumbag myself. But this man, Gil Gates, has taken that shit to a new low.

Offering his daughter.I have to say, even I am a little offended by that.

But not too offended.

“Hey.”

I yank my head out of my hands and look up to see my brother Kir at the door.

“Got another migraine?” he asks, gesturing in my direction with a toss of his chin.

I run a hand over my smooth head, shaved bald by my barber that morning, as if that would relieve the tightening belt around my brain. “I’m fine. What’s up, Kir?”

I lean back in Papa’s chair—even if it had been Mikey’s for two years, I’ll never call any of this his—and crack my knuckles.

My brother makes himself at home opposite my desk. “How are the numbers looking?” he asks. “Mikey’s numbers?”

I shake my head. It’s not worth being angry anymore. Waste of my energy. It’s time to look forward.

“Well,” I start, “I met with the accountant, and he confirmed that Mikey pretty much used the place as his personal ATM machine.”

Kir scoffs. “Tell me something I don’t already know. I swear, if I could get my hands around that fucker’s neck—”

But I wave him off. I’m tired of the ‘ifs.’ It’s time to deal with the situation. Not dwell in the past no matter how infuriating it is.

“We can get out of this, Kir. We can pull cash from the other businesses as long as we need to. We’ll collect what we’re owed, pay off the debts Mikey racked up, and have the place back to Papa’s standards in no time.”

“What about the girl?”

Charleigh.

Fuck. I knew he was going to bring her up.

I choose my words carefully. My brother doesn’t need to know I’ve spent the better part of a day thinking about the lovely lady.

“She… she can help us. She will help us.”

A shit-eating grin makes its way across my brother’s face.

Am I conflicted? Am I ever conflicted? For fuck’s sake, am I pussy-whipped by a woman I don’t even know? Who I saw from a distance at my father’s funeral two years ago, and who I just saw for fifteen minutes as I gave her father a warning beat-down?

What the fuck is wrong with me?

Kir shrugs. “I saw how you looked at her. Better keep it together, my brother.”

Bastard. That’s the problem working with family. They know you too well. They can anticipate your next move. Your next words. Your next thoughts.

Push your buttons and all that shit.

I ignore my brother. Hell, I saw him checking her out, too. But I’m not saying anything. Not yet. “What does her father know about the club? Aside from the card rooms?” I ask.

“Vadik, he knows everything. How do you think he got his lame ass into so much debt? By sitting in the back of the room like a good little boy? He’s up to his eyeballs in this place. Paying the strippers for lap dances, hiring out the hookers for a good time. The man ain’t no saint.”

That makes it all the more sordid, his willingness to pimp out his daughter.

Not that that changes anything. But as much as I’ve been around, I can still be shocked by the decisions people make from time to time.

Blows my motherfucking mind, this one does.

* * *

Vadik

I lift a paperweight from Papa’s desk, a gift my mother got him on one of their working vacations, a trip to Italy to meet with the brotherhood there. In the yellowed glass there is a replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It’s funny, that such a clichéd little thing brought him so much happiness.

I roll the cold glass in my hands and, for about the tenth time that day, wish the old bastard were still around.

“He’s throwing his daughter to the wolves,” I say, stating the obvious.

Kir nods slowly, scrutinizing me. I wish he would back the fuck off. “You got concerns about that?”

I rub my temples again before I answer. “Nope. We got business to attend to.”

“Vadik. Is this going to be an issue for us?” Kir asks.

I won’t dignify his pain in the ass interrogation. I get to my feet. “C’mon. Let’s get a drink.”

He claps me on the back on the way to the door. “Now that’s my big brother.”

And that’s my middle brother. The only way to change the subject is to mention alcohol.

“Dominika!” I holler as we settle into the dark, paneled-wall lounge.

I sink deeply into a crackly leather chair, and the scent of everything I remember from my childhood rises up to meet me—lemon oil on the furniture, cigars, and expensive whisky. I loved coming to the club when I was a kid. All three of us did.

Of course, Mama only let us come in the off-hours, when there were no girls running around half naked, and no grown men crying because they’d bet their house on a card game.

“Vadik. Kir,” Dominika says a little over-solicitously.

It’s not like her to suck up. But she’s nervous. If the club closes, she has nowhere to go. Hell, she’s still bitter my father didn’t leave her a red cent in his will.

Shitty treatment of a long-time mistress, but I have no doubt he had his reasons.

“Couple scotches, please,” Kir says.

I watch Dominika disappear behind the bar, choosing the top shelf brand she knows my brothers and I prefer.

She brings us two Baccarat crystal rocks glasses, Kir’s with ice and mine without. I suck down the liquor in one long draw. The migraine that was threatening was finally taking its leave thanks to the pain pills my doctor prescribed. Pills that are not supposed to be taken with alcohol.

But there are times I’ll do anything to make the pain go away. Kind of like how Gil Gates will do anything to get my brothers and me off his back.

* * *