I stalked down the stairs, pissed at myself, at Viktor, and at the world in general. I was barely holding onto my control. It had taken everything in my power to step back and remove myself from her vicinity.
I want.
When I looked down outside and saw her laughing and talking to Viktor, it stopped me in my tracks. When she impishly smiled and held out her hand to him before rising on one toe and turning from a woman to a goddess in one delicate move, I had to work to breathe. She looked so tiny next to Viktor’s huge form as she stretched her body into a position that required both strength and grace.
I had cut my meeting short with Vlad just so I could come and find her. I knew she hadn’t meant anything by her actions, and I knew she wasn’t playing with Viktor’s heart. Hell, even he knew that. But I couldn’t stop myself from accusing her of being the femme fatale. I had hoped to ruffle her up, to give me an excuse to stamp my mark on her. It was a selfish, possessive move that she didn’t deserve.
What the fuck was wrong with me? I didn’t obsess over women—they obsessed over me. She was a strait-laced chick with possibly the worst luck of anyone I knew. She was doing her damnedest to get back on the straight and narrow. Meanwhile, I was rich as fuck because I was willing to do all the low things most people wouldn’t do for money. Life was unjust.
I stomped into my office. I was annoyed to find Vlad still sitting on my couch, drinking a vodka. Anyone else would get kicked out, but Vlad lived by a different set of rules.
“You finish doing what you needed to do?” he asked, his innuendo subtle enough that it could be taken many different ways.
Before I could answer, my phone rang.
I glanced at the number. “It’s Chris.” Chris was one of our hired scouts. An outsider who was friends with half the police force. We paid him a pretty penny to feed us intel about what was happening on the street. “Chris,” I said into my phone.
“Hey, I thought I’d drop by.”
Usually, we discussed things on the phone. The fact that he wanted to talk in person wasn’t a good sign. “Sure, where are you?”
“I’m five minutes out.”
I hung up and looked at Vlad. “Chris is on his way.”
Vlad’s eyebrows went up. “That’s not good.”
“Looks like everyone’s being careful these days.”
He slowly got up, leaving his dirty, wet glass on my coffee table. “You’re making a mistake, harboring that girl.”
“Leave it,” I said, keeping my tone mild. I started to walk outside.
He was surprisingly agile. “She’d better be worth it.”
I gave him a steady look. “You have something to say, Vlad?”
He shook his head. “Just making conversation.”
Together we walked outside and watched Chris pull up in his maroon Camry. The guy was carrying an extra thirty-five pounds on his frame, and there was a baby car seat in the back. He told me once that he didn’t have kids, but nothing made him more invisible than looking like a dad.
“Chris,” I said as he got out and looked around.
He walked towards us. “Hey, thanks for meeting me.”
“You want to come upstairs?”
He shook his head. “Nah. I’m heading out of town shortly.”
Vlad and I exchanged looks.
“What’s going on?” I asked him.
Chris looked around before answering. “Last night’s hit was on the Somalian group. They were bringing in a shipment, and a gunfight happened in the street with Bunko’s group. The only casualties were from the Somalian group.”
“How do we know Bunko’s responsible?”
“They don’t yet have forensic confirmation, but witness statements tie them to the hit.”
We all knew this was Bunko, but I needed to understand his strategy. “And the shipment?”
“Bunko’s men left it. Didn’t even try to take it.”
So, they were just trying to take out the group. “Anything else?”
He looked worried. “Word is, the entire Somalian group has gone missing.”
“What do you mean, missing?”
“Their crib was found empty. Looks like they left in a rush. Half-eaten meals. Chairs turned over. That kind of shit.”
“How many?”
He winced. “Estimate is fourteen people missing.”
“Dead?”
He shook his head. “No clue. There are no bodies, there was no blood. No sign of them anywhere.”
“What about their base? Did they take anything?” The Somalians had a small flophouse and garage that they used to ship pretty much anything they could get their hands on. They were not the most organized group and were willing to take on all the dirty little jobs the rest of us didn’t want to touch.
He shook his head. “Nothing taken. Police got there and seized everything. Guns, fentanyl, some coke, and all their cash. It’s like the entire group evaporated.”
“Anything else?”
Chris nodded. “I don’t know what this means, but everyone is talking about a woman. Chatter indicates that Bunko’s men are looking for her.”
I could feel Vlad shift beside me. I played dumb. “Who is she?”
“She witnessed a murder, and she can take Bunko down. She’s a hot topic these days.”
“Any idea who she is or where she is?”
Chris shook his head. “She was in police custody, but she’s gone to the wind. It’s like she’s disappeared. There are rumors the Italian sect has control of her, but that’s unconfirmed.”
Vlad interjected. “You’re leaving town?”
Chris looked grim. “Things are getting pretty hot on the street. Everyone is edgy and trigger-happy. Time for me to take that long fishing trip I’ve been planning for a few years.”
“You coming back?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Maybe. Not until the smoke clears.”
I handed him an envelope of cash. “That should catch you up to what we owe you.”
He looked pained and then looked back at me. “I like you, Andrusha. You need to be careful. This is just the start of things. It’s going to get a lot uglier.”
I nodded, hating that he was right. Vlad and I watched as he got back in his car and drove off.
Beside me, Vlad lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply. “So, your resource is the police witness?”
“If we can get Bunko off the street, it’s worth the effort.”
“When they find out you have her, it’s not going to be pretty.”
I was tired of everyone telling me how bad it was going to get. We needed to retreat and focus our energy on surviving this. “How many shipments do we have going out on average per week?” I knew the answer. I wanted to know if Vlad did.
“We’ve cut it from twelve to six.”
I glanced at him. “Shut everything down. Anything that isn’t legal and bolted down I want stopped by the end of this week.”
“That’s going to hurt us. We won’t have the cash flow to cover the costs of operations if we do that.”
“If we get attacked while we are moving product, we’ll be out the cost of our supplies. It’ll cost more in the long run. Shut it all down, and put everyone on either security or training.”
“What do I tell the men?”
“Nothing. If they ask questions, you remind them to keep their mouths shut.”
“Yeah.”
I turned to walk back inside. “I’m taking the rest of the night off. Tell my detail to be ready in fifteen.”
Vlad looked at me with dark eyes, but he didn’t say a word.
I sat in the private back room of Bastelli’s best club. All the crime leaders in this town were there. Carlo had called an emergency meeting. He was the oldest, and he had the longest standing relationships with the rest of us. We all trusted him, even if we didn’t trust each other. If he thought we all needed to get on the same page, we needed to get on the same page.
Around us, half-naked waitresses served food and booze while dancers on poles performed in G-strings. Each of us had our own pole dancer and our own waitress. Bastelli, no matter what the occasion, thought we needed to either be drunk or horny.
I stared blindly at the woman dancing in front of me, waiting for the meeting to start.
I tried to remember the last time I had been at the Velvet Petal. Had I visited there in the last two years? Had Olivia possibly been one of my dancers? It seemed like all our meetings happened in these places. I tended to block out the women when we discussed business.
Bastelli yelled at me and pointed at my dancer. “You want a lap dance? You just have to tell her.”
I shook my head and winked at her. “Not tonight, gorgeous.”
Bastelli didn’t take no for an answer. “Come on. You have a problem with one of my girls, I can get you a new girl. She’s one of my best, though.”
If I refused, she would probably get in trouble. I knew how this shit went. And sometimes it was just easier to play the part.
I motioned to the girl. “Sure, darling. Come on.”
She straddled me and started to slowly gyrate around my body. I smelled coconut oil lotion. I put a pleasant look on my face and thought about Olivia again. What kind of lap dance did she give? What did she smell like? The thought of Olivia moving against me wearing just her panties had me instantly jacked.
I pulled out a few hundreds and handed them to the dancer, who was just getting warmed up. Neither of us wanted this transaction, so we might as well wrap it up. “Thanks. You were amazing. Can you give me a show on your pole?”
She happily tucked the money in her bikini bottoms and walked back towards her pole.
The meeting got started, and I sat back, listening to everyone squabble about what next steps to take against Bunko. Carlo did his best to wrangle everyone into a general consensus, which was basically that we needed to work as a team to take him down. No backstabbing.
Carlo made eye contact with me. “What about you?”
I needed information. The only problem was that no one liked to share. “I think we need to do some research.”
“What do you have in mind?”
I looked at Bastelli. “Do you have the tape of the night of the shooting in your club?”
He shrugged. “We already reviewed it. There was nothing on it that meant anything.”
No one, ever, wanted to share intel. But I wanted to get my hands on images of Bunko’s team. “A second pair of eyes doesn’t hurt.”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
To change the subject, I spoke to the entire team. “I think Detective Klaassen is dirty. She’s also our best lead.”
“Detective Klaassen is helping run the police task force against Bunko,” Carlo said.
Mikey leaned forward. “What makes you think that?” he asked me.
“Right now, it’s just a hunch, but something is seriously off with her.”
Mikey shook his head. “You and your fucking hunches. They always suck, and they always come true.”
“I’m trying to retrace her steps. If any of you have anything on her, spin it my way.”
Bastelli nodded. “I’ll ask around.”
The meeting dragged on with a lot more in-house fighting and little being decided. No one liked Bunko. We all agreed he would fuck things up. But we couldn’t get our shit together.
I stood up. “Keep your eyes on the detective. Whatever she gives us, feed it back here. Anything she has on Bunko will just make us stronger.”
Everyone begrudgingly agreed. We were too damn competitive. None of us played well in the sandbox. But we all knew we were running out of options.
Bastelli stood up and spoke in my ear. “Talk to Morton at the Velvet Petal. He has a copy of that night for you.”
Without thanks, I turned and walked out.
I was more than half-cut when I left that meeting, and then Morton wanted to drink with me before he handed me the copy of the tape. I think, at Bastelli’s request, he was supposed to pump me for information. He wasn’t a bad guy, but I think he knew within seconds of talking to me that I wasn’t going to give him anything.
Still, we went through the motions. This is how the game was played. We were all running a con on someone else, all the time. We all had different motivations, but sometimes both parties, without even talking about it, knew the drill.
We finished another fucking lap dance and half a bottle of vodka before he handed me the fob. “I added some footage around the dancer.”
“Which one?” I played dumb.
“The one who witnessed the crime.”
It made sense to give me that footage, but this was also a test to see if I knew her whereabouts.
“I’ll check it out.”
I slid another couple hundred under the dancer’s G-string and walked out. Viktor waited outside with four of my men.
He looked at me when I got in. “How did it go?”
“I’ve more booze in my body than I want at the moment, but I got what I was looking for.”
He glanced over at me. “You’re glowing.”
I shook my head and wiped at my clothes. “Why do they always have to wear that glittery body paint? It fucks with my suits.”
“Meanwhile, the rest of us sat outside waiting,” Viktor said dryly.
I looked at him, knowing he was kidding. Viktor hated strip clubs. “My job is way less fun than it looks.”
He gave a short laugh. “What’s funny is that you actually mean that.”
“When this shit passes, I’m going to let you take care of some of these meetings.”
An hour later, I sat at my desk in the dark, watching the Velvet Petal security tapes while nursing the biggest vodka I could pour myself. I needed to focus on Bunko and all his meetings he had at the club the night of the murder, except I couldn’t pull my eyes off Olivia, who was in one upper corner of the screen, doing a pole dance for someone. When she went up the pole, she went out of view of the camera, but when she slid down, I was hypnotized by the way she moved.
There’s no way she’s a virgin.
That was my first thought when I initially watched her dance. She was sexy as fuck, but I would catch these minuscule expressions that told me she was also watchful and alert. She hid that part of herself well.
I found myself rewinding her dancing three times. I had the biggest hard-on of my life. I shouldn’t have been watching this tape, but that was part of the reason I had asked Bastelli for the tape, wasn’t it? There was this really sick part of me that wanted to see her dance.
I knew she’d be hurt if she ever found out I’d watched it, but when she danced on that pole, I thought she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen in my life. It was another piece of the puzzle that I called Olivia.
I drank until I was close to passing out. About five shots past whiskey dick, I staggered upstairs.
