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 Three’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.
Her eyes are on the floor again, every inch of her rigid.
She’s terrified.
His expression is relaxed, casual, a slight smile on his lips, like her fear amuses him. No idea what he could be saying. He’s not yelling, but the longer this goes on, the more the woman looks like she might collapse under the weight of his words.
After a moment, Aristov flicks the woman’s cheek so hard she winces, her head tilting up, her eyes meeting his. He says something else, and she nods, before he turns, motioning for the bartender to give him a golden-colored bottle from behind the bar.
Appleton Estates. Jamaica Rum. I can see the label as Aristov approaches, dragging the waitress along with him. He stops beside the table, in my line of sight, his hand shifting from the waitress’s waist to clutch the back of her neck.
“I’m sorry,” she says, forcing a smile, although tears brim her eyes. “I hope you can forgive me. It’ll never happen again. I promise.”
Promises. I hate promises.
People break them all the goddamn time.
I nod, because I’m not sure what to say to that. What I want to say will probably only make everything worse for her, and it seems like she’s having a rough enough time without my help.
“Rum,” Aristov says, holding the bottle out to me. The outside of it is dusty, the bottle still sealed. “I must confess, we do not sell much here. We specialize in vodka, only the best, straight from Russia.”
I take the bottle from him.
Aristov leans over, pressing a kiss to the waitress’s temple before whispering, “Go to my office, suka.”
Her head lowers, and as soon as Aristov lets go of her neck, she scurries through the club, out of sight. Aristov lingers, his eyes on me as I crack open the bottle, bringing it to my lips.
“On the house, everything,” Aristov says. “All of you. Enjoy.”
My guys, they celebrate, but I just sit here, still sipping rum while they scatter, wasting no time now that it’s free. Cheapskates.
“Join me for a drink in my office?” Aristov asks, raising his eyebrows.
I shrug as I stand up. What the hell? “Lead the way.”
His office is toward the back of the club, a small room behind a two-way mirror. He can see out, watching everything, but nobody can see in. The waitress stands inside, in the center of the room, hands clasped together in front of her.
It’s not an office in the traditional sense of the word. It looks more like a typical studio apartment in New York. Leather couches surround a square table, a small private bar opposite the door with liquor bottles on it. Vodka. Above that is a loft, a white ladder leading up to it. I don’t even have to take a guess why there’s a bed in his office.
The lighting is soft, the walls white, with a red Persian rug covering part of the marble floor.
After shutting the office door, Aristov snatches up one of the bottles. He guzzles some of the liquor as he approaches the waitress, eyes meticulously scanning her before looking at me. His free hand grasps the back of her neck again, yanking her by it, turning her my direction. She whimpers, closing her eyes. “She is stupid, this one, but she is pretty, and there is nothing she cannot handle, if you would like to try her.”
“She’s not really my type,” I say.
“Oh? What is your type?”
“The type that doesn’t cower from me in fear.”
Aristov laughs. “Ah, do those type of women exist? Most are afraid of their own shadows.”
I don’t entertain that with an answer.
He drags the waitress over to one of the couches, sitting and tugging her in front of him, shoving her down on her knees. He unbuckles his pants, not saying a word, and grabs her by her hair, pulling her face onto his lap as he pulls his dick out right in front of me.
The woman takes him into her mouth without putting up any sort of fight, and he lets out an exaggerated sigh as he smiles lazily, seeming damn pleased with himself.
Look, I’m not an idiot. This isn’t my first day on the job, if you know what I mean. I know he’s asserting his dominance or spraying his territory or whatever alpha male bullshit move you want to chalk this up to, a figurative pissing contest because I’m a rival lion who entered his den. So I get it, but the thing is, he doesn’t know me. He’s thinking this show will get under my skin, that it’ll make me uncomfortable, that I’ll cower, but that’s not happening.
I told Scarlet he didn’t scare me.
I meant that shit.
I will whip my cock out and measure that son of a bitch, right here, right now, if he pushes me. In the figurative sense, of course. Literally, my cock is staying right where it is.
“You sure you do not want a taste?” he asks, nodding his head toward the waitress blowing him. “You could fuck her. I do not mind. She squeals like a little piggie when you fill her up.”
“I appreciate it, but I’m not fucking any of your women.”
Or, well, hell, I might be.
I don’t know.
I’m still fuzzy on his history with Scarlet.
But regardless, as far as I’m concerned, she’s not his. She’s not Amello’s, either. She doesn’t belong to either of those assholes.
Strolling over to the couch across from him, I sit down, relaxing back, sipping straight from the bottle of rum, not bothering to avert my eyes. Looking away toes a lie of cowering that I’m not even coming close to crossing.
I think he realizes it, that I’m not like the others he deals with. He could slit that woman’s throat and I wouldn’t flinch. I don’t have it in me to flinch. He stops prolonging things, gripping the back of her head and shoving her down, making her gag, as he bucks his hips a few times, fucking her face until he spills down her throat.
As soon as he’s done, he yanks her away. “Get back to work.”
She runs from the room, shutting the door behind her. Aristov tucks himself back away, narrowed eyes fixed on my face. If anything, I think I’m ruffling him.
“Is there a reason you have come here?” he asks. “Since it seems to not be the appeal of my women, it must be the appeal of me, no?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not my type, either.”
He shrugs, chugging more vodka. “I do not cower.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“You have heard?” He raises his eyebrows. “Earlier this week, you said you did not know me.”
“I didn’t,” I say. “Kinda got curious when you busted into the club, spewing bullets, so I asked around. Led me here.”
“So it was the appeal of me.” He laughs, drinking some more, damn near finishing off the entire bottle in just a few minutes. How the fuck does he still have a functioning liver?
Hell, maybe he doesn’t.
Maybe that’s why he’s after Scarlet.
Maybe he needs a transplant.
Maybe they’re compatible.
I shrug, because in a roundabout way, what he says is true. I came because I had a sneaking suspicion I’d find Scarlet’s problem here. “Like you said, you don’t cower. Most people do. I’ve been in the city for a while, and I keep finding little boys who only talk the talk. So when I encounter someone who walks the walk, well, it gets me interested.”
He sits there, continuing to drink, as he thinks those words through. I can see as the liquor takes hold of him, his posture relaxing, eyelids drooping, and leg lazily moving.
“We used to do business with the Italians,” he says. “The families would come to us when they wanted something done but were too chicken. They had so many silly rules. Do not kill women, do not kill bosses, do not kill officers, but we do not have those rules. We were the loophole that kept their hands clean.”
“I don’t need loopholes,” I say, “nor do I care if my hands are clean.”
“That I have heard,” he says. “You have built a very big reputation in a very small time, Mister Scar.”
Mister Scar.
I can feel my muscles twitch when he says that, my body unconsciously reacting. I’d like to hit him, but I’d also like to walk out of here, and with my guys preoccupied with pussy, well, I’m not sure that would turn out to my advantage.
“Go big or go home, right?”
“Right,” he says. “Are you working with George Amello? Is that why you were at his club?”
I shake my head. “Someone has been robbing him. He accused me. I didn’t appreciate the insinuation, so I made an appearance to tell him how I felt about his finger pointing.”
He laughs. “I must confess—that is my fault.”
“You? Figured you were above petty larceny.”
“I am,” he says. “It was personal.”
“Personal? What did he do to you?”
“He has my girl.”
“The one you were looking for? Morgan?”
I have to force myself to use her real name.
He nods, pointing his bottle at me. “That is the one.”
“So he took a woman from you,” I say, trying to riddle it out. “Seems to me, looking at this place, you’re not exactly hurting. Is one woman really worth all that?”
He doesn’t seem to like what I’m saying. His slack expression grows hard, his shoulders squaring. Yeah, she’s worth it to him. She’s worth more than I might’ve realized.
After guzzling the last of his liquor, he shoves to his feet and strolls back over to the bar. For getting drunk so fast, his walk is awfully steady. He exchanges his empty bottle for a full one as he says, “She is different.”
Different. I can tell he means that. Hell, he almost sounds sentimental about it, like he might actually feel something for Scarlet.
“I do not like when people take what is mine,” he says, turning back around. “She is very pretty, my Morgan, and she knows it. She uses it to her advantage. It makes men want to help her, as if she needs help.” He laughs bitterly, cracking open the bottle. “She is like a siren of the sea, and the only thing that might be stronger than her call is my money. That is why I will give half a million dollars to whoever coughs her up.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“It is,” he agrees. “It is also a lot of incentive.”
That it is.
I know quite a few people who would sell out their own mother for that kind of cash. Scarlet doesn’t stand a chance. They say you can’t put a price tag on feelings, but I’m pretty fucking sure half a million is a big enough payday to wipe that away.
For most people.
“What are you going to do with her when you find her?” I ask, the irony of this whole moment not lost on me. It wasn’t long ago I was looking for the same damn woman and Seven asked me this exact question. Because men like me... men like Aristov? We react on principle. It’s ego. We’d pay half a million dollars to get our hands on someone just for the chance to watch them bleed out, and it would be worth every penny to us.
“That is my business,” he says, that answer not a surprise. Pretty sure I said something similar. He walks toward me, setting his bottle down on the table before reaching into his back pocket for a wallet. Flipping it open, he pulls out something tucked in one of the pockets, shoved in behind credit cards and who knows what else.
A photo, I realize, when he holds it out to me.
I take it carefully.
It’s worn and scratched up, the edges frayed, like he’s pulled it out and shoved it back away hundreds of times. Brown hair is pulled up, messy on top of her head, some loose strands falling down around her face. It’s Scarlet, without a doubt, but at the same time, it’s not the Scarlet I know. The girl in the picture is young—fourteen, maybe fifteen. Still a teenager, her face slightly rounded, soft with a bit of innocence. Not a hell of a lot, but some. She’s smiling her half-smile, like she’s as happy as she could possibly be, which isn’t really happy at all. More like not quite as beaten down.
“That was taken a few years ago,” he says. “She is a bit older, but she is still the same pretty girl.”
Before I can respond, there’s a knock on the door to the office. Aristov folds his wallet up, shoving it in his pocket, and snatches up his liquor bottle as he yells, “Come in!”
The door opens, a man walking in. I saw him once, at Mystic—the guy that was with Aristov, the big burly motherfucker that looks a lot like him. He hesitates when he sees me, eyes narrowing.
“What are you doing here, Markel?” Aristov asks.
“Needed to talk to you about...” Markel trails off, staring at me, before he turns to Aristov. “Am I interrupting something?”
“I was just leaving,” I say, standing up, waving my bottle of rum at Aristov. “Thanks for the drink.”
“Anytime,” he says.
I glance at the picture once more before holding it out to Aristov. He takes it back, gazing down at it in his hand as I walk away. I stroll past Markel, who watches me go.
Limerence is packed, my men nowhere in sight.
So I leave, because tonight’s not the night to start trouble, even if trouble sounds like a lot of damn fun right now. Security at the door doesn’t say a word as I leave, carrying the rum with me, because fuck it.
It’s mine now.
Seven lingers by the curb, my shadow in the darkness. He hasn’t even moved. He looks at me as I approach, assessing, like he’s figuring out what happened without asking. I get in my car, not bothering with the seatbelt, taking a swig as Seven joins me.
“Find what you were looking for?” he asks.
“Even more.”
“That’s good,” he says, hesitating before adding, “It is good, right?”
“I don’t know.” I glance at the club, my gaze skimming along the red cursive. “He wants her.”
“Who?”
“Scarlet.”
He lets out a low whistle. “What does he want with her?”
“Didn’t say, but he’s offering one hell of a reward to whoever hands her over.”
He drives away from the club, merging into traffic. Not a word is spoken, but I can see him fidgeting, his fingers drumming against the steering wheel.
He’s wondering if I’m going to take the offer.
He doesn’t ask, though.
Maybe he’s afraid of hearing my answer.
Maybe, deep down, he already knows.