Menace (Scarlet Scars #1)(8)
“What?”
“Are you going to kill her for that?”
I shrug. “Guess we’ll find out.”
Chapter Three
A thousand dollars.
I count it out—ten crisp, new one-hundred dollar bills—as I slip in the back entrance of Mystic, passing through the metal door someone propped open with a broken cinderblock (yeah, because that’s safe...). Thumping bass rattles the dark, winding hallway, music coming at me from every direction as I pass by a dozen rooms, a few with the doors closed. Every room has a different vibe, a different song playing, and it all kind of converges out here in the middle. Lights flash, a multitude of colors, so intense as they meld with the music that it’s almost like you can feel them running through your system.
From the corner of my eye, I can see shadows moving, but I don’t purposely look in any of the rooms, giving them privacy. It’s a matter of respect. Nobody really likes being back here, so the least I can do is let them keep whatever shred of dignity they manage to dig up.
I make my way to the front, to the wide-open club space, the music from the hallway drowned out by whatever vulgar rap song is playing.
Something about popping pussies.
I don’t know. Don’t look at me.
I didn’t pick it.
The crowd is thin at this hour (or really, most hours...) and the women are weary, counting down the seconds until four o’clock strikes so they can put their clothes back on and vacate the premises. Go home to their lives, where they’re mothers, and wives, and sisters, where they run errands and take classes until it’s time to come back to this hellhole.
It’s exhausting, you know, entertaining and satisfying. People turn their noses up at the business, judging, like snobby little f*ck-sticks, but it’s a decent job, and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. It’s honest work... not like, well, pickpocketing.
Whatever.
I head through the place, not stopping to acknowledge anyone. They all tower over me, the women wearing six-inch heels to keep eye-level with the men, while I’m currently barefoot.
Barefoot.
In a strip club.
Yeah, I haven’t seen my dignity in a long time.
The office is in the corner, near the front entrance, tucked in beneath the DJ booth. I approach the closed door, hesitating, before tapping on it.
The door opens a crack, and I slip in right away, hearing it close behind me, locks securing. It makes my skin crawl. Locks are the sound of imprisonment.
Two young guys sit along the side of the room, attention fixed to a wall full of surveillance monitors. I avert my eyes, not wanting to see. It’s easier to pretend nobody is watching those things. They say it’s for our safety, that they watch us to keep us from harm, but I’d wager the thousand bucks I’m holding that if someone started mutilating any of those women, those two dickwads would just sit here and jerk off.
“I’m surprised to see you,” a voice says behind me. “Figured you had other plans this weekend, since you said you weren’t coming in.”
“I did,” I say, turning to face him. George Amello. He’s in his late fifties, a clean-shaven Italian man with a wide smile and thinning hair. “I made some money.”
“You made money,” he says, sitting down behind his desk, his dark eyes on me. “How?”
“Does it matter?”
He laughs, a big, boisterous kind of laugh that makes people uncomfortable. “No, I guess it doesn’t. How much you got for me?”
I step around the side of his desk, over to where he is, and pull myself onto it, sitting on the corner, facing him. My dress rides up, the tops of my lacy thigh-highs visible. I hand him the stack of cash, and he takes it, his gaze lingering on my thighs for a moment before he starts counting.
When he finishes, he opens a desk drawer and tosses the cash into it. He says nothing, just takes it. Not long ago, he used to offer promises, words of encouragement, but these days his brand of help is more like extortion, like I’m paying for his silence.
Well, I kind of am, but that’s beside the point here...
His hand finds its way to my knee before running up my thigh, slipping beneath the bottom hem of my dress, his calloused fingertips caressing my skin. He’s handsy, sometimes copping a feel—inspecting the goods, he calls it—but he never tries to take it any further. Some might say he’s a decent human being for it. I say he’s just embarrassingly impotent.
No amount of little blue pills will get that gearshift out of park, if you know what I’m saying.
So I tolerate it... for now... until the day comes when I don’t need this place or his help anymore.
There’s another knock on the door, and George gets up with a sigh, pulling his hand away as he struts to the door, unlocking it and yanking it open.
“Boss,” a quiet male voice says as someone walks in. I look that way, tensing when I see a vaguely familiar guy. Young, with a buzzed head and soft hazel-colored eyes. He was at the bar tonight, the one a few blocks away.
He’d been with that guy, the one with the scar on his face and a lot of money in his wallet, the one drinking cheap rum straight from the bottle.
Oh shit.
I turn away, my back to the guy as he sits behind me, on the other side of the desk, hoping like hell he didn’t notice me tonight. George retakes his seat, his hand right back on my thigh, tracing the lace with his fingertips.