Rev It Up (Black Knights Inc. #3)(32)
“No, Mama.” He caught Franklin’s vigorous headshake in the rearview mirror. “I gotta go wight now.”
“Jake,” she turned to him, “could you—”
“Already on it,” he said, hooking a fast right into the parking lot of a gas station, ridiculously happy at doing this, this ordinary, mundane thing of getting the kid to a restroom, this…being a family.
Yo, I could definitely get used to this…
***
“Oh, this is gonna be fun,” Rock murmured as he glanced around the reception area at the pay-by-the-hour roach motel. The one that promised to be his home for the next few days.
There was a sad, lopsided plastic plant in one corner, a couple of painted-up ladies of the evening lounging on a ratty, red velvet settee, and a cigarillo-smoking, stained-wife-beater-wearing guy working behind a set of steel bars that separated the reception desk from the rest of the entryway.
To add to the air of seediness, the smell of sex mixed with the more pungent aromas of bottom shelf booze and stale cigarette smoke.
“I’ve seen worse,” Vanessa murmured as she slipped an arm around his waist and swayed drunkenly.
The drunkenness was all part of the act. It, along with her platinum blond wig, sky-high red patent-leather pumps, nearly nonexistent miniskirt, slick ruby lips, and enough kohl eyeliner to give a randy raccoon a heart attack, was supposed to fool everyone into thinking she was just another working girl who’d scored herself a high-class john.
Enter him: the high-class john.
The Armani suit he was wearing was stolen from Christian’s closet along with the Gucci loafers that were half a size too big and slipping against his heels.
Oui, he was gonna have one hell of a set of blisters by the time this was over. No doubt about it.
He slung an arm around her shoulders and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Now that sounds like a story I’d like to hear sometime, chère.”
“I’d tell you,” she whispered back, “but then I’d have to kill you.”
It was the standard spec-ops comeback, but he threw his head back and laughed like she’d just said the wittiest thing he’d ever heard, because, mon dieu, the feel of her pressed against his side seared him like a brand.
The next four days were going to be hell. And he was contemplating this very salient fact when he caught a look at himself in the smoky, gilt mirror clinging to the peeling wallpaper.
He barely recognized his own reflection.
With the neon-blue colored contact lenses he’d popped in his eyes, his hairless chin, and the jet-black dye he’d washed through his hair—not to mention the gold watch and four-carat diamond sparkling in his ear—he looked like a quintessential Chicago mobster.
Shades of Al Capone.
One of the good things about having a non-descript face was that a few small changes completely altered his looks.
“Hi, sugar,” Vanessa slurred to the guy working behind the bars, her voice a rough parody of itself, like she’d spent the last fifteen years smoking two packs a day. Rock considered himself a pretty good actor, but Vanessa Cordero, oui, she was world class. “We’re gonna need a room for—” she glanced up at him, pursing her glistening lips. And though this was all a giant ruse, for a moment he wished he really was taking her upstairs to peel away that ridiculously small halter-top and that barely there miniskirt in order to sink into the warm, wet welcome of her body. “How long you want, big daddy? An hour? Two?”
“Let’s make it a full night and go from there,” he winked, donning his best Chicago-accent while reaching into his jacket pocket to pull out a platinum Bulgari money clip—also on loan from The Christian Watson collection. Rock would never understand the guy’s obsession with designer labels. Right now, he missed his jeans like crazy and, oh lordy, what he wouldn’t give to have his boots back. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith checking in,” he told the guy who cast a jaded eye over his suit.
“That’ll be two hundred dollars, Mr…Smith,” the guy rasped as he chewed on the end of his cigarillo and ran a hand through the ten hairs still left atop his greasy head.
Two hundred dollars?
Uh-huh. Rock highly suspected the rates at the Stardust Hotel worked on a sliding scale. The more money you could afford to pay, the more money your stay was gonna run you.
“We’d like a room facing west,” he told the guy as he thumbed off two Benjamins and slid them between the bars. “You know, so the sun doesn’t wake us up in the morning.” And so they’d be perfectly situated to watch the hotel’s front door and the comings and goings at the bar across the street.
The guy threw the crisp bills into an old-fashioned cash register that dinged in happiness of yet another deposit before he slid Rock a key with a plastic, diamond-shaped attachment. On the attachment, in chipped white font, was the number 402.
“We’ve got a delivery coming,” he told Mr. Cigarillo, winking and running his tongue over his lips in a lewd gesture. “A few…provisions to get us through the night, if ya know what I mean.”
The guy stared at him with dead, bloodshot eyes and continued to chew on the soggy end of his cigarillo.
“Anyway,” he continued, undeterred by Sir Wife-Beater’s bored gaze, “when they get here, just send ’em on up.”
Sir Wife-Beater transferred his smoke to the other side of his mouth, flashing one severely crooked front tooth, and Rock figured that was as close as he was going to get to an acknowledgment of his request.