Better When He's Brave (Welcome to the Point #3)(72)
“What do you mean, give them something to value?”
I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “You hire the prettiest girls you can find. You give them a degree of security they wouldn’t have out on the street, but they are still getting naked for strangers and that can be demeaning. Class the joint up. Get rid of the pink everywhere. It’s gaudy. Make this place feel expensive and worthwhile and the girls won’t just work here, they’ll own it. Plus you can charge more and bring in a better class of loser. This place feels like a throwback to harder times, and after that shootout . . .” I shrugged again because he wasn’t stupid and knew exactly what I was talking about. “You need to breathe new life into this place just like you’re trying to do with Novak’s other old businesses.”
Nassir muttered something in a language I didn’t understand but it sounded exotic and sexy. No wonder Key ran. Having all that smoldering intensity and sexy appeal focused solely on her had to be nearly impossible to resist.
“You think a new coat of paint and some new decor would have kept Key here?” He sounded skeptical.
“No. I think she had to go so when she comes back she can do it knowing she’ll probably never leave again. That’s a hard pill to swallow. I think if she knew she was more than just tits and ass and a pretty show you would’ve gotten a lot further with her.”
He grunted at me and sat down in the chair behind the ugly desk. He looked at something on the computer and then over my shoulder to where Chuck was still standing as a silent sentinel.
“What do you think? Is this a crazy idea?”
The giant African American man barked out a laugh that had me jumping a little. “No way. It’s f*cking brilliant. The regulars are too comfortable and you have too much on your plate. Let her tear this place apart and fix it up. Let her make it as pretty as she is. No one will know what hit them.”
I shot Race a look out of the corner of my eye and then shifted my feet nervously. This wasn’t what I had expected at all. “Uh . . . I can’t play around with laundering money. The feds already have me on their radar and Titus will kill all of us after he locks us up if he thinks any of that is going on.”
Nassir flicked a look to Race then back to me and he folded his hands together and leaned back in the chair. He looked like a devil sitting on a tattered throne.
“That’s one of the reasons I need to finish rebuilding my club. We always tried to keep Spanky’s clean. Right now just the bar is handling anything we need filtered through legitimate means. We can find another avenue for that while you’re here, but only if you take up the reins. Unless you agree to do this, then the only other place I have for you is up on that stage, are we clear? And you have to see the job through to the end, not just until I put a slug in the Irishman.”
I fidgeted nervously. When people called Nassir ruthless they weren’t kidding. He had a way of maneuvering people and situations so that he got the exact outcome he was after. I felt like there was zero wiggle room for me if I agreed to do this. There was far more responsibility involved than I had been expecting when I planned on asking him to put me to work. I didn’t know anything about managing a strip club or how to work with fierce strippers forged in the fire of this brutal city. I didn’t know how Titus would react to me working for Nassir. He made it clear he wasn’t a fan of the guy’s business practices and ability to skate around those pesky little things like laws and regulations. But then again, it wasn’t like I had any other option on the horizon. I was just waiting for the showdown with Conner, so I might as well help some other ladies out until judgment day found me.
“If you can keep it legal, all of it aboveboard, so that Titus doesn’t have any reason to doubt me, then I’m in.”
Race chuckled and patted me so hard on the back I almost fell over while Nassir studied me hard.
“The cop’s opinion matters that much?”
I tilted my chin up and made sure all three of them could see how serious I was when I replied, “It’s the only thing that matters.”
Chuck laughed from behind me. “Welcome to the family, pretty girl. This should be interesting.”
Interesting was probably the simplest thing it was going to be. No matter what I did I just seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the grip of this city. At least I was smart enough to know struggling against it only made the hold tighter. Like Keelyn was soon going to figure out, once you came back here you did it knowing you were staying forever, and there was a weird kind of peace in that knowledge. I was going to die trying to protect my home or my home was eventually going to kill me. It was the same for all of us, which made us exactly what Chuck said—a family. The most dysfunctional one ever, but still we all had the same fate that tied us together.
Lucky us.
Chapter 16
Titus
I JERKED AWAKE AS my fist, which was propping up my head, slipped away from under my chin. I had drifted off while sitting in Bax’s hospital room after having a fast and furious text argument with him since he couldn’t adequately tell me to f*ck off through the pins and wires still holding his jaw shut. Dovie hadn’t left his side since the night he had forced her to go home. The reason I was there now was that she needed to run home and clean up the house a bit because Bax was getting released tomorrow. He was supposed to have been released two weeks earlier but had had a setback when one of the multiple screws holding his shattered ankle together had broken and he developed a nasty staph infection. He ended up requiring more surgery and more time laid up in recovery. He demanded that Dovie spend the night in a real bed, that she rest, and when she went to argue he agreed to text me and ask me to stay with him until he was sprung loose the next day. It was kind of cute, my ultra-badass brother acquiescing because he cared so much about the spunky redhead. Dovie didn’t want him to be alone, so he texted and I showed up to stay with him. As soon as she left Bax proceeded to chew me out for not helping him keep her away. It took me a second to recognize that he was scared, really scared for her well-being and thought she would be safer away from him and me and the whole mess with Roark. He was trying to push her away for her own protection, but she was too smart and too stubborn to go.