I never wanted to be responsible for the well-being of anyone else, never wanted that kind of responsibility, but the old adage that sex sells is very true, and ultimately I couldn’t walk away from that kind of money. It was shocking how much it mattered to me that girls got taken care of, that they got paid for services rendered, that they had the final say in what they would or wouldn’t do. I wanted them safe regardless of where their paychecks came from, so when any of them came to me after being knocked around or with a complaint about an uncooperative client, it made me furious. Far more furious than any of the men that tried to screw me over or take me down on any given day.
Grumbling under my breath about how complicated every single situation I got myself into always seemed to be, whether it was by my own making or someone else’s, I pulled my phone out of my pocket as it started to vibrate.
Chuck’s number flashed across the screen and I swiped to answer it while climbing up the stairs in the opposite direction of where everything inside me wanted to go. She was here. She was in my home. I had finally tasted her, inhaled her, and welcomed her. I felt like I could breathe again after suffocating for months without her.
“You have a name for me?” Forgetting to put champagne on the shelf might seem like such a simple, insignificant screw-up to most. To me it was almost unforgivable.
When someone was offered a chance, given the opportunity to be part of my business, they needed to shine. I was not a second-chance kind of man.
“Yeah. I looked at the tapes. It was a kid. One of the new barbacks. Took the cases in the cooler and got distracted by a pretty girl. You have a bunch of them wandering around that club and they aren’t wearing very much.”
“That’s no excuse.” I pushed my hand through my hair and headed off toward the bathroom attached to the master.
Chuck laughed drily. “I kind of figured you would say that, boss.”
“Have him in my office in the morning.”
“He’s really just a kid, Nassir. The punishment needs to fit the crime.”
I popped the button on my pants and reached in to crank the shower on as hot as it would go. Sometimes I thought if the water was hot enough, it would finally make me clean. So far there had never been enough heat. I was still just as dirty and tainted as I had always been.
“You suddenly questioning my methods?”
It was really, really quiet for a long time. So long I thought that maybe Chuck had hung up on me. I knew sometimes what I did was too extreme for him, that sometimes I reminded him of Novak, and it turned his stomach. To stay on top in a place like the Point, you had to leave an impression, even if it was just on a silly kid that got distracted by a nice ass in a short skirt. That was the next generation coming up to run these streets, and I would be damned if they weren’t molded by my own hand and my experience.
I wouldn’t force my vision on them. I would never ask them to fight my fight. I would never ask them to believe in anything that didn’t matter to them, but I would teach them to be careful. I would teach them to watch themselves. I would teach them to identify a threat and to react accordingly. I would teach them how to survive the same way I had learned to survive.
“I might’ve questioned you before your girl came back, but now that she’s here, I doubt you’ll be as fucking unhinged as you’ve been. I had no idea Key was your own personal Jiminy Cricket.”
I had no clue what he was talking about and I told him as much. He laughed again and filled me in over his chuckling.
“It’s an old cartoon about a boy that isn’t real but is given life because his creator loves him. He has a magical cricket that is his conscience and tries to show the boy right from wrong, guides him into making good choices. I had no idea that all these years Keelyn was the thing that was keeping you tethered to being a real boy. Without her around, you became something else, wooden and inhuman.”
Even with her around I was something else. I had never been given a chance at being a real anything other than a killer, but with Key in my life, I could at least fake it, temper it down and pretend to be more man than monster wearing a muzzle and a leash.
“It’s good for everyone that she’s back, but I still want the kid in my office in the morning.”
“I’ll have him there. By the way, I went into the cooler because I know those shelves were installed right.”
I shucked my pants off as the room got steamy and flattened my hand across the bruise that Key had touched. I could feel that touch like it was branded into my skin. That was what happened when I had to earn something instead of just taking it and possessing it: the reward lingered. The payoff was so much bigger. The victory hard won and ultimately that much more satisfying.
“What was wrong with them?”
“The top braces were unscrewed from the front section. They have these rubber stoppers on them to keep them from sliding across the metal of the walk-in, and those were missing. When you set the second case on the shelf, the weight was too much and it tipped the entire rack forward. You’re really lucky you didn’t get crushed. Those bitches are heavy.”
I frowned into the mirror. “How does something like that happen?”
Chuck cleared his throat. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t happen by accident but there were too many people in and out of that cooler to tell if one person was in there longer than another.”
I frowned, not liking the implication he was laying out for me. “You think someone deliberately took the stoppers and wanted the shelves to fall?”