“Well, if he’s got a problem with seein’ past that shit, sugar, then he might not want me even if he did expend the effort to look at me, which he did not, but I don’t want me any of him, either.”
Ashlynn looked like she let out a sigh of relief.
Whatever.
I turned my attention back to the door. “What’s his name?”
“Daisy—”
I looked back at Ashlynn. “Don’t wanna know it to go after him, honey bunch. Wanna know it to avoid him.”
Ashlynn nodded. “His name is Marcus. Marcus Sloan.”
Oh yeah.
That name said it all even if the suit and the hundred dollar haircut didn’t.
He was class.
He was loaded.
He was trouble.
And I was a good girl.
So he’d been a good view for a few seconds.
And just like you always had to do in life, you took the good when you got it as you got it.
And when it was time for it to be done, you didn’t hold on.
You moved on.
So I put Marcus Sloan out of my mind and I moved on.
Chapter Two
Nothing
Marcus
“Run the tape.”
“Sir, Smithie says—”
For the first time in a very long time, Marcus Sloan’s composure slipped.
“Run…the goddamned tape,” Marcus ground out through his teeth.
The man in front of him sitting in the chair at a bank of monitors swallowed visibly, his eyes shifting only momentarily to the man at Marcus’s back before he turned to the controls.
He hit some and all of the monitors blanked except one came up and the tape ran.
Marcus stood still and forced himself to watch.
It didn’t last long.
He was not a man unaware that acts of lasting brutality could be delivered in shockingly short periods of time.
In fact, he’d built an empire on this.
He had just never seen anything like that.
The monitor cut out when the action on it had played out and the man turned it off.
But Marcus’s eyes didn’t leave it even when he asked, “Where’s Smithie?”
“He’s cut up about this, Mr. Sloan. Fired Milo ’cause he fucked up. Lost his mind when he did it. I was there. Thought he’d rip his head off. He—”
Marcus’s gaze moved to the man.
“This was not the question I asked,” he said slowly.
“He’s…I think…” the man moved uncomfortably in his chair and said no more.
“I won’t ask again,” Marcus told him quietly.
“I…I heard someone say, uh…he and Lenny… That is, I heard they went to go see Shirleen Jackson and Darius Tucker.”
Lenny, Marcus knew in keeping tabs, was one of Smithie’s bouncers. Good kid, working his way through college providing security at a strip club. Marcus had met him once, and if he’d gotten a whiff of what he needed from the man, he’d have recruited him. But Smithie shared Lenny wanted to devote his life to finding a cure for cancer, something he’d lost a grandmother and aunt to, so he was studying biology in hopes one day to do that.
He might be studious but he was also a large, dark-skinned black man with a talent for security.
And if he’d seen what Marcus just saw, now he was a man with a mission that might put his future plans in jeopardy.
That did not factor to Marcus.
Only one thing factored.
And Shirleen Jackson and her nephew Darius Tucker, both colleagues of Marcus’s, though they played different games on different turf, were a good start.
But only a start.
He turned on his foot and moved from the room, his man Brady following him.
Once they’d cleared it, they walked through the silent strip club, now closed when it should be open, lit only by its copious red neon.
When they were halfway to the front door, Marcus kept moving and didn’t look to Brady even as he ordered, “I want a meeting with Lee Nightingale.”
“Uh, sir?”
He stopped when they arrived at the door, his hand on the handle, and looked to Brady.
“Liam Nightingale. He’s recently opened an investigations firm in LoDo. Get me a meet. Immediately.”
“For what?” Brady asked.
“I’ll explain that when I sit down with him,” Marcus answered.
Brady got closer.
His man was tall, lean, cut, pretty-boy features, light-brown hair, all of this hiding his ability to get a variety of jobs done in a variety of creative ways. In other words, however he needed to do it to get it done.
He was uncomfortable, not with what he said next. Marcus had no problems with the people he trusted around him speaking their minds and Brady knew that.
He was uncomfortable with Marcus making any moves that might be unsafe.
This didn’t happen often. In fact, it happened rarely and only when the need arose. But Brady was protective in more ways than it being part of his job description to protect his boss.
Marcus had bought that loyalty not with money but with something only men like him and Brady knew was much more precious.
“Mr. Sloan, we don’t know dick about that guy.”
“If you think that’s true, you haven’t been paying attention,” Marcus told him, his tone not harsh, simply informative. “He hasn’t been on the scene long but he’s made quite an impact in the time he has.”
“I’ve heard about him. I’ve heard he gets the job done. I’ve also heard his dad is a cop. Veteran. Years on the force. His brother is also a cop. So is his best friend, Chavez. And Chavez’s younger brother, no one knows what that guy is. All they know is that Hector Chavez is a wild card and anyone with links to a wild card like that makes me uneasy.”