Page 12 of Release Me

“Hey, handsome,” she purrs.

“Not tonight, beautiful,” he replies before she even gets a chance to sit down. The girl, who, if I remember correctly, is named Poppy, isn’t put off by his rejection. She just smiles and turns around, setting her sights on me. I wave her away, tilting my head in a silent command for her to pursue someone else.

“Dre, what’s up with you, man? You usually love our nights at Ludus. Last time, you were in the back with Poppy before we even ordered drinks.”

The concern coating Luca’s words loses some of its validity when his hand starts to cut a line across the woman’s thigh, hiking up the hem of her already short dress.

“Nothing’s up with me,” Andreas replies, a slow smile spreading across his face as a busty red head with alabaster skin takes the seat Poppy was just attempting to occupy. He wraps his arm around her waist, closing his eyes when she plants a kiss on his cheek. “I was just looking for something different tonight.”

I push to my feet. “Well, I guess this is where I leave you.”

“Stay, Seb.” The half-hearted plea comes from Luca, slipping out of his lips before he places a kiss to the neck of the woman he’s going to be taking into one of the back rooms in the next few seconds. “Finish your drink. Find someone to get your mind off the ass cutting Aunt Adrienne is going to give you when she finds out you fired her precious baby boy.”

None of that sounds the least bit enticing, and I leave my brothers to their distractions without explaining for perhaps the thousandth time that for me, Ludus is a business, not a playground. When I started the members only club, it was with the intention of creating a safe space for sex workers to operate without worrying about being abused, cheated out of money they worked hard for, or killed. The idea had been born out of necessity, coming to me in the middle of the night after I’d complied with a police request for video footage from Cerros for the third time in as many months because yet another escort had been assaulted in one of our hotel rooms.

I knew if I didn’t do something, and quickly, we’d eventually have a murder on our hands, and so, Ludus was born. Talia had helped me track down the group of escorts who’d been operating in the hotel right under our noses, and we built the club around their specific needs and desires. Of course, their primary concern was security, so we hired the most capable, trust worthy motherfuckers we could find and put them on every door. From there, we branched out, adding on a small operating fee that would give them access to more incentives than they would ever see on the streets—reproductive health training, access to an in-house medical team, workshops and seminars on new toys and tricks, wealth management and rate negotiation—until anyone doing sex work in and around New Haven would be stupid to go anywhere else.

For an illegal operation, Ludus ran smoothly for a long time. We hit our first snag about six months in when a local pimp named Cheese put a price on my head for giving his top earner, Desiree, the strength to leave him and work for herself. Talia was terrified, but I was amused, thrilled by the prospect of unleashing the violent part of me that had no place in the boardrooms I was commanding. Every wanna be assassin that came for me got a choice: walk away or be left bleeding and broken in whatever dark corner they approached me in. They all took one look at the suit and tie and decided to try their luck. I took great pleasure in making each and every one of them regret that choice.

When I finally got to their boss, who showed up with a gun because apparently he was the only one who really meant to get the job done, I beat him within an inch of his life with it. The last thing he heard before he lost consciousness was me telling him to take the stack of hundreds I’d just dropped in the pool of blood next to his limp body and accept it as payment for Desiree and the gun.

Since then, things have been good, but I still make a point of staying vigilant, which means when I’m at Ludus, I don’t let the beautiful women or their short dresses distract me. Every monthly visit to the club goes the same way. Luca and Andreas insist on coming with me, so I let them. I nurse a drink while my brothers eye fuck every girl that walks by. When they find someone to keep them occupied for the night, I make my rounds, checking on the girls working the floor and the members they’re entertaining before going to get a report from the head of security. After that, it’s a toss up, and my attention goes to whatever area needs it most. Sometimes it’s our cleaning crew requesting additional people or asking if I know of anything stronger than industrial strength bleach. Other times, it’s the kitchen and bar staff wanting me to know one of the vendors was short on something.

Tonight, it’s the bar that wins out. As I’m leaving the security room, Marcus, a stocky former boxer with a love for mixing cocktails, meets my eyes in a silent plea for assistance that has me heading towards him, ready to deescalate whatever problem he’s dealing with. I’m five feet away from the bar when I realize the problem isn’t a drunk client or an upset wife—which has been known to happen around here. No, the problem is almost six feet tall wrapped in an intoxicating combination of a black, leather midi dress and ebony skin that shimmers with specks of gold that must have been in whatever lotion or serum she applied to her skin to make it shine under the warm lights of the club. The problem smells like bergamot and amber. The problem is bent over the edge of the bar with bone straight lines of midnight silk trailing down her back, caressing her skin every time she moves her head.

The problem is Nadia Hendrix.

It should be a problem that I’ve identified her without even seeing her face, but I can’t see it that way. I can’t see anything but her. Marcus flicks his gaze from Nadia to me, and I kind of feel bad for the guy because he expected me to come over and save him, but I’m not going to do that. Not yet, at least. I take a seat on the barstool next to where Nadia is standing, and she doesn’t even look my way. That’s how focused she is on the one sided conversation she’s roped Marcus into about the ruby red wine in the decanter on the counter between them.

“I specifically requested the ‘93 Thornehill Pinot Noir, not this.” She frowns down at the glass in her hand. Her lips curling the way they did when she spoke to me in the lobby the day we met. “What is this? Let me see the bottle.”

Marcus dries his hands on the bar towel that lives on his shoulder and pulls the bottle from underneath the counter. He reads the label and shrugs before handing it over to her. “Listen, lady, I’m a bartender not a sommelier, and as I told you the other day, you can put in a request, but that doesn’t always mean Ruthie will be able to source it. If she can’t, she brings the next best thing, which is what you got in front of you.”

One look at the label tells me what she has in front of her is a vintage Pinot Noir produced in France and, judging by the tongue twister of a name, costs at least five hundred dollars.

“But I don’t want it,” Nadia insists, placing the bottle on the tray next to the decanter and wine glasses and pushing it towards him. “I want what I asked for.”

Marcus pushes the tray back, glancing at me again to see if I’m going to intervene. “Well, I don’t have what you asked for. I have this. If it makes you feel any better, the note Ruthie left said it would go well with the duck your client brought in for the chef to prepare tonight.”

Something strange happens in my chest when Marcus’ words confirm that Nadia is here to work. Based on her outfit and the dramatic sweep of makeup gracing her eyelids, I figured that was the case, but having it confirmed makes me feel…violent.

“You work here?” Those weren’t the words I intended to come out of my mouth, but they get her attention. She turns her head slowly, annoyance rolling off of her in waves, and when her gaze meets mine there isn’t even a flicker of recognition in her eyes.

“Something like that.”

Her tone is clipped and strained with pleasantness she doesn’t think I deserve. She turns back to Marcus, whose face is now etched with panic as he looks between the two of us. He opens his mouth, presumably to tell her exactly who she’s just dismissed, but I hold up a hand to tell him not to.

“I’ve never seen you here before.”

This time she doesn’t even bother to look at me. “There’s a first time for everything.”

Marcus’ brows meet his hairline, and I know he’s thinking this is the first time he’s ever seen anyone talk to me like this. Again, I give him a silent command to leave it alone.

“Right.” I bite my lip to suppress the urge to call her Miss. Hendrix again. If she’s working, which I now know that she is, she probably isn’t using her real name, and I don’t want to blow up her spot. “I guess this is the first time you’re going to have to accept that you can’t always have it your way.” Reaching across the bar, I grab the tray, sliding it towards her until her fingers have no choice but to grip the edge. “Take this, go back to your client and leave the bartender alone.”

Now, she’s looking at me. Now, there’s not only recognition swirling in the puddles of caramel brown, but also anger. It flares her nostrils and makes her take a step back from the bar, clutching the unwanted wine close to her chest. Her mouth opens and closes like she wants to say something but she doesn’t know what. When it finally opens again, she’s speaking to Marcus, not me.

“Make sure the bottle is comped, have the chef add a cherry coulis to the duck dish and have a complimentary charcuterie board with Gruyère out by the time I pour this first glass.”

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