Page 83 of Callum

Twenty-Three: Time Slows

CALLUM

“Why is she up there?”

“She’s a stripper. They tend to be on stages.” Lally smirks at me, but his eyes aren’t turned in my direction. He’s watching someone across the room, but I can’t be fucked to see who it is. My full attention is on the redhead on stage two.

Rosalind’s back bows against the pole, her chest pushing forward as her ass presses back, and I lose it. “Where is Ginetta?”

“I’ll find her.” Lachlan disappears before he finishes the sentence, zigzagging through the room until I lose him in the crowd. My attention goes back to Rosalind, who is now lying on the stage floor with her legs straight in the air above her.

The sharp clack of her ridiculous heels smacking together makes a man two tables to my right let out an appreciative sound. When she flips onto her stomach and pushes her ass into the air, the man yells for her to “point that ass my way, sweetheart”.

“His name is Tobin, and I’m completely on board with killing him.” Lachlan drops into the empty seat next to me, his eyes locked on the man now waving cash in Rosalind’s direction.

“Where’s Ginetta?”

“Right here,” a harsh voice sounds behind me, and I tear my eyes from Tobin. There are more pressing matters than cutting out his tongue. “What can I do for the MacAlister Boys?”

I ignore the pointed dig, narrowing my eyes at her. “You can tell me what Rosalind is doing on that stage.”

“Rosalind?” Ginetta crosses her arms, a surprised look on her face. “She’s stripping. It’s standard practice in a strip club.”

“Get her off the stage,” I snap, losing the last of my patience when I see Rosalind move in the direction of the dead man, Tobin. “She’s not allowed to strip anymore.”

“I wasn’t aware you controlled how I run my business, Callum.”

“And I wasn’t aware that you allowed minors to strip in your clubs, Ginetta.”

Her gaze hardens, and a look spreads across her face that I’m sure would scare any other man. I’ve seen too much to be afraid of humans anymore. “She’s seventeen.”

“Still a minor,” Lachlan tsks, leaning back in his chair. The move exposes the gun in his waistband, and I see Ginetta’s eyes lock on the weapon for a moment before she straightens her spine.

“Fine. I’ll take her off the stage until she’s eighteen.”

“No,” I’m tired of this back and forth. Ginetta Ricci knows what I want, and she’s going to give it to me. Lachlan seems to sense my next move because he stands at the same time I do. “You will take her off that stage, and she won’t ever go back on it. She’s done being a Girl for you, Ginetta. I don’t care where you put her in the GiGi’s, but it will be a place where no one touches her.” Leaning into Ginetta’s space forces her to look up at me, and I smile sharply at the look in her eyes. “Anything that happens to her happens to you twofold.”

“You don’t get to—”

“Yes, I do.” Stepping around Ginetta, my eyes land on Tobin again. “And you’d do well to remember that.”

She says something that makes Lachlan huff out an amused snort of laughter as I walk away from them. He’ll make sure Ginetta takes Rosalind off the stage and sets her up somewhere else in the GiGi’s organization.

I would do it myself, but there’s a man who needs to see the Doctor.

—

Elbows deep in another man’s chest, and all I can think about is Rosalind.

It’s always like this when I’m Doctoring. My mind tries to protect me from what my hands are doing, burying me in memories rather than processing what’s before me. But I can’t do that this time.

This time, I need information.

She’s watching me from the chair I had to force her into, her leg elevated on the end of the table. It doesn’t seem to bother her that I’m torturing a man two feet away from where she sits. In fact, her eyes are filled with a kind of curiosity I hadn’t anticipated.

There’s a fine line between taking a life and holding one in your hands. Surprisingly, they tend to yield the same amount of bodily fluid cleanup.

The man on my makeshift operating table lets out a pained groan, drawing my attention back to him. Rosalind identified him as “one of the Turner brothers” but couldn’t remember his first name. Mister Turner chokes out a sound that I’m sure would be a plea for his life if he had enough life left in him to form the words correctly.

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