Page 88 of Underground Prince

Mmm brain fuel.

My phone chirped on my nightstand as I rose from the dead.

Kai: U up for something tonight?

I thumbed a response. Depends. Is there an opening for cocktailing?

Less than five seconds after I hit send, Kai responded.

Kai: Nope. Your lessons continue. Come to my apt. 90th between 1st and York around 6 tonight.

A smile crept up on me and was full-blown by the time I agreed to Kai and blacked out my screen.

I was dressed and through the door in even less time.

* * *

I went to The Black & Aug first, apologizing profusely for missing my shift yesterday, feigning food poisoning, and feeling horrible about lying. Sadly, I was incredible at it. Brian, being the boss he was, gave me one free pass, but any more screw-ups and I’d be out on my ass. I nodded and offered to work a few hours today on tips alone to make up for my absence. Impressed, he allowed it, and five hours later I had a crumple of dollar bills in my pocket.

In forty-five minutes I was in the Upper East Side and buzzing Kai’s apartment number.

“Enter if you dare, my disciple,” came Kai’s response through the speaker.

I pushed through the entrance and ascended three floors until I was in front of his door. It was opened a crack, so I let myself in.

Kai rounded the corner and saw me. A tray of poker chips was in his hands. “This way.”

“So these are your digs, huh?” I said. The walls were painted in neutral beiges, with subtle pops of blue in the upholstery, the lampshades, the paintings of oceans at various tidal stages distributed in the small hallway. I raised my brows at the minimalism, so dust-free I could smell the cucumber-scented cleaning spray, so deprived of clutter that it almost looked staged.

“My humble abode, yes. Please excuse my freakish neatness. It comes from a long line of ancestral indoctrinations. These are the guys.”

I didn’t realize he’d have a whole crew with him and tripped over air. “Ah. Hi everyone.”

Seated around a blue felt table were four men in various forms of drapery—one thin, angular man had his arm slung over a chair, another more portly man had his legs spread out in front of him while he shuffled cards. A third one was chewing gum loudly and scrolling through his phone, one leg resting on the other. The fourth was fully splayed on the cream leather couch to the right, one arm behind his head as he flipped through TV channels.

“Russ, Connor, Phil and Sam.” Kai named them from left to right. “Meet Scarlet, boys.”

The one on the couch—Sam—asked, “We ready?”

“Uh…” I avoided sitting at the table, preferring to hang out under the archway.

“Relax.” Kai’s hand came down on my shoulder. “I’m not throwing you in as crocodile bait this time. These guys know your situation and are willing to entertain you for a few hours.”

I stayed put.

“Okay fine, they’ll indulge you for half an hour.” He shrugged. “Then you might have to put up or shut up.”

“Still going with the deep-end way of teaching, are you?” I said to him, but sat down anyway. He leaned onto my shoulders, giving them a squeeze before taking his own seat across from me.

“We startin’ in kindergarten now or what?” the man one seat over from me, the portly one—Russ—said, in a gruff, deeply Brooklyn accent. His assessment had me avoiding his gaze, my back tensing at the attention.

“Scarlet has—”

“I know enough,” I said, cutting Kai off from his defense of me. If I couldn’t hack it in a room full of men in a cerulean-accented apartment, I couldn’t make it anywhere.

Sam sidled up and took the chair to the right of mine. “Nice to meet you,” he said before saying to Kai, “Let’s go already.”

“High card’s on the button,” Connor, I think, said through the side of his mouth. He was seated to the right of Sam and was the one who chewed his gum like a horse and smelled like bubblemint.

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