Page 49 of Bite Marks

Fucking insurance. Fucking inventory. Fucking dipshit useless brother-in-law who was trying to steal my fucking club and make my entire coven homeless.

God, I needed a day off.

“Shit,” Juniper hissed, her eyes on the clock when I looked up from my screen. “I’m supposed to be getting Mars fitted for the diamonds number.”

“Go on,” I said, waving her away. “I’ll keep at it for a little while longer.”

She came close for a quick kiss against my temple.

“I know I’m usually the last person to be optimistic, Dana, but it’ll work out.”

“Thanks, baby girl,” I murmured softly, giving her hip a gentle squeeze. “I love you.”

Juniper’s cherry cola lips quirked into a smile before catching mine in a brief kiss. “I love you.”

The little numbers on the screen turned blurry againas I returned my focus to my spreadsheet.

On top of this new issue of the missing deed—something that in theory I should be able to resolve by going down to city hall if the building was purchased after 1820, if my quick online search was accurate—I still needed to figure out how to make the business survive with less than twenty-five percent of our income.

No matter what I did, I just couldn’t see a way to grow the club’s profits. An increase in the admission fee would only exclude more casual clients. Raising the membership fee would piss off regulars, who were the heart and soul of the business. An uptick in drink prices was… I mean, it wasviablebut would hardly make a dent in the grand scheme of things.

Usually, I would’ve just tapped into the coven’s savings account for something like this. But the lawyer I’d contacted had strictly advised against accessing those funds—large withdrawals could come back to bite us in the ass if Garrett really did decide to take us to court for the contents of Cherie’s estate.

That was the thing about paper records—whoever had the proof, even if it was a dirty, underhandedlie, was who’d be successful in court.

So, we needed to increase our monthly income andquickly, or the coven wouldn’t just lose the club but our home too. A bit of an oversight on our part to tie our living situation to the buildingwhere we did business, but we never considered that Cherie wouldn’t be here to keep things running smoothly.

Fuck me, that couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let it happen.

Not after Cherie put her trust in me. She believed I could do this… that meant I had to.

I’d stepped up to make sure our family was taken care of, that her legacy meantsomething. That wasn’t going to end because Garrett was throwing some fucking hissy fit over what he thought he was owed.

The part that made me seethe was it wasn’t like the bar was in the red. We were the most popular club in the Lower City—hell, one of the most popular in the entirecountry. But attendance had slipped a little in the last couple of weeks, and social media engagement had stuttered since our last show changeover.

It wasn’t enough for us to begood. We needed to bethebestif we were going to buy ourselves enough time to get that dickhead Garrett off our backs.

I tabbed through the numbers again—attendance, the average amount customers spent at the bar, the house fees from the girls. It was… Good. Steady, even. But it wasn’tgrowing.

I didn’t realize I was scowling until Vi knocked on the door, leaning hard against the frame with two plates balanced precariously over one arm.

“Whoa, that computer must really be hurting your feelings.”

I leaned away from the screen, face twitching into a smile at the gentle rasp of her voice. “Just looking at it too long. What’s up?”

She nodded to the plates, stacked with pizza, a pair of sodas tucked under her arm. “Thought you might be hungry.”

“Don’t you usually eat with the girls?”

Vi batted her long eyelashes at me playfully. “I’msosorry, Dana, do you have another date?”

“Not if you’re offering,” I joked, pushing away from the computer and leaning back in my chair to look at her with a roguish grin.

She snorted a laugh, and fuck if that wasn’t stupidly charming.

“Don’t get too excited, boss. Come on, the pizza will be cold.”

“Yeah, okay. Have a seat.”

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