Page 28 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name
Daniel exhaled. “A favor.”
NINE
The Dollhouse wasin South Philly, in an austere black building across the road from a Popeyes and an AutoZone and shrouded in a haze of traffic fumes from the freeway. It was not the most glamorous locale, but the owners clearly understood one basic fact: it was a strip club in South Philly. No one went there to look out fucking windows.
Daniel parked the van behind the club and quit the engine. Mercifully, the music quit too. Whenever he rode with Milo, the little shit made him listen to drill rap at full bore. The kid seemed to believe he had a future in the music industry, and that if he listened to enough Chief Keef, he’d somehow absorb the rapper’s talent. It wasn’t working. Daniel had suffered through Milo’s version of “I Don’t Like” for two hours now, and it had taken every ounce of his self-control to not reach across, open the passenger door and shove him out.
The only thing stopping him was the fact that Milo was Terry’s half-brother. The family resemblance was faint, but Daniel knew better than to antagonize the younger Bidois, as the elder Bidois was a stone-cold psychopath.
He looked down at the phone in his lap. The screen showed nothing. All the way from Chicago, he’d been checking it every few miles, dreading a text from Seb. A text telling him that Julia was in danger—that Terry had found her or sent some of his goons to show up at her house. Daniel had instructed his brother to tell him immediately if something like that happened, all the while knowing there’d be nothing he could do about it if it did.
He got out of the van and stretched his stiff back. Pocketing his phone, he walked around to the back of the van, climbed in, and tossed out the duffle.
It landed on the gravel, close enough to Milo’s feet to make him skip backwards. The idiot was always too busy scrolling his screen to pay attention to his surroundings.
Daniel stared down at the guy and shook his head. Milo Bidois was easily the ugliest man he’d ever seen. But not because he’d been born that way. No, he’d gone to a lot of effort and expense to look as bad as he did.
His face was a mess of tattoos. Weird doodles and scrawls of cursive that no one could read. It was as if he’d passed out drunk one night and someone had gone to town on his face with a Sharpie. Then he’d woken up and decided to make that shit permanent. His hair was braided into tight cornrows, each one dyed a different color of the rainbow. He wore several thick dookie chains around his neck and gold grills in his mouth that made him spit when he talked. All up, he looked like something you’d scrape off the road after Mardi Gras.
Daniel jumped down, then closed the van and locked it. He shoved the keys in his pocket, then headed for the rear entrance. Milo tried to jog after him, grappling with the duffle that was heavier than he was.
As he approached the door, he nodded at Sonny Fai, the club’s head of security. Daniel handed him his phone, then submitted to the obligatory pat down. Sonny let him pass. Behind him, Milo tried to saunter past, only to have Sonny clamp a massive hand onto his shoulder and drag him backwards.
“Come on, man,” Milo whined.
The Samoan was twice Milo’s size, in both height and girth, making the idiot’s protestations pointless. By the time he was done with his search, Sonny had extracted from his person a drop-point knife, a bong, a baggie of Oxy, a phone, and two Glocks.
“No outside drugs,” Sonny said, pocketing the pills. The rule seemed ironic, given the contents of the duffle. But the Samoan only gave the interior of the bag a cursory glance.
Daniel led the way down a dark hallway into the club itself. It was like descending underground, even though the place was still on street level. Plush black upholstery padded the walls, and pink fluorescence seemed to ooze from the air.
Runways connected three circular stages, all tiled in shiny mirrors. A glass mezzanine floor wrapped around three sides of the room, accessed by an illuminated staircase. The nearest wall housed a long, neon-lit bar.
From the overhead speakers, a trigger-pull bass line was thudding, but there wasn’t a patron to be seen. The girls were all out in force, though, wrapped around poles and writhing on the mirrored stage floor. They appeared to be on show solely to entertain the four men seated at the table in the center of the room.
Daniel led the way across the club towards them. Milo’s eyes were on stalks, taking in as much skin as he could.
“Badbitches,” he said, making a full turn while hanging onto the crotch of his jeans.
Sasha Sokolov sat at the head of the table. Daniel recognized him instantly—mirrored aviators, gym-honed arms, that cocky lounge-lizard energy. He was the younger Sokolov, flashy and volatile. His brother Borya, the real power behind the name, never came to these deals in person. But Daniel had clocked him already, staring down from his usual perch on the mezzanine above, arms folded, eyes cool. Always watching.
A more mismatched pair of brothers you’d be hard-pressed to find. While Sasha was all about the silk shirts and sealskin loafers, Borya dressed like a high school math teacher: cheap polyester suits and butt-ugly floral ties.
But despite his bland appearance, Daniel knew—from the odd jobs he’d run for him in the past—that you didn’t fuck with the older Russian. Borya had a ruthless streak that ran deep. Rumor had it he’d had to leave Vladivostok after he’d had his wife and two kids murdered, their bodies discovered in a burnt-out car. Apparently, family life hadn’t suited the guy.
The Sokolovs now owned strip clubs across the East Coast and were expanding along the Gulf. But their yacht money came from porn. They owned a major distribution company stateside, although they’d recently moved all production to Eastern Europe. Allegedly, the laws there were more accommodating to your average sex industry capitalist. The brothers’ foray into narco-trafficking was a new venture, but one that was paying off if the diamond-encrusted Rolex on Sasha’s wrist was anything to go by.
The other men at the table were well-dressed lackeys that Daniel had seen around before. It was only ten in the morning, but the party had started early: three magnums of champagne stood open, and a crystal tray of freshly lined coke sat in the center of the table.
Daniel took a seat, yanking Milo down beside him.
The Russian exchanged pleasantries, then offered their choice of refreshments. Daniel bypassed the booze and did one line of coke for appearance’s sake. It burst on the back of his synapses like fireworks.
A beautiful redhead appeared at the table and promptly parked herself down on Daniel’s lap.
“Hi,” she purred.
He considered the logistics of moving her off his lap, but the fact that she was completely naked made that…tricky.
