Page 35 of Kneeling for Daddy
It’s dim, likely hiding what I can only imagine are the stains on the plush velvet couch I’m about to sit on. The walls of the tiny room are mirrored, and there’s an already open bottle of cheap bubbly in a bucket of mostly melted ice on the table.Classy.
“Sit,” she purrs.
I follow her request, uncomfortably taking a seat. She climbs onto my lap, straddling me, and immediately begins grinding against me. My jaw clenches, and my whole body stiffens in response. All I can think about is Ani.In my bed… laughing… curled up against me in our bed.My wife would spit fucking fire if she saw me like this. Guilt burns at me, and I fight the urge to remove the woman from my lap.
She leans close, rubbing her tits along my chest as her lips dust against my ear. “What’s your name, handsome?”
“Nik,” I answer curtly. “Yours?”
“Sonya. But for enough money, I’ll be whoever you want me to be.”
“And for enough money, what else can I get?”
She grinds over my lap, reaching between us toward my belt. “You want more than a dance?”
Unable to bring myself to answer, I nod my response.
“Fifty to blow you. One fifty to fuck.”
There it is…That’s all I need.
Grabbing her hand, I pull it from my belt buckle before she can finish undoing me.
“No?” she asks, her eyes laced with confusion. “You sure? A little more money and I’ll let you do the things your wife won’t.”
I know it’s a line—one she’s been fed to get money out of the club’s customers—but I can’t help the effect it has on me. With my hands high on her waist, I shove her back gently, enough to stop her from grinding. “I’m not interested.” I shake my head.
She slides off my lap. “Do you want the other girls instead?” she asks, her voice quivering with uncontrolled nerves.
“No.” I shake off my jacket and slip it over her shoulders. Pulling out my wallet, I remove all the bills in it and shove them into the breast pocket.
“Wha—”
“Put it on,” I insist, helping her into it. It’s big enough that it falls to her thighs. “Go out the back door, go to the bus station, and get as far away from this city as you can.”
We walk from the champagne room, and Sonya pauses in the hall, staring up at me with hesitant eyes. “Go,” I softly insist, nudging her toward the unmanned door at the end of the hall. “I’ll make sure they don’t come for you.”
I watch her walk down the hall as I pull my pistol from the front of my pants and flip off the safety. “Thank you.” Her voice carries down the hall as the heavy fire door closes behind her.
When I step out from the rear of the club, Cillian shoots a glance toward me, silently asking, ‘Well?’ My answer comes in the form of two bullets into Aram’s chest.
That takes care of one of Alek’s—now former—lieutenants.
“Maybe we weren’t clear enough,” I spit, crossing the room as Cillian, Enzo, and Alek shove from the table, firing bullets of their own. “No trafficking. No prostitution.” Another bouncer lunges at me, his fist swinging. I manage to catch it, twist, and slam him face-first into the table as chaos erupts in the club.
Cillian and Enzo move with efficiency, breaking faces and leaving bullet-ridden bodies in puddles of blood on the floor. All of us are fueled with rage. This isn’t about pride or the fact that these men disobeyed us. This is about girls like Ani—and Madison and Eavan—who weren’t blessed with the right social status or powerful family to protect them. Girls who were so desperate for the chance of something better that they wound up trapped and abused. I won’t stand by. And neither will my brothers.
By the time the club falls silent, the air is thick with blood, and the floor is covered in broken glass and bodies. A lone member of Alek’s mafia family remains, a broad-shouldered blond man who can’t be much older than Alek, who shielded a few of the girls as bullets flew through the room. Enzo stalks toward him, his gun at his side, with the protection of ours just behind him. “You just got promoted.” He laughs with a huge fucking smirk, slapping the terrified kid on the shoulder. “The girls stay iftheywant to. You pay them and treat them with fucking respect. If wehear the slightest fucking rumbling about some old fuck getting head in the champagne room, wewillbe back.”
“And youwillbe joining your friends,” I add.
“They’re not my friends,” the kid mumbles.
“Good.”
I have been pacing the hardwood floor barefoot for hours, staring at the door like I can magically will Nik through it. He left hours ago with Cillian and Enzo, the three of them tight-jawed, with sharp eyes, and cold, like they were bracing for the job they knew was coming. When they leave forworklike that, it’s never good. My nerves have been fraying to threads, and my stomach ties into knots with every tick of the clock.
The door finally swings open, and Nik looks like he just fought his way back from hell. His shirt is bloodied and wrinkled, and the jacket he left wearing is nowhere to be seen. Beneath the blood on his hands, his knuckles are split and raw.This seems to be normal for him.He looks anxious, or maybe wound tight from the events of the evening.
