Page 76 of Devoured
As soon as she saw the adjusted numbers, she beamed. “So what does that mean? He’s keeping it as is? Nightclub be damned?”
I shrugged. “Something like that.”
“You think Roland will be able to attract good clients?” She was energized then, her eyes frantic. She wasn’t really asking the question but thinking out loud. “I bet he can turn this place around. His name alone. I could use that kind of money. You can too, right?” She looked at me then, but I avoided eye contact, bending my neck. “Or is he going to invest and then bounce, like he does with his other clubs?” I couldn’t answer that question. I didn’t want to think about what was going to happen next. “Do you know?”
“I don’t,” I said. I pressed my lips into a thin line. “He’s been kind of evasive about his plans.”
“You must know something,” she said. “Aren’t you two together all of the time?”
“Sort of,” I said, glancing towards the direction of the apartment. Was he waiting in the office already?
“Maybe you can convince him to stay. At least for a little while. Until this club gets back to the way it was,” she said.
I forced a laugh. “You weren’t working here when it was in its heyday,” I said.
“Bitch,” she said, her chin tight, “I can make an estimated guess that I should not have to hustle this hard to sell my pussy.” She clenched her jaw. “Come on. Talk to him. See if he’ll stay.”
“I’ll try.”
“People like me depend on this place,” she said. I did too. And I knew we weren’t the only ones.
She stood. “Is that it?”
“That’s it,” I said. She walked towards the door, but then paused and leaned on the doorframe.
“About the other day,” she said. I waited for her to speak, a dry expression on my face. “Thanks for coming to the courthouse.” She shifted her weight, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Being there to support me and all.”
“Jake was an asshole.”
“I know. And I know you guys tried to warn me.” She shook her head. “And you pulled that one dickhead off of me too. Anyway,” she sighed deeply, as if it pained her to say it, “It means a lot to me that you were there, even though I’ve always been a bitch to you.”
I raised a brow at her. “Us bitches gotta stick together.”
A side-smile flashed across her face. “For real though.”
I wandered through the Greenhouse, the chattering growing louder as the time neared the club’s opening. Another night of selling our bodies, our love, our entertainment. But at least this time, we weren’t doing it for anyone. Every cent we made was for ourselves.
I opened the door to the main floor and saw some of the servers chatting at the gourmet restaurant’s dining tables, and at the kitchen, a man was standing out the window, talking to someone on the inside. He heard the door shut behind me and turned, our eyes meeting briefly. There was something familiar about him—the unruly black hair, the black suit with the plain button-up shirt underneath—he must have been one of the security guards Roland had hired to follow me. But then the man’s lip twitched, and he flinched away. An uneasiness rippled through me, giving me chills.
Then he was out of the entrance doors before I could take another step forward.
I peered through the kitchen window, trying to figure out who the man was talking to. But all of the staff were at their work stations, the head chef barking orders.
“Hey,” I said. One of the line cooks turned to me. “Who was that guy who was just here?”
“I didn’t see a guy,” he said.
I made eye contact with a woman—I recognized her; she had once worked in our kitchen as our personal chef, but only for a few weeks before she moved to the restaurant side.
“You were talking to someone,” I said. She clenched her teeth. “Come on. Who was that? An Adler?”
“I wasn’t talking to anyone,” she said. The liar. Roland would know. I went through those same entrance doors as the stranger, crossing my fingers that the man would be out there in one of those black SUVs, clearing my mind of any anxiety. But I didn’t see any of the black cars. But Roland’s car was parked out front.
I opened the door to my apartment. The same, familiar house music assaulted me, loud and thumping through the walls. My office was empty. I turned off the speakers. Then I found Roland on my mattress half-naked, his sculpted abs stretched out, his eyes dilated.
“You finally came,” he said.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m glad you came too. We should talk about this more. The transfer, or transition, or whatever in a little more depth.” I took a seat next to him, and he touched my hand, rubbing circles into my palm. “Is my security team coming into the club now?”
