Page 36 of Tease Me (Dark Odyssey 1)

Chapter Ten

Nick

Gabe ison the phone talking to one of his women.

I don’t know which one it is this time. Can’t keep up.

It only bothers me because I need to talk to him now and he’s on the fucking phone talking it up with this broad about what she’s wearing.

It’s just him and me tonight. Salvatore is back at the accountancy office dealing with one of our clients who had ten million come in from a business deal. He’s better at shifting the larger sums of money around and hiding it to make it either look legit or off the books. He manages all the offshore accounts, while me and Gabe do the onshore stuff. A few years back Pa expanded the accountancy work we do to include private clients. So we currently take care of the money coming in from the shipping contracts and money from our other clients too.

Gabe and I are sitting on the upper level of the club reserved for just us. We have different levels for different people. The whole top section is ours. It’s what we call the viewing section. We sit up here and we can see everything below us.

Three levels down.

He laughs out loud and ignores the fuck out of me like he used to when we were kids when I cast him a seething glare.

He must be taken with her because he’s been on the phone now for twenty minutes. I would prefer if he went elsewhere with the shit.

I’m in no mood to hear him talk to some doll who’s chasing him, and not when I know he’s been banging Mimi down in the dressing rooms.

That’s definitely not Mimi on the phone.

He acts different when he’s around her. He likes her well enough but she’s not his type and the poor doll can’t see for shit when it comes to him. She’s been in our lives for as long as I can remember. Her father is another family friend and since he doesn’t mind our special tastes, she doesn’t mind working for us. She deals with the waitresses and the new recruits. Been with us right from when we opened ten years ago.

But she’s had her eye on Gabe for as long as we’ve known her. His problem is the same as mine in the sense that he doesn’t want to settle for one woman. Our difference is that he’ll string two dolls along at the same time. Two or three, or ten.

I can’t do that.

I’m either available and dick around and the women know it’s just fun, which is essentially me most of the time, or there are the few occasions in my life when I’m with someone.

Three times it happened to me. The last was the worst. It was however what drew me closer to Gabe. We’ve both loved women who belonged to other men.

Arranged marriages are big in our world. Crime families marry their daughters off, some are debts, some are straight-up payments. Gabe’s was a payment. Mine was a debt.

Vanessa… my… well she wasn’t my anything. She was a debt. The sort you couldn’t get out of without starting a blood war. In my world you have to know when to back the fuck down and back off. You have to know when to stay behind the line set up for you.

That was what happened to me.

Didn’t change the fact that I loved her and I haven’t loved since.

I met her here at the club.

The club’s opening almost feels like it was an expression of freedom. I don’t like putting it that way though because I was never restricted in my life the way most people are.

We’re all like that in my family. No restriction. It was how Gabe came to be with his Charlotte. It’s been ten years and I know he hasn’t forgotten her.

This broad on the phone talking to him is one of his attempts to try. The same goes for Mimi. Unfortunately for her and unfortunately for me because it’s fucking eight twenty and Gabe is still on the fucking phone. There’s a reason why I wanted to finish all that I need to say to him well before now.

The reason is Mia.

I’m pretty sure she’s either here or nearly here. I want to give her my full attention. I want to forget today. Another fruitless fucking day that saw me with no answers.

I knew Vincent would be doing his part to search and gather intel where he could, what we were doing though was searching the lower levels of the underground. I started with Billy’s restaurant and talked to people who knew him. Good idea, except that nobody knew a damn thing, and if they did they wouldn’t squeal to people like us without a threat. Threats and blood, body parts missing. Shit like that, that could coerce a person to talk. Shit that could and would land me in shit with Pa and Vincent if it got back to them. Them with their fucked up fantasy to preserve order.

With the streets being a no go

The next thing I thought of doing was a thorough check through Tommy’s stuff at the office and at his house. Paperwork and files.

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