Page 34 of Vicious Chaos

“Jade had that idea?” Luca asks, shocked.

I point to Kade. “Blame him. He gave her a book.”

He rolls his eyes. “She was curious about sex. The book has a sex club that one of the characters goes to and she was intrigued by the idea.”

“A place to go and explore new and different things. Learn your kinks and what you like,” I muse aloud. “Or if you already know, just a safe place to enjoy them.” I hum to myself as I run through the possibilities in my head.

“I see the appeal,” Luca agrees. I already know Kade is all on board based on his reaction when Jade first brought it up. Noah is nodding along and Declan is just standing back, an amused look on his face. Ryder stays relaxed behind me, so I know no one is opposed to the idea.

A rush of excitement runs through me as the idea starts coming together in my mind.

Declan leans over and whispers to Luca, “I just saw the lightbulb flash above her head.”

All the guys laugh as I roll my eyes and stick my tongue out at him.

“We could have floors with different themes. Set up for as many different kinks as we can. Maybe get some classes going or something? Just a place to explore. A place to pick your poison.”

Kade cheers. “So we’re doing this then?”

Everyone nods and Luca hums. “We could use The Black Rose. It’s already isolated and we are going to have to rebuild. Might as well rebrand while we’re at it.”

Everyone agrees and we have a few minutes of tossing ideas around on how to build it and market it. It’ll have to be a hushed thing to keep it safe. Vet our clients thoroughly.

After a few minutes Declan pulls our attention to another topic. “Speaking of The Black Rose, where do we stand now?”

The question brings us back to everything we learned today, at the fire but also from William. I think carefully before I say anything. I have an idea that may or may not have their support.

“We know it was Romano,” I answer. “A small bomb left in the kitchen. We had three kitchen employees that were killed instantly. A fair few injuries, but none fatal.”

Luca looks up from his phone. “The whole building will have to be rebuilt, so building the new club won’t be an issue. It’ll be a good fuck you to Romano as well. Show him it didn’t faze us in the slightest.”

I nod along with his words. Our image is more important than ever at this point. With Romano actively recruiting against us, we don’t want to give anyone any reasons to side with him over us.

It’s the biggest reason we haven’t started releasing more information on his clients that we do have. We have his records, but we need to be careful with how we use them now that people can connect it to us. We are limited to taking out those only tied to Romano. Not anyone that other players in the game will take issue with.

“You also saw William?” Noah asks. At my nod, he continues, “We’ve been looking through the employee records and tracking financials, but we’ve already flagged anyone connected to Romano. We didn’t find anyone new in any of the businesses.”

“Did you expand the search to all our businesses?” Luca asks, thinking about the legitimate places Romano could target next. Noah nods.

“We’d been going through everything that is openly ours.”

“If Romano has people always stationed at certain locations, it’s most likely patrons that he’s switching out.” Kade points out. Fuck me, but he’s probably right. We keep fishing out his spies he gets under our employment. Of course he would switch to the other option that is a hell of a lot harder to trace.

“That’s harder to weed out,” I sigh. Steel Roses especially is too hard to keep track of every face that comes in through our doors. We see thousands of people every week.

Luca bites down on his bottom lip as he stares at me. Fuck. I already know what is coming but don’t want to hear. I grimace before he even opens his mouth. “We are going to have to shut down Steel Roses.”

I hang my head and silence descends over the room. No one wants to do it, but we have to. Romano is going to take any chance he can get against us. Steel Roses will be the hardest to ensure we don’t give him the slightest leeway. It only takes one stray backpack to blow up a whole lot of people.

“We can do a remodel,” Kade suggests. “Put in some new features for the skills you’ve been learning with Roe?” I can tell he’s trying to soften the blow of having to close down my second home. The place I’ve always felt more at home than anywhere else. At least before here, surrounded by men.

I take a deep breath and push away the melancholy feelings evoked by shutting our doors. I nod at Kade’s suggestion. “We need to take care of my girls.” My dancers were the first purpose I found outside of revenge after I left my old life behind. They’re even more important to me than the club itself.

The rest of the staff will be easy to sort into other locations, but we don’t have anywhere else specifically that my dancers can go. Not anywhere they can still dance.

“I promise, Letty. We will figure something out,” Luca swears. He knows better than anyone how much those girls mean to me.

“What about training with Lila?” Ryder asks.

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