Chapter 27: Chapter 27

Niko

“Charleigh. Can I come in?”

I knock on her door. She’s the type who appreciates that.

Vadik and Kir left for the lounge to press the flesh with some members, but I declined. This day has kicked my ass, so I’m going to have a drink, put my feet up, and watch sports. If I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll punch someone’s lights out, and I’m not a really violent guy.

Not compared to my brothers.

Well, relaxation was my plan until I overhear Charleigh talking to someone who I guess is her troublemaking younger sister.

“Come in,” she calls in a weary voice.

She’s beaten down. Not surprising, really.

I find her on her bed, blowing her nose and wiping away what I’m sure are tears.

“You good?” I ask, even though she’s obviously not. “Want something to eat? I can get Chef to make you something.”

Food is always good. Neutral. Noncommittal.

Having changed out of her work outfit, she’s wearing sweats and socks bunched around the ankles. Without a sexy get-up and with her face scrubbed clean of makeup, she’s unrecognizable, at least to anyone who’s seen her working here at the club. She looks like any other girl who might be out running errands, picking up a coffee, or even hitting a movie.

Or whatever normal girls do. I don’t know many, so can only guess.

Looking at her hands in her lap, her hair prevents me from seeing her face. That’s how I know she’s crying. “Not hungry,” she whispers.

“Okay, then. I’ll be watching sports right out here if you need anything.” I start to back out of the room. I’m not sure I could really comfort her even if I wanted to. I am flat out of gas and she seems like she’d rather be left alone, anyway.

“Hey, Niko?” she calls before I pull the door shut.

“Hmmm?”

“How long… how long has my dad been coming to your card games?” There’s a brittleness in her voice I haven’t heard before. Has she accepted her fate? Is the ugliness of the life we’re leading her into already ruining her, turning her into something different?

It’s a shame. But inevitable, I tell myself, trying to feel better about it.

I walk back into her room. “Why? Why are you asking?”

She finally looks up, and even with her red-rimmed eyes, she’s still stunning. And sexy. Fuck, the way she responded to me in the car while she sucked off Kir with Vadik watching was goddamn hot. I’ll be jerking myself to that sight for a good long time.

I’d better commit it to memory, because soon, she’ll be out of our lives, most likely forever. That is, if Vadik has his way.

She looks around the room, gathering her thoughts. “I’m just wondering how someone like my dad gets fifty-thousand dollars in debt. That’s a lot of card games. Right?”

“How do you know that? The amount of your father’s debt?”

“Vadik told me.”

I can see her doing the math in her head. She has no idea. Yes, it took a lot of card games for her old man to rack up that sort of debt, so sure, he played a hell of a lot of cards. But we also have games where guys lose fifty-thousand dollars in one night. It’s all relative.

Gil Gates did not hang with the high rollers, much as he might have liked to. No, he was on the low bet tables. And he lost a lot. Obviously.

And yet kept coming back.

I’ve read it’s not the actual gambling win that thrills people, but the setup. Will I or won’t I? The anticipation, the suspense, the thrill and the fear. The actual winning—or losing—is just the side show. The preparation, and the hope that one’s circumstances could change in an instant, is what keeps people coming back.

The promise of more. The promise of new. The promise of reinvention.

What they don’t realize is that these are all just promises. Not guarantees.

I’ve seen people win large sums of money who actually look disappointed because they know that’s the point where they ought to cash out and go home. And sometimes they do. But more often, they keep gambling, sometimes for days at a time, staying awake with all manner of stimulants, until they lose every last penny. It’s almost a relief when this happens, because they know they get to start all over again.

A sad example of it's the journey and not the destination. Or however that stupid saying goes.

That’s where the trouble starts. People like Gates run out of money, fast. And yes, we make loans, which only gets guys like him in further trouble. But we’re not fucking babysitters. We’re running a business and our players are expected to handle their own shit. A man gets in too deep? That’s on him.

“It took a long time, Charleigh, for your dad to get to the point where he is now. Years and years of winning a little and losing a little. Eventually the losses outweigh the wins and that’s where the debt starts to pile up. But he played for a long time. Before I was even working in the business. I mean, shit, I was still a kid when he was coming to my dad’s card games.”

“You remember him?” she asks, her voice rising in pitch.

“Vaguely. I used to come to work with my father. Against my mother’s wishes.” I laugh. “But I have a memory of you too.”

She frowns. “Me?”

It was only two years ago but feels like a lifetime. My parent’s funeral. Charleigh stood with her back to the wall, watching everything, waiting for her dad to get through the receiving line. She wasn’t like the other women there, overdone and tacky. Her hair was pulled into a tidy ponytail and she wore only red lipstick with her simple dress. Vadik noticed her. We all did. It was impossible not to.

I never expected to see her again. And yet, here we are.

“My parents’ funeral,” I say. The one where the coffins were closed, that’s how badly they were burned.

She swallows hard, the visual clearly not setting well with her. “Oh. Of course. Funny how you remember me from that day. I was trying to support Pops. He hates going to things alone.”

I don’t tell her that when I saw her more recently in her father’s shop, I recalled how her presence at the funeral two years prior was like a breath of fresh air. Coming across her at the pawn shop, when we were trying to get her father to settle his debts, was truly bizarre. There she was, an exquisite beauty, surrounded by all the junk her father was buying and selling.

Like a rose among thorns.

And she was even more lovely than the last time I saw her.

We are quiet for a minute, each of us most likely thinking about the strange turns that life takes.

She looks at me, the new bitterness in her voice now showing in her face. Her lips are a thin line, and her eyes are void of the light I usually see in them.

I wonder if it’s out permanently.

It’s bound to happen. It does with everyone involved in our world. If you don’t build yourself a hard shell, you get pummeled. And Charleigh’s building her shell.

I’m sorry to see this happen to her. I guess I thought she might escape unscathed. But when it comes down to it, no one’s immune.

“Niko, do you think my father had something to do with my mother’s murder?”

My gaze whips in her direction. Shit. I should have known at some point the story of what went down with her mother would come up. The longer she hangs around with us, the more she understands how our world works. And the more she realizes life holds few coincidences.

As she’s processing this, she has questions. Lots of them.

And my mind is racing, formulating answers. I want to be careful. She’s going to hear some things she doesn’t like. Things that hurt. This is sensitive shit.

I study her before I answer. “Are you sure you want to talk about this, Charleigh?” I ask, settling into an easy chair in the corner of her room.

I don’t want to be tempted by being any closer to her.

Yeah, right.

“Look,” she starts, “you told me all about having a different dad than Vadik and Kir. You trusted me with your story. You can trust me with this.”

Trust her, sure. But can she handle it? The truth?

“Okay, Charleigh,” I say, knowing she will be a different person as soon as she hears my thoughts. “Yes, we think your mother was murdered because of something your father did.”

I do know it wasn’t by our faction. We don’t take out family members. But that’s all I know.

And a second later, I hate myself for telling her. It’s as if I’ve snatched away the last shred of goodness she has.

She stares blankly. Not moving, not speaking.

Until she says, “Will you spend the night with me, tonight?”

* * *

Niko

“You’re moving her again? But she just joined you in your suite yesterday.”

Dominika is pissed. Pissed that we dare to show Charleigh any sort of preferential treatment in moving her out of the club and to our compound, where we will start staying again. Security is much more robust there, and we’ll all be safer.

Not just Charleigh.

Things are heating up with Dimitri, and we are taking no chances.

But Dominika feels that if there are any favorites to be played, it should be her. That’s how she was with my dad for years, and she is still, incredibly, entitled. While I didn’t know they were together when my father was still alive, I had vague suspicions, and after my parents were gone, my brothers confirmed what I thought.

Papa’s dying left Dominika high and dry. I mean, she still has her job at the club—Uncle Mikey kept her on because it meant he had to do no work, and we keep her on because the club needs the continuity that only she can provide. You’d think this would be a win for everyone, and yet Dominika still feels shortchanged, something she makes little effort to hide.

Papa didn’t name her in his will. Is it wrong to leave out a years-long mistress from benefitting from your estate?

I can’t really say. I can only surmise Dominika wasn’t named because Papa didn’t want my mother to know, in case he went first.

Which is ridiculous. As if my mother had no idea. Of course, she knew. Mistresses are a cross to bear for women like her. But he kept her spoiled, showering her with his love. And she kept her mouth shut.

To be honest, Dominika is lucky we don’t can her ass, she’s such a pain. But our father would not want that, and besides, she does fulfill her purpose.

Today she’s especially rattled to find that Charleigh will no longer be subjected to her whims. As if Charleigh pulled one over on her. What she doesn’t understand is that it’s not about Charleigh, per se. The girl is a very valuable asset to the club, and there’s no limit to what we will do to protect that.

To be completely vulgar, it boils down to what we can exchange for said asset. It’s transactional. Nothing more. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is.

Which is what makes Dominika’s pettiness all the more irritating. If she understood our business at all, she’d see that. She’s missing the point. It’s shortsighted of her.

Personally, I may have reservations about what we’re doing from time to time, but I get the importance of it. If we let Gil Gates slide on his obligations, everyone will do it. The respect our father worked so hard for will have been for nothing. When it comes down to it, respect is worth more than what Gates owes us, and more than what anyone else owes us too. It’s our most valuable asset.

Charleigh is an important part of keeping all that moving forward. After all, it wouldn’t do to have a failed business, especially one that flourished so well under my father. My brothers and I would look weak and ineffectual. That’s the kiss of death in our world.

And yet when I look at Charleigh, I see something I think I’ve lost in myself. I don’t know what to call it except some sort of happiness. A belief that life is fair. There’s a freedom in that. A lightness. Anything is possible.

I once had that.

When Charleigh’s around, I can taste it again. As if it’s within reach. Attainable. Maybe even likely. And yet we’re selling her. Fucking selling her.

What’s wrong with this picture?

As she requested, I do spend the night with her, my arms wrapped around her slender body, and it’s goddamn heaven. Her sighs and girl-snores enchant me, as does the way she flips from one side to the other and back. I’ve never shared a bed with someone so restless.

And yet, in the middle of the night, I wake up and we’re clasping hands. She must have taken mine at some point. Or did I take hers? Without even waking, our fingers found each other’s as if we’ve been doing it for years.

I know Vadik was dismissive of Charleigh’s request that we keep Dimitri and Alexei from bidding on her. Hell, I don’t blame her for asking. Alexei is a disgusting old lech and Dimitri is a loser, but those two men can provide a fuck of a lot of cash to cover what Uncle Mikey took out of the business.

That doesn’t mean I’m okay with the plan as it stands, though. I’m going to do what I can to keep Charleigh not only out of those men’s hands but also out of the hands of any other club member. I just have to tread carefully. Vadik is my brother and I love him, but this is one time I won’t hesitate to go against him. I don’t know whether I’ll win, but I’ll give it my best shot. I need to proceed carefully. Make him think it’s his idea. That it’s for the best of the club. And all of us.

Relocating Charleigh to the compound will be a big help. In my opinion, the further we get her away from here, the more likely we are to keep her away.

And fuck Dominika. I don’t care if she’s bent out of shape that Charleigh’s getting some sort of treatment other girls around her don’t get. Is it favored? Maybe.

But Dominika has had a good ride here. She has nothing to complain about.

She better start realizing that.