Prey (Primal #1)

28

F reddie,” I clicked my fingers to garner immediate attention as he was directing the dancers rehearsing on stage. I brought some paperwork down to the bar area and pulled up a chair at a round table at the back of the gallery.

Freddie stormed over, looking pent-up as if expecting me to scold him. “The blond, third, along with short hair. Bring her here.”

“Bridget?” he inquired, frowning, showing the strain around his eyes.

“I’m not interested in her name; just bring her here, Freddie,” I stated firmly. Then, I glanced at my Rolex, wondering where Ronan was.

That boy was never late, or maybe he started getting slothful while I was in prison. Nah, that didn’t seem like him.

Freddie beckoned the girl out of the line of dancers and asked her to come down the stairs to speak to me. Even from this distance, I detected the fear in her eyes, but I didn’t care, and I suspected she knew why I wanted to see her.

Her hands grasped together to stop them from shaking as she stumbled into those black tap shoes; luckily, Freddie caught her before she made an arse out of herself.

As she stood over me, I peered at her eyes, and as I expected, she was high as fucking kite, and I shot Freddie a look of disapproval. “Roll up your sleeves.”

She fidgeted and shuffled from one foot to the other, irritating me.

“Did you hear me speak?” I snarled at her. “Did you see these lips move?”

She swallowed before answering, “Yes.”

“Roll up your sleeves,” I demanded.

With shaking, pale hands, she began to pull them up but was taking her sweet time, so I signaled to Freddie to help her. He yanked her sleeve up and exposed track marks, and I tutted in annoyance.

“Get her out of here,” I growled, pushing back my chair to stand. “Put her in the fucking rehab.” Freddie started ushering her away, looking ashamed, so he should be. We’ve got standards to uphold. Our good Kaiser money should be spent pleasing our paying members with gold and silver, not two-bit snags.

“Wait.” I halted Freddie because I decided I hadn’t finished and stormed toward the stage.

You couldn’t hear a fucking pin drop as their nightmare descended on them, climbing up the steps as some of the girls smiled while others looked as though they were about to faint.

“Sleeves up,” I ordered, not in the mood to muck around.

One by one, I demanded they pull their sleeves up, and if they didn’t, I pulled them up for them. The brown-haired girl was another space cadet with tracks on her arms, so I told her to step back. The redhead was fine, the curvy blond was fine, and the skinny blond was another whose pupils were large while she swayed on her feet, so I ordered her to step back as well.

Out of the lineup of twelve girls, four of them were spun out, and that raised the question as to where they were getting the drugs from.

“Bring those girls to me,” I insisted as Freddie bustled about, probably wishing I was still in prison, while he herded the reluctant girls down the stage steps to my table.

It was too early for a drink, so I lit a cigar and took a strong pull, blew out the smoke, waiting impatiently for the girls to sort their shit out and park their arses in a chair.

Once they were seated and fidgeting nervously, I sat in silence, which was a technique I learned from my uncle to intimidate and assert control. Long pauses and unflinching stares were an effective way to dish out a message without saying a damn thing. Everyone in this bar. Everyone in this fucking club knew who was in charge.

Dragging out the silence a little longer as we were draped in a cloud of cigar smoke, I inspected the dancers' body language on the stage. When I was ready to speak, I leaned back in my chair, rested my arm on the chair next to me, and demanded, “Point them out.”

Blank stares on pale face replied, still twitching and too frightened to look me in the eye.

“Your dealer,” I clarified, noticing a redhead behind the bar watching with great interest as she wiped the glasses with a cloth to make them squeaky clean. She could be curious. Or she could know something.

When silence fell, I repeated slowly, “Who is your dealer?”

The girls exchanged glances, which told me they were possibly connected outside of work and had the same dealer. No one dared to speak, so I wondered if the dealer held something over them, bribery with drugs or threats against their families. But more likely, they were worried that I’d arrange for the Merk character to be knocked off. They knew who I was and where I’d been for the last three years.

“You’ve got five seconds to give me a name…five, four, three…two-”

“Merk,” the blond with a pixie hairdo blurted and received fearful looks for it as panic coiled through them as if by uttering his name, they’d written their death warrant.

“Merk? Who the fuck is Merk? Where can I find Merk?” I pressed, as the redhead behind the bar kept catching my eye for some reason. Everyone else in the room turned away, pretending not to see, and she kept watching.

The pixie girl stuttered, “He’s-”

“Shush,” the girl with long brown hair hushed, then realized she made a grave mistake when she caught the look on my face. Merk had them wrapped around his little finger, and that pissed me off, mainly because it caused a weakness in my business.

I wavered before pushing my chair back and beckoned Freddie to get his arse over to me as I walked toward the bar.

“Everything okay, Mr. Kaiser?” he asked apprehensively.

Pointing my thumb at the girls, I said, “Organize the van to take them to the rehab. I don’t want to see them again until they’re clean.”

“No problem,” he replied and bustled off to the table as I approached the bar. The redhead lowered her eyes and stepped away.

“You,” I pointed in front of me. “Move.”

She stepped before me, still cleaning that drinking glass, her blue eyes darting about anxiously. The redhead was older and more mature than the young girl with tracks up her arms, and her work ethic was exemplary. I didn’t need to talk to the staff or know their name to notice who was studious and reliable and who wasn’t.

It was all in their posture, and the way they carried pride on their backs because it was a fucking privilege to work in this exclusive club, and most of the staff knew this. Others were a little slow to catch on and either needed to leave or change their attitude.

“You’re taking an interest in what we’re discussing over there,” I pointed out. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

“He waits outside their buildings,” she confessed quietly. “I live near two of those girls, and I see him and other men get them hooked on drugs and alcohol, then pimp them out. But they lure them first by being nice, buying them drinks, and pretending to care for their needs.”

“Merk?”

She nodded. “There’s a whole syndicate. Those girls come from broken homes and desperately want someone to cling to, which makes them easy prey.”

“Do you know where Merk lives?” I persisted, eager to put this right because Freddie and Betty wouldn’t have hired the girls if they failed the mandatory drug test. So, they got hooked while working here, which annoyed me even more.

She opened her mouth to answer, froze, and dropped her eyes when someone approached the bar. Ronan. He acknowledged me with a nod, then glanced between me and the redhead, realizing that he interrupted a conversation.

“You’re late,” I pointed out as if he didn’t already know.

“Got held up,” he replied, giving nothing away.

“Why is your hair wet?”

“I got caught up in the rain,” he replied, “and I had to go back to the apartment to shower and change my clothes.”

“It’s raining outside? I hadn’t noticed,” I mumbled, then turned back to the redhead, distancing herself from me. “Where can I find Merk?”

She swallowed and glanced at Ronan again. “I don’t know exactly where he lives, but they hang out down Twenty-first Street outside the women’s shelter to lure their prey.”

“Thanks,” I appreciated her honesty but was aware that she had put her neck on the line by doing that. Even though no one overheard the conversation, plenty of people saw us speaking just after I pulled the girls off the stage. Someone with half a brain could put two and two together and figure it out, which was a problem for me. Are there enemies in the midst, right under my nose, who push drugs onto my staff?

“What’s going on?” Ronan frowned, turning toward me.

“You heard of Merk?”

He nodded, “Yeah. Great upstanding guy,” he was being sarcastic. “Dregs from the Ivanovs .”

“He used to work for the Russians?” I muttered as it was starting to paint a picture.

He cocked his eyebrows and glanced about to make sure the coast was clear. “Before you bought them out.”

“He’s pushing drugs onto my staff,” I told him. “Were you aware?”

“I flushed out a few and sent them to rehab on the tab, but once they’re clean, most return to streets under the thumb of their pusher,” he explained. “If they don’t have good homes to return to, then we’ve lost them.”

“Yeah, well, our priority is to keep the club clean, but…” I paused to consider it, and Ronan knew what I was thinking.

“I can organize a friendly visit if you want?” he suggested, and I glanced back at the table where the pale, bony girls with dead eyes were sitting.

“The problem is that once you pop, one another takes his place,” I was conflicted, but when they messed with my business, lying back and doing nothing was not in my nature.

Ronan surveyed me closely, waiting for a sign of direction. I knew if I did this, it might open a can of worms, and since I just got out of prison, I wasn’t too keen to give the police another opportunity to arrest me. But there was a serious problem on the streets of Gothenburg. Three years gone, and I’d noticed a change for the worse. Maybe it was the cost of living and general depression in attitudes, or perhaps it was caused by a hole left when the Russians absconded. Probably both.

I finally nodded to Ronan, giving him the go-ahead. “Make it squeaky.”

“Sure, boss,” he replied, moving away to organize the business, knowing I wouldn’t hear another word until the job was done.

I pulled away from the bar and clicked my fingers at Freddie. “Get them out of here before we’re open for business,” I pointed to the girls. Then, I gathered up my paperwork and walked upstairs to my office.