Sinful Mafia Santa (Diamond Ring)

Chapter 1

AERYN

There are two kinds of people who go to an underground sex club the week before Christmas: The lonely and the curious.

Wait. There’s a third kind too: Chefs who need to blow off a little steam after furiously plating orders for the last seating on a busy Friday, four nights before the holiday.

“I’m absolutely knackered,” I say, the Irish coming out in my voice as I collapse into a chair in Will Lasker’s cluttered office. “And all I had to do was shove mixed greens onto plates.”

“Bullshit,” Will says, sucking deep on his vape pen. “You are a goddess, Aeryn Reardon. You took over that salad station like you’ve worked here all your life. And you didn’t even break a sweat.”

Well, I did strip down to my black silk shell—Miu Miu for the win. My Alexander McQueen cardigan is draped over the back of my chair. My matching high-waist trousers are no worse for wear, but I traded in my Louboutin heels for a spare pair of Will’s Crocs.

It’s been eight years since Will and I completed our coursework at the New York Culinary Institute. Even when Will was smoking cigarettes instead of vaping, he could taste the difference between orange and yellow bell peppers, blindfolded. Now, the salads he serves at Nourriture are works of art.

“Are you going to fire that shitehawk?” The man I stood in for showed up an hour late, higher than the Empire State Building.

“I already did,” Will says. “Want a full-time job?”

I laugh. “You can’t afford me. Besides, I have to be back in Chicago by Christmas Day.”

“Want a three-day job?” Will persists. He waggles his eyebrows at me. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

I laugh. “And how will you do that?”

“Come on,” he says, pushing back from his desk. “I’ll take you to Kynk.”

I snort. “You and I parted ways with kink the night you decided to fuck Jaxon Pearson in the classroom walk-in.”

“Kynk,” he says again, and he spells it. He doesn’t bother apologizing for Jaxon. Will and I are much better friends than we ever were lovers. And part of me always knew he preferred boys, even when we were dating.

“Sorry,” I say. “I don’t think Kynk made it onto TripAdvisor’s list of Top Ten New York Attractions.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Will says. “It’s the most exclusive sex club in all five boroughs.”

“But they let you in,” I point out.

“I am a card-carrying member.”

“So not so exclusive then.”

“Do I need to remind you that I am the owner and chef de cuisine of the restaurant The New York Times called ‘First in Class’ last year?”

Will doesn’t need to remind me. I’m still green with envy—greener than the kale microgreens I tweezed onto his salads for the last four hours. He’s living his dream here in Manhattan, while I’m stuck back in Chicago.

My week-long vacation to New York has been one last hurrah before I accept the inevitable and take my place in the Reardon family business. An obedient daughter, I’ve given notice at the Chicago Art Institute, telling them they need a new chef for their museum café.

It was never a Michelin-starred restaurant like Will’s, but it was a job I got on my own merit. I’ll miss it. A lot. I’ll never be as happy, fulfilling my obligations as to Chicago’s Irish mob.

“Hey,” Will croons, as if he realizes he touched a live nerve. “We don’t have to go.”

I force myself to laugh. “Friday night at a sex club in New York City with my gay ex-boyfriend? How can I possibly say no?”

“Have you been to one before?”

“What? You think Chicago is the boonies?”

“I thought maybe—”

“I’ve been to a feckin’ club.”

I don’t tell him it was three rooms in the dank basement of a Chicago brownstone.

That I went with three girlfriends from high school, when we all decided to skip our tenth reunion at St. Boniface.

That I had a couple of drinks, walked around in lingerie bought for the purpose, and decided I would never understand the appeal of butt plugs with animal tails attached.

I was home, alone, asleep in my own bed by midnight—and that was after a session with my favorite hot pink vibrator.

Will is already on his feet, bouncing like arborio rice spilled onto a linoleum floor. I swear to God the man must be vaping pure adrenaline. “Let’s go, then!” He sniffs at his chef’s jacket. “Jesus. I reek. Thank God Kynk has showers.”

“Thank God,” I drawl.

I barely have time to switch out my shoes and pull on my sweater before he’s hustling me out the door. I’m still knotting the belt on my sturdy winter overcoat when a cab glides to the curb in response to his raised hand.

I gaze out the windows as we make our way down Fifth Avenue. The city is decorated for Christmas, brilliantly colored lights reflecting off the fresh snow that fell during dinner service. Even though it’s late, there are still lots of people on the pavement, gawking at brightly lit store windows.

Will ignores the holiday finery. Instead, he fills me in on the menu he’s launching next month, twenty-one all-new courses.

I make appropriate noises at all the right places, but by the time Will gets to his three desserts—each one-bite morsel more elaborate than the last—I finally interrupt.

“Wait. Where is this club we’re going to? ”

“Brooklyn,” he says, waving toward the bridge we’re about to cross.

I sigh. I wanted to avoid Brooklyn this trip. I wanted to steer clear of the memories.

“Down by the waterfront,” Will adds.

That’s even worse.

Will leans forward, concern carving lines between his eyebrows. He’s right. He reeks. “Change your mind?” he asks.

“No,” I say too quickly, shaking my head. “It’s just that…”

Will waits at least thirty seconds before he prompts, “Just that…”

I sigh. “Logan was going to open a club in Brooklyn.”

Will’s eyes go wide with horror-tinged pity. Or maybe that’s pity-tinged horror. I know both looks well.

I despise being Logan Reardon’s little sister. Even people who’ve never watched a minute of professional hockey have seen footage of my brother sprawled on the ice at Aces Arena, his arterial blood neon-red against the blue crease in front of the goal.

Logan died ten years ago Christmas Eve. It was a freak accident.

A fight, like a dozen other line brawls across the league that night.

Logan just happened to fall as another player’s skate came up.

One inch to the left or the right and he would have taken a stitch or two, been back on the ice before the end of the period.

Instead, his carotid was dissected and he bled out in three minutes flat, in front of eighteen thousand fans.

In the past decade, millions have watched the replay on social media.

Will finally whispers, his voice low with respect, “Logan planned to open a sex club?”

My laugh sounds shaky. I doubt my straitlaced brother ever said the word fetish in his life, much less indulged in one. He was always an athlete, always in training.

Of course, growing up a Reardon, Logan knew his way around underground establishments. On his eighteenth birthday, he made his vows to the South Side Squad, taking his place in our Irish mob clan beside my da and our four older brothers.

But Logan’s future was always on the ice rink. Not in strip clubs and after-hours bars, not liberating “lost” trailers in night raids at Chicago’s trucking terminal, not stepping into some sweetheart job at Reardon Construction.

I tell Will, “He wanted to set up a sports bar in one of those abandoned subway tunnels. He was going into business with one of his teammates. They planned on getting athletes to drop by on the regular, keep the crowds coming, you know? I was going to do the food—wagyu sliders, heritage pork bratwurst, international beers, that sort of thing.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t happen.” Will sounds sincere.

“I am too.” I was frozen for nearly a year after Logan died, unable to accept that he was gone, unable to go back to culinary school, unable to do just about anything but haunt the Reardon family mansion in Chicago.

I’m Da’s only daughter. He indulged me. He always has.

Until now.

Da has given me one year to get married, and he’s pushing me hard toward one of the old Irish families.

The only restaurant he’ll tolerate my running is a manky diner on the South Side, a place to launder his mob money.

He’s already picked out the location, promising to burn out the existing restaurant if the current owner doesn’t sign over the lease by New Year’s.

I’m lucky Da let me come to New York, let me say goodbye to the life I could have led. I’ve had one solid week of reservations at the city’s finest dining establishments, but every meal rubs salt in my wounds. Korean amethyst bamboo salt, yeah, but salt all the same.

My dreams will die Tuesday morning, when I climb into Da’s private jet and head back to Chicago for Christmas dinner with my clan. Once I set foot back on Squad territory, I’ll be a good little Reardon girl for the rest of my feckin’ life.

“Look,” Will says. “If this is a bad night for you…”

“William Lasker, that’s the third time you’ve asked if I’m having second thoughts. It sounds like you’re the one thinking I shouldn’t go to this club!”

“No way, Ariel.” He’s called me that since the first day of classes, when my red-brown hair refused to stay put in a respectable ponytail. He said I looked like the Little Mermaid, and I told him I looked better in a seashell bra than any animated character. After that, our friendship was sealed.

The cab pulls over to the curb in the middle of a block that looks condemned, and Will taps his credit card to pay. When we climb out of the car, I realize the snow has been cleared from a narrow section of sidewalk. We make our way to a shadowed door.