Chapter 3 - Collision
My phone screen filled with my wife’s smiling contact photo while the call rang.
Below me, the Cherry Room moved. Downstairs, Lily stood searching for an outline she couldn’t quite see.
She stood in the far corner near the dance floor, one hand planted on that little waist. Two young fools hovered around her with thirsty grins. She had been grinding five minutes ago. Now she was pretending she was surprised that I was calling her.
She answered.
“Hello, husband,” she said, biting the title like she wanted it to bruise. “What do you want?”
The bass crawled through the phone, a thin, tinny rattle compared to the heavy thud in the room. Her voice still cut clean.
“You fired my men, then went downstairs to put on a show,” I said. “I’m asking which part of that was supposed to make sense.”
She tipped her chin toward the VIP Room. The glass hid my face from her, but I had hers. Her lipstick was still perfect. Her jaw was tight.
“I didn’t answer for a lecture.”
“No, you answered because your husband was calling.”
“Are you, though?”
“When it suits you it seems.”
She laughed once, sharp enough to sound fake. One of the boys beside her leaned in, too pleased with himself. Lily let him get close enough to be seen, then stepped away before he could touch what he was looking at.
I liked that she knew the line. I liked even more that she kept testing whether I would move it.
“What’s wrong, Lily?”
“Nothing is wrong.” Her eyes stayed lifted, searching the tinted glass for my expression and getting nothing. “I’m downstairs. I’m dressed up and ready to party with the studs.”
“Go easy on them, honey.”
“Cute.” She turned her shoulder so the room could admire the drop of her neckline. “You should come down. I’ve got a couple babies down here who think I’m single.”
“They can think whatever keeps them spending.”
“You don’t care?”
I looked at my wife through the glass wall, at the way she held herself like a challenge. Possessive little thing. Territorial as hell until she wanted me to be the one showing teeth.
“About them?” I asked. “No.”
Silence rode the line for half a beat. The music filled it.
“You’re such an arrogant bastard.”
“Accurate.”
“I could let one of them put his hands on me.”
“You could.”
Her mouth pressed flat. That answer always disappointed her.
She wanted rage from me, public and spontaneous.
She wanted me storming down those stairs, dragging her away by the wrist, proving in front of every model and bottle girl that Lily Rose Getachew was still the only woman I would ever claim.
She never understood that my claim did not need theatrics.
Tedros sat with his elbows on his knees, toothpick working slow in the corner of his mouth.
Abel talked too fast at Spice, who ignored him and kept her eyes on me.
Reza adjusted his cuff while Viccy pretended to be interested in his pitch.
Darryl stayed by the glass, watching the floor with that still look of his.
Every one of them had come to me because my wife had cut them loose again.
I kept my voice even. “You know who’s up here?”
“If you say one of your bottle-girls by name, I’m hanging up.”
Viccy smiled at me and put one finger to her lips.
I didn’t give her the satisfaction.
“Viccy or any other bottle-girl I have up here isn’t the problem.”
“Oh, so it’s Spice tonight.” Lily’s laugh went mean. “Or one of those other bottle girls who forgets how decency work when you walk by. Maybe that skinny model from table six. The one who keeps pretending she needs directions to the bathroom.”
“She does get lost a lot.”
“Haile.”
Her voice dropped on my name.
I leaned back and watched her stop performing for the boys. Her free hand went to her mouth, thumbnail grazing the edge of her lower lip. She was mad as hell.
“Don’t play with me right now,” she said.
“I’m not playing. I’ve got the crew sitting in my VIP Room with their pride in their hands because my wife decided she runs payroll with her temper.”
“They work because you let them work.”
“They work because I trust them.”
“They hang around because you feed them.” Her voice sharpened. “They stand at your door, drive your cars, carry your little packages, smile at every bitch who bends over your table, and then I’m supposed to sit there like I don’t see it?”
The boys near her finally caught that she was not flirting anymore. One drifted back into the crowd. The other pretended to check his phone.
I watched Lily watch me.
“You fired them,” I said.
She looked away first. That pleased me less than it should have.
“They came crying to you?”
“They came to the man who runs this show.”
“Good. Then you can tell them I meant it.”
Tedros’s toothpick stopped moving. Abel’s eyes cut over fast. Reza’s jaw tightened before he smoothed it away. Darryl did not move at all.
“What exactly did you mean?” I asked.
“I meant I’m tired of your little brotherhood acting like this place is a bachelor party.
” She faced the glass again, cheeks flushed now, not from dancing.
“I meant Reza can’t stop chatting up girls like he’s auditioning them for you.
Tedros can’t stop letting every big-ass pretty woman past the rope because she knows your name.
Abel just can’t stop running his mouth in general.
Darryl alright I guess. But he can go fuck himself as well. ”
Darryl’s eyes lifted at that. He said nothing.
Lily’s breath came hard through the phone.
“So yes,” she said. “I fired them. All of them. Since apparently nobody else around here remembers I’m your wife. And I run the payroll.”
The room behind me went still.
I took a deep breath.
“You are my wife,” I said. “That is why I’m giving you this chance to come upstairs before I decide how mad I want to be.”
She laughed, but it did not hold. “Fuck you.”
“Watch your mouth.”
“Or what?”
The corner of my mouth moved. She wanted the answer too badly.
“Come find out.”
Another pulse of bass climbed through the floor. Below, Lily stood in the crowd with her phone to her ear and her eyes fixed on the darkened glass, furious because I had not chased her and furious because I had invited her to walk into my room on her own feet.
“And mingle with your whores?” she said. “Male and female? Fat chance.”
“I’ll clear the room.”
“Congratulations. You know how doors work.”
“I’ll send them out,” I said. “Then you and I are going to talk where I can see your face without glass between us.”
Her thumb worried her bottom lip. She caught herself and dropped her hand.
“You think that’s all it takes?”
“No.”
“Then why would I come up there?”
“Because you already made up your mind.”
She went still.
I had her. I did not need to squeeze.
For a second, the club took over the line. Voices. Bass. The thin scrape of her breathing through the speaker.
“You are so full of yourself,” she said.
“And you are on your way.”
She hung up.
I kept the phone in my hand and watched her lower hers. She did not move at first. Her pride made a show of standing there. Then her head turned, just enough, toward the staircase that led to me.
Good girl.
I turned back to the room.
“Everybody out,” I said. “I need an hour with my wife.”
Abel dropped his head back against the couch. “Man, boss, you killing the whole vibe. I just got Spice laughing for real.”
Spice snapped her gum and gave him a look. “I was laughing at you, baby.”
“See?” Abel pointed at her. “Progress.”
Reza stood first, smoothing the front of his jacket like he had never been dismissed in his life. “Of course. Domestic diplomacy. Very important for the brand.”
“It isn’t the brand I’m worried about,” Tedros said. His voice came low around the toothpick. He rose from the red couch with the weight of a man who made doors reconsider being closed. “Man, you thinking too small, boss. She fired all of us. Again.”
“I heard her.”
“You heard her loud enough to fix it?”
I met his stare.
Tedros held it for a breath, then nodded once. The toothpick shifted. That was as close as he came to an apology.
Darryl peeled off the glass and picked up his keys from the mirror table. “She’s coming up hot.”
“She usually does.”
“She was scared when she did it,” he said.
The blunt truth landed harder because Darryl spent so little breath. I did not answer. He did not need one.
Abel pushed himself up, chains clinking as Tedros caught him by the back of the hoodie and steered him toward the door.
“Damn, big man, I got legs,” Abel said.
“Use them,” Tedros said.
Viccy lingered by the couch, phone in one hand, lashes lifted toward me. “You sure you don’t need backup, Mr. Getachew?”
Lily would have heard poison in that sweet voice from across the club.
“I’m sure.”
Spice slid past Viccy and paused near the door, lips shiny from the gum she kept working. “Tell Mrs. Getachew I said hi.”
“No,” I said.
She grinned anyway.
Reza opened the door and gave me a small bow. Tedros went out behind him. Abel complained under his breath until the hallway swallowed him. Darryl left last, his eyes cutting once toward the stairs before he pulled the door shut.
The latch clicked.
The VIP Room changed when they were gone.
The couch sat empty around the mirror table, red leather holding the shape of bodies that had just been there.
Beyond the tinted glass, the Cherry Room kept spending money.
The bass pressed up through the soles of my shoes.
I liked the room better with some life in it.
I crossed to the bar, pulled out the stool, and sat with my back half-turned to the door.
Downstairs, my wife had chosen her pride. Now she had to climb the stairs with it.
I listened for her heels.