11. Nyx
Chapter 11
Nyx
I’ve never been back to The Foundry since the night I met Sullivan O’Brien. The club wasn’t really my style. Girls got in free, but drinks were expensive and everyone was just a little too…posh.
Only reason I was there was because I already knew at seventeen that rich people have the best drugs. Their shit is rarely laced with baby laxative.
The club’s gotten a lot flashier since then.
The lights, the people, the sound system. I don’t remember it being so loud, so hot, so bright. It’s probably changed a lot over the decades it’s been open. According to Vito’s Google searches, before it became a nightclub, it was one of the most popular prohibition-era speakeasies in the state. People have been coming here to get their kicks for nearly a century.
What Google wasn’t privy to was whether it belonged to the mob back then already, or if they assumed ownership once they realized its potential.
Andy stops beside me at the edge of the dance floor, scanning the crowd through narrowed eyes.
“See him yet?” she asks.
I feel out of place amongst all these carefree souls with their sloppy smiles and their sweaty bodies. In my current state of mind, I’d rather be nursing a bottle of tequila…which says a lot, because I gave up binge drinking years ago.
But since I’ve met Savage, bad habits I’ve worked so hard to break have begun creeping back into my life.
I lean in so she can hear me over the pounding music. “Doubt he’s here. But someone up there might know where to find him.” I point as subtly as possible to the VIP area.
Andy checks out the balcony, shrugging. “Figures. Been up there before?”
I suppress a shudder at a violent flashback of Sullivan squeezing my tits.
“Yeah. Once.”
“Can you get us in?”
“I can try.”
She frowns at my reluctant shrug.
This was the plan from the start, but I’m doubting myself now. Another bad habit that’s worming its way back into my life.
Andy tugs at her green bodycon dress, and I wince a little recalling how pedantic Vito was about her outfit.
I already knew Vito had more than one ‘safehouse’. But the closet full of women’s clothes Vito kept at the cottage still surprised me. He said it was in case one of his dates needed to spruce up before heading out with him.
When it was Andy’s turn to dress up, it’s like someone flipped a switch in Vito’s head. He insisted on something green, to bring out her eyes. That she straight-iron her hair, which she reluctantly agreed to. But when he came up to her with a mascara wand, she slapped him.
Weirdly, that just made him smile at her in a knowing way, and from the shock on her face, she seemed to instantly regret it.
I used to pack it on when I was clubbing, but I didn’t bother tonight. And while my dress is tight, it’s almost at my knees. Savage nearly had an aneurysm at some of Vito’s suggestions for what I should wear. Guess I should be lucky I ended up with this black sequined number and not a burqa.
I didn’t argue with him. I’m not here to party, or to get laid.
I’m here to find the man who kidnapped my sisters.
It chills the marrow in my bones to think that an apex predator like him so much as looked at my babies. Especially when I know it’s likely he’s already done so much worse.
“We’ll figure a way in.” Andy slips onto the dance floor, and I’m only a pounding bass beat behind her.
She sways confidently on her heels, despite the press of the crowd and limited visibility out here.
I’m still in two minds about Andy. She seems capable, independent, and pragmatic. Add in her EMT-level medical experience, and she’s an excellent plus one to any mob infiltration party. But she’s triggered by the weirdest shit, so I’m wary to trust her. I know from experience that PTSD doesn’t make someone weak…but it definitely makes them unreliable.
We had some time alone to talk when Savage and Vito went to fetch ammo and brief their men about tonight’s mission. When I’d explained to her what had happened to my sisters, her story came out.
A few years ago, she’d been snatched in a parking lot by some psycho. He’d held her and a bunch of other girls captive, hiring them out to his sick friends as sex toys.
She escaped with the help of another captive and the man who came to rescue her, a man who Andy seems to both fear and revere. After that awful experience, she took several self defense courses, and learnt how to shoot a gun.
Andy refused to come in here without being armed, even when there was a chance we wouldn’t get past security. Vito found her a pistol small enough to be strapped to the inside of her thigh, and luckily, only women’s purses are checked at the door. Neither of us brought one.
There won’t be time for us to go and powder our noses.
I follow her through the club’s writhing dance floor, tasting as much as smelling the fog of sweat and perfume. We’re both bought drinks, but I’ve barely touched mine. I don’t think Andy’s taken a single sip.
We’ve only been dancing for a few minutes when Andy cocks her head and leaves the dance floor again. She heads straight for the bouncer at the VIP entrance as if she was born in a seventeen-room mansion with a vintage platinum spoon in her mouth.
The bouncer sees us approaching and stiffens, ready to fend us off. Then he gives Andy a double take and some of that aggression melts away from his shoulders.
I don’t hear what she says to him as she leans in and lays a hand on his arm, but by the time I reach them, he’s unclipping the velvet rope and standing aside for us to enter.
We’re halfway up the stairs before I whisper, “How’d you do that?”
Her face is grim. “Oldest trick in the book.”
“Sex?” I hiss.
“Money.” Andy lifts her hand, a folded bill clamped between two fingers.
She pauses outside the second set of doors. “Want to go in first?”
Once Savage had finally agreed that only me and Andy would venture inside The Foundry, we discussed what would happen if Sullivan was here tonight. The chances of him not recognizing me are slim. But I’m hoping he underestimates the living shit out of me so I can get close enough to talk to him.
The door closes silently behind us.
I pause to get my bearings before strutting deeper inside. Plush lounge chairs and booths are scattered throughout the dimly lit VIP section. Either things have changed here, or I was so wasted I never noticed the two stripper poles, or the set of poker tables near one wall.
Downstairs, the club is at capacity. Up here, there are maybe fifty people. Any more than that, and their collective egos would cause a narcissistic void in the space-time continuum, sucking them all into a parallel universe.
“I don’t see him,” I murmur to Andy as I casually head for the balcony’s railing.
“He’s not that guy in the back snorting a line from that stripper’s ass?” Her lips barely move as she comes to stand beside me. I turn around, propping my elbows on the cool metal railing, as if we’re just gabbing away like besties.
I glance over at the guy she spotted, shake my head. “Too blond.”
“Him or the stripper?”
“Both. Sheesh, what was she thinking?”
“And the one getting the lap dance?”
I sip my drink. “Soon as he gets his face out of the girl’s tits, I’ll let you know.”
Andy snort-laughs, and I manage my first smile of the night. I won’t lie, this mission is the most nerve wracking I’ve ever been assigned. Not because it’s tough.
I’ve definitely had it tougher.
If I fuck this up, my sisters will never live another normal day in their lives.
“Okay, because if it’s not him, then check the guy?—“
I cut off at the sound of a man’s voice. “Nyx?”
My drink sloshes over my hand as I hurriedly straighten, tottering on my heels. I recognize that voice. And I recognize the tall, brawny man coming our way.
“Is that Sullivan?” Andy whispers. Surprisingly, she sounds determined, not anxious or uneasy.
“No.” My voice is hollow as I watch Liam’s father approach us. “But if anyone knows where he is, it’s Patrick.”