3. Micah
Imake my way up the stairs inside CeCe’s, music thudding in my veins, and my hands clenching at my sides. But try as I might to ignore the impulse, I look over the mezzanine railing and monitor the brunette at the bar. I study the long angles of her body. Her trim, athletic shoulders peeking from her skimpy tank. The sinewy muscles obvious, despite her compact frame. Lower down, lean thighs and muscular calves promise that Ms. Hale is no stranger to exercise.
Whether she attends a gym or punishes herself with a late evening jog the way I do, I don’t know. But she knows exertion. She knows hard work.
Tiia wears cheap jewelry: a couple of bracelets that shimmer beneath club lights, and a thin gold chain around her neck. Its discoloring implies she wears it always, even when she’s sweating or showering.
I trudge along the second floor, through the VIP area and around armed men who wear crisp suits. They don’t stop me. They don’t get in my way as I continue through and watch Tiia’s sidekick, the red-headed spitfire, flirt with Gregory. It seems she likes dudes with a beard; or maybe, she just likes dudes period. Likes to flirt. To be loud.
Which, from my two minutes with Tiia, I think is the complete opposite to her personality.
She has a personality. It’s kind of outgoing, and rooted deeply in sarcasm and passive aggression… a pleasant change, considering my closest and best friend in the world, my brother Felix, lacks any sign of passivity in any form.
“Micah!” Felix sits back at ‘his’ table, the one perched in the corner, so he gets a bird’s-eye view of the club beneath, but remains shadowed and secure, so no one sees him unless he wants them to.
I peel my focus from the maybe-Hawaiian, maybe-Puerto Rican, but definitely quick-witted Tiia, and bring it across to my brother as I come to a stop in front of Michaels and Stovic—Felix’s soldiers when I’m not around.
They part, dipping their chins in acknowledgment as I pass, then I circle around behind my brother, my eyes burning into the side of Tiia’s face as she sips from her drink and listens to her friend chatter incessantly.
“Who is that?” Felix picks up his lowball glass and takes a small sip, glancing back at me a moment later when my lips remain firmly shut. “Micah?”
“I’m not entirely sure.” I snag a chair and haul it away from the table, plopping down so fast, the feet scrape against the floor. “Tiia Hale. She says she’s a New Yorker, but she looked pretty fuckin’ lost when I found her outside.” I bring my hands up and dig my right thumb into my left palm, massaging the ache that ricochets from my fingers and spreads along my forearm in waves. “She’s not a schoolteacher, dancer, artist, musically or otherwise, nor is she a journalist, according to her, but she won’t tell me what she actually does. Apparently, she lives in the East Village. Didn’t say whether she lives alone.”
Silence hangs but for the thud, thud, thud of music pumping from the speakers. The movement of bodies downstairs. The slide of women’s bodies on a stage.
CeCe’s has already turned over a million dollars in legitimate trade since we opened our doors a month ago. The cops occasionally walk through, searching for violations, but we welcome them, invite their attempt to uncover what isn’t there, then bid them a pleasant farewell when they find nothing and leave with a bad attitude.
They only get three visits before we call in declaring harassment, and a badge never again walks through our doors unless they have a warrant.
The club is raking in enough cash to keep Felix happy, and me, less stressed.
Current situation notwithstanding.
Finally, after a contemplative moment, Felix sets his elbows on the table and drags his attention from Tiia’s profile. “Are you looking to fuck her, marry her, or kill her? Because,” he taps the side of his fist against my arm, demanding my attention when I would rather watch her under the club lights. “I’m not really sure what your expression is saying right now. I’m sensing…” he sits back and shows off a lopsided grin, “attraction. But you’re mad about it.”
“I’m not attracted.” I mean… I am. I suppose. But that’s because she’s beautiful and brave. Two of my favorite things in a woman. “And I’m not mad.”
“Then why are you scowling?” He reaches across and pokes the deep line etched between my brows. “You look cranky.”
I slap his arm away, drawing the beady stares and warning gazes of every guard on our payroll.
But Felix isn’t my boss. Not in the way he’s everyone else’s. He’s not my superior, the way the media and everyone outside our world believes.
Felix took up for the family where our father left off when he died. So when a Malone must speak, Felix is the mouth; when a Malone must be seen, it’s Felix’s face that’s presented. When a decision must be made, it’s Felix that people look to.
But that’s all just about appearance.
Felix is the figurehead of the Malones, because if a Malone must be executed, then he wants it to be his back in the crosshairs.
That’s what he does. He protects his brothers.
But decisions are rarely made without joint agreement. And investments are never made without a majority vote.
Felix doesn’t want to rule the family; he only wants everyone outside our circle to think he does, so when shit gets tricky, he’s the first on the list of five hits that must be made.
“You smacked me,” he sniggers, speaking quietly but flicking his fingers forward in a discreet signal to his men to watch the club and not us. “You want me to retaliate?”
“At home.” I sit back, my lips twitching and my chest still cooling after my run. My lungs search for fresh air, but there’s none to be found up here—not for as long as my brother sucks on a cigarette in his spare time. “We’ll hit the gym at the house and settle shit.”
I peer toward Tiia and her friend again. “Why’s she making me look twice, Lix?”
He drags his eyes from the side of my face and looks across to the bar instead. “Because she’s sex on legs, and you’re still a virgin?”
I snort, soft laughter rolling along my chest. “Might as well be. No one I’ve taken to bed has ever scratched my itch exactly right.”
“You’re picky,” he teases. Then he nods Tiia’s way. “You wanna take her for a spin?”
“I introduced myself as Micah.” I drop my hands and chew the inside of my cheek. “Just Micah. No ‘Malone’. And still, she couldn’t get away from me fast enough.”
“Maybe your previous ‘scratches’ have spread gossip that you’re worthless in bed.” His smile widens, playful and taunting. “Maybe your reputation precedes you, and she’d prefer not to waste her time on a dud.”
“Fuckin’ dud,” I grumble under my breath. “Can you hold an intelligent conversation, ever? I’m trying to tell you she was skulking around outside our club, and when she got my name, she gave me the eyes. Like she knew who I was.”
“She’s a New York native.” He shrugs. “Everyone who has lived here for more than five minutes knows your name. Which means nice, normal, sensible girls are gonna wig out if they’re not looking to fuck a gangster. What’s she drinking?” He nods in the ladies’ direction. “Vodka?”
“Dunno.”
I reach into my pocket and snag my phone, then tugging it out again, I skip over the texts from a certain sexy doctor and clamp my lips shut, lest I alert Felix to something he doesn’t know.
Scrolling my contacts, I stop on the number for the phone by the bar, then hitting dial, I bring the device to my ear and wait only a moment before Gregory spins on his heels and grabs it from its cradle on the back wall.
“Hey, boss!” He shouts to be heard, tucking the phone between his ear and shoulder before he spins back and continues pouring a beer. “You want something sent up for you?”
“What are those women drinking?”
Greg freezes, his eyes swinging up to me—though I’m not sure he can see me through the smoke and shadows—then he lowers them again and looks straight at Tiia and her friend.
There are hundreds of women inside this club at this very moment. But he looks to the two I reference without a single moment of hesitation.
“The redhead is drinking vodka, boss.”
“And the other one?”
“Soda water. Pretty sure she’s hard of hearing, too, because I’ve heard her shout ‘what’ at least seven hundred times in the last three minutes. Her friend is yammering on about you and Lix, and the brunette’s eyes are glossing over. She’s not listening. Not sure she can.”
“The redhead is talking about me?” I look to Lix, my instincts proven correct, and clench my injured hand in my lap. When I can’t massage it with my right, squeezing it into a fist is the next best thing. It stretches the tendons and scratches an itch—not the same one I mentioned already, but… similar. “What is she saying?”
“Giving the brunette a rundown of the family, I think. I’m only catching snatches, but the general gist seems to be the redhead is a writer, and the Malones have been pretty loud in the journalistic world this year. Old man Tim’s death, Felix being promoted to head boss. Ms. Cannon’s recent articles. The redhead is basically saying you’re famous. But she’s got no info that Ms. Cannon herself hasn’t published.”
“And what does the brunette say about it?”
Greg snorts, finishes pulling the beer, and sets the glass on a steel grate that catches run-off suds. “I honestly think she’s sleeping sitting up at this point. She gave her friend an uh huh a few minutes ago. A really? after that. But I’m not sure she actually gives a shit. She can’t hear well, so my guess is she’s given up on asking Red to repeat herself. She’s just sipping her soda water.”
“What are their plans for tonight?”
“Dunno, boss.” He turns and starts along the bar to fill someone else’s order. “Red mentioned dancing. Some dude named Roscoe is apparently heading this way, because he wants to catch up with them. But the pretty one is uninterested. I bet she excuses herself to the bathroom soon, climbs out the window, and heads home to her pyjamas and cats.”
I peel my attention from my bartender and study Tiia again. Her long hair, tied high in a cascading ponytail. Her slender neck, unmarked. No ink, no proof of a sex life, and no hunch from bad posture. Which eliminates desk jobs from my list of possible occupations. “She mentioned cats?”
“No,” he chuckles. “That was a gross generalization. I’m just saying she looks thoroughly unimpressed with her surroundings and would rather get out of here. It’s not even ten yet, so if she does, she could get home early enough to binge something on TV and still get to bed at a reasonable hour.” He pauses for a long beat, then asks, “You know her?”
“I met her. Watch them, okay? If this Roscoe turns up, you make sure he’s not trouble, and if anyone else should think to approach, you take care of that, too. I’ll be around. If she gets up to leave, you let me know right away.”
“Yes, boss.” He sets a glass on the bar and reaches up to free the phone from his kinked neck. “Is she a problem, sir, or a protected species?”
“Not sure yet.” I push up to stand, drawing Felix’s gaze as he turns with an unlit cigarette perched between his lips. “She’s got my blood tingling, and I can’t help but think it’s survival instinct, not lust. I’ll come down later and make myself known on the floor.”
I bring the phone from my ear and kill our call, then I reach out as Felix lights his smoke, and tear the fucking thing from between his lips. I crush it in my palm, pissing him off in a matter of milliseconds. “Our father died of cancer, stupid. We didn’t like him, so we didn’t mind much. But I’d rather not see you in a diaper anytime soon.”
I drop my phone into my pocket and open my hand so tobacco and ash trickle free to the table, then I step around my chair and push it back in. “I’m heading upstairs to get changed. Then I’ll walk the floor to keep watch over things.”
“It’s not your night to work,” he calls back. “And that was my last cigarette, bitch. I was saving it for a ceremonial thing.”
“Ceremonial?” I roll my eyes and force myself not to turn to look across the club floor. “You’ve been smoking all night, dickhead.”
“It’s my last pack.” He nods to a soldier I don’t have to turn to see. “Christabelle’s on me about it. So’s Minka. So I was enjoying my last lot before I put the habit away and become a better man.”
“Uh-huh. Well, in that case, I just helped you out.” I reach up to tug on the tie I would normally be wearing inside this club, but of course I only graze my sweaty tank instead.
I was just jogging past this place. Monitoring things before I continued my route. But Tiia was outside, wading into a pond filled with killers.
Everyone knows what happens to female ducks during mating season.
“Christabelle still at the office?” I ask my brother. “That why you’re stressed out?”
He slumps back now, because I brought up his kryptonite. “She’s finishing up some stuff for a big publication that’s going out in a few days. Jasper’s on watch, then he’s bringing her to me. I’m waiting here till she’s done so we can drive home together.”
“And in the meantime, you’re blackening your lungs and pouting like a little whiny baby.”
“Says the guy who can’t stop obsessing over a chick in sexy little shorts and kick-your-ass boots.” He flashes a playful smile, and winks when Stovic reaches past me and offers his own pack of cigarettes.
Felix accepts it, opens the cardboard, and selects a single smoke, then places it between his lips and tosses the rest back. “Last one, gentlemen. From this day forward, you’ll never again see me with one of these fuckers.”
“Uh-huh.” I snatch that one too, crush it in my palm, and smile when his killer’s stare, the look that liquifies a lesser man’s bowels, snaps up to lock onto mine.
“Did you another favor,” I smart. “Stop sucking that shit into your lungs, or I’m telling Christabelle.” Then I set my hand on the table, pain slicing up through my arm from the amputation I never consented to, and meet his stare. “And don’t mention another woman’s sexy shorts or how she looks in them, or I’ll tell Christabelle that, too.”
He sits back and sneers. “You’re a dick.”
I straighten up tall again and step around the table. “I like having this new button to press to keep you in line. You’re a pain in my ass, Felix. And Christabelle is the leash we’ve all been wishing for.”
I stop in front of Stovic and Michaels and lift a brow. “No more cigarettes for him. You heard the man; he’s quitting. Help him.”
At their nods of acknowledgment, I step through the duo and move to the flight of stairs. Then I head up, not down, and leave behind Tiia Hale, the beautiful woman whose very existence makes me stop and stare.
The realistic part of me acknowledges that I’m heading up for a shower and change of clothes strictly so I can redeem the impression she must surely have of me, but I push that part of my conscience aside, and tell myself over and over that I’m here anyway. I’m working. Thus, I must dress the part.
And if I happen to see Tiia Hale again… Well, that’s just a neat bonus I wouldn’t mind exploring.
Too bad that when I come down in a fresh, pressed suit, my hair brushed, and just enough cologne to make a woman lean closer, I find neither the red-haired woman in a skimpy dress, nor the other, far more subtly sexy one.
“Gregory?” I come up to the bar and lean across the stool Tiia occupied only moments ago. The seat is still warm, and the glass she drank from remains, with condensation still on the side. “Hey!”
He spins, his gray eyes widening when he looks to me, then to the stools he was ordered to watch.
“Where are they?”
“Boss.” He pays no attention to any other person in this place shouting for a drink, and rushes across to where I stand. “She was here a second ago, I swear.”
“I told you to call me when she was leaving!”
“I didn’t see her leave. I was watching.” He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly, despite the beard he keeps to cover a weak chin. “I swear I was watching them. The dude turned up, and the three of them were sitting there a second ago.”
“Roscoe?” I look toward the doors, though the lights inside make seeing out into the night impossible. “How long ago did he arrive?”
“About five minutes.” He sets his hands on the bar and ignores the cries of thirsty patrons surrounding us. “But he didn’t want a drink, so I went off to serve someone else.”
“And now they’re all gone. She’s gone.” I drop my hands into my pockets and consider what to do about it.
I could find out where she lives, I suppose. If I really wanted to know. I could go there, make sure she makes it home safe. I could toss Roscoe on his ass. Check in on the binge TV, multiple cats situation.
Or I could leave it alone, and consider Tiia Hale a mere aberration in an otherwise controlled world.
“I’m sorry.” Gregory reaches across to clap my arm gently. “Really I am. I was watching them. I swear, I turned away for only a second.”
“Yeah.” I shake off his hand and stalk away from the bar. “If you see her again, you let me know right away.”
I don’t turn to make sure he heard, and I sure as fuck don’t spin back to wait for his acknowledgment. My request is simple. And a smart man knows what is expected of him.
Fortunately, Gregory is typically a smart, observant man.
A single failure in a long list of triumphs shouldn’t be punished. That’s the way Tim ran this family, but it’s not how Felix and I do things.
I traverse the packed room and head all the way to the doors, but I don’t catch a dark-haired beauty crossing the street. I don’t get a view of her trim back as she walks away. Or her long hair, swinging in the nonexistent breeze. She’s just… gone.
And if her expression once I introduced myself is any indication, I’m not sure she intends to ever return.
Smart move, really.
“Hey, Micah.” A friendly voice and a different beautiful smile draws my mind back to the here and now, and my eyes to a grinning Christabelle Cannon.
She walks alongside Jasper, coming to a stop only when our toes practically touch and her perfume wafts deep into my lungs. “It’s packed tonight, huh?”
“Yeah.” I look straight over the top of her head, to her guard. “All good?”
“Yes, sir.” He’s about six feet, two inches, and two hundred pounds of muscle and firepower. His job, pure and simple, is to make damn sure Christabelle lives through the day to return to Felix. “All is well at the Tribute office. Nothing to note.”
“Good.”
I look back down at the woman who is, without a doubt, the very best thing that’s ever happened to my brother. It’s unconventional in some ways—their relationship. And not without its complications. But she’s good for him. Good to him.
And fuck, but that’s all I care about, as far as my brothers’ relationships go.
“He’s on the second floor,” I tell her. “Back corner. He’s pissy because he’s quitting smoking.”
“So stupid,” she grumbles. “He can go days without touching one. He won’t even think about them.”
“Right. But now that quitting is official, he can’t stop. His brain is a little fucked up like that.” I grin and shoot her a wink, stepping to the side to allow her entry. “Go. Take his bad mood and toss it in the trash for the rest of our sakes. You heading back to the house now?”
“Yeah.” She walks, but turns and moves backward, knowing without looking that Jasper won’t let her stumble. “I’m done with my day. It’s time to go home. You too?”
“Uh…” Frowning, I look out at the street in one last desperate attempt to see something no longer here. But just as quickly as she came into my life, Tiia disappears once more. “Yeah,” I relent. “Yeah, I’m coming too.”
“You can ride with us.” Christabelle smiles again, wide and pretty and so sweet, I find it hard to remember a time she wasn’t part of the family. “We’ll share Felix’s bad mood between us.”
I’d suggest she spend the ride with him alone, sucking his cock and putting his mind somewhere else, but to say the words out loud would be disrespectful. And, as far as I’m concerned, there are certain women in this world a man would be wise not to disrespect.
Christabelle Cannon is one of them.
Minka Mayet, another.
“Come on,” she calls out, turning on her heels and stepping through the doors. “I want to get out of here as soon as possible. The music’s gonna give me a migraine.”