Chapter 18
HATCH
“Let her go man.”
“Jesus Christ dude,” I groan and collapse back onto the leather throne seat, shoving my hands under my mask before setting it right and glaring at the cockblocking executioner smirking at me. “You couldn’t have waited… I don’t know, two minutes to fuck that up for me?”
“Two minutes?” His brow raises. “That’s all you need to get off?”
That’s all I needed to get her off, I almost snap. Lucy seemed as high as I was on being together. I know it’s dangerous, that I should keep my distance, but fuck when she’s right there? I’m just a man and definitely not a good one. Restraint has never been my strong suit.
Admitting that she was about to come apart for me might feel good to stick it to X, but it feels more like a betrayal to Lucy. I also can’t read him right now, either. I thought he and Lucy had a thing. Right now he seems annoyed, but not, “I just caught myself getting cucked” annoyed.
“What can I say?” I spread my arms. “All I need is a pretty girl on my lap, and I’m a two-pump chump.”
He chuckles. “You know the girls have a name like that for guys like you.”
I roll my eyes and peel myself out of the chair. “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”
He steps aside to let me pass, grinning. “‘Not it!’”
I snort. “I don’t blame them. Having to dance against wet jizz jeans should at least cost extra.”
“According to Dee and Mariposa, it does.” He points his thumb behind him. “Now come on. Castle don’t like to wait.”
He closes the door then fiddles with his watch before crossing the floor.
I follow as he navigates through the tables.
It’s just like it was last night—like it probably is every night.
Places like this tend to feel like the movie Groundhog’s Day if you let them.
Black holes where time and people never change until eventually, everyone’s old, gone, or dead.
My head is on a swivel, though, taking everything in, especially when I realize we’re heading to the door patrons only disappeared through last night.
“Let me ask, what do you feel right now?” X asks low, falling to step beside me. “After the VIP room I mean.”
I huff. “Besides cockblocked?”
Out on the floor again, I can’t see through the shadow beneath his hood but I’m starting to read his expression in every other part of his body.
This time—the rise and fall of his shoulders, the shake of his head, but still feeling his attention solely on my profile even as he pays attention to everything else—pretty sure he’s annoyed and rolling his eyes at me. But maybe also intrigued.
“Yeah besides cockblocked, dickhead.”
I shrug and take stock of what he’s trying to ask. “Fine, I guess. My allergies flared up as soon as I got here, but then the meds I took right before kicked in.”
X nods. “That’s good. We all take something here. The stronger the better. So keep taking whatever it is you’ve got.”
Yippee for me, I’m taking the strongest there is.
“Other than that, let’s see…” I continue. “Grateful to have a job? Curious to find out who this Castle fella is and whether he’s gonna shoot me on sight for beating up his man.”
X shakes his head. “Nah, he ain’t gonna do that. Castle’s a lot of things, but logical the most. Frog is one of his men, sure, but if he thinks you’ll fuck him over for a better paycheck, he doesn’t give a shit what happens to you in the end.”
Well, that’s good to know. I can work with someone who has a moral code. Less unpredictable. My new objective, along with making sure Lucy is safe from all this, is to make my boss think I’m a loyal motherfucker. I can do that. I think.
“Makes sense,” I answer.
We stop and he reaches to pull open the door to the stairwell I saw yesterday. I glance over my shoulder for Lucy. But she’s nowhere to be found.
I didn’t get nearly as much as I wanted to from Lucy, but what I did learn?
Damn. I had no idea about how her father was an addict.
I don’t blame the guy. I mean, he bargained his future firstborn away in a poker game while on the sauce, so makes sense he’d call it quits after that.
It’s also understandable why she’d be freaked out about syringes or anything related with drugs.
Although… I don’t know, there was something about her answer that made me not totally buy it. As if she gave me what she thought was a damning enough secret to answer the question, but there was something else to it.
I mean, what was it she said? People get drugged and kidnapped all the time? And tonight, she let slip that someone made her dance. Come on. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know there’s something deeper going on there. I just have to figure out what.
Then again, I wouldn’t have pegged a Troisgarde daughter as someone who would so easily spill secrets, even snippets of them. So maybe she’s playing me as much as I’m playing her.
Except there’s no fucking way she faked that terrified look she had on her face last night. She didn’t fake it then, and she didn’t fake it when it flashed over her face tonight either, right before I brought her back to me.
I sigh, and as X ushers me inside the darkened stairwell—black carpet, black walls, the occasional generic Southern coast painting backlit underneath—I go easily, unsure what I’ll find at the top.
“Anything else I should know?” I ask looking up at him climbing the stairs.
He sucks his teeth, then speaks so low, I have to hop the steps to get right up next to him to hear.
“Best not speak unless spoken to. Let others do the talking. And don’t provide more than what’s asked.”
I frown. “What’s that mean?”
He glances up at the camera in the corner before flicking his gaze back at me. “You seem smart. You’ll figure it out.” He pauses, then adds, “And don’t talk to him about his watch.”
“Okay…” I sound out, but before I can ask him, he’s already set back up the stairs.
Our long legs climb them two at a time until we get to the landing at the top. Two doors made of rich dark, almost black, wood are the only options up here, one on my right and one directly in front of me.
“That one goes to the lobby.” X gestures to my right. “You probably clocked it yesterday.”
I nod. Seems like Dorman would’ve been more stressed about guarding that door too, since it apparently leads to the big man. But maybe he knows something I don’t.
Doubt it, but there’s the slight chance, I suppose.
“Okay,” X blows out a breath and shakes out his limbs like he’s about to enter a cage fight. Dread coils in my stomach. Should I be more nervous? That’s not a setting I usually have. In fact, I haven’t felt that feeling since I was thirteen, not until Lucy anyways.
I glance away from him and stare at the door, reading him in my periphery. He finally nods and glances up at me up and down.
“He’ll like your suit. That’s a good start.”
“Thanks.” I grunt. “You’re buying me a new leather jacket, by the way.”
“The fuck I am.” He rears back. “How you figure?”
“Oh, well, there’s the simple fact that you ruined it?”
He snorts, smiling. “Oh yeah. I did, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, forget that little fact, did ya?” I grumble. “Between you and Dorman, I’ve lost a fortune.”
“Dorman?” He bursts out a laugh. “You got swindled by that idiot? How much?”
I grimace, and point to my hat and mask. “With these and my attempt at making him not talk in rhymes? Ninety bucks.”
“Damn, bo, I thought you was smart. He normally only gets the real dumb ones.”
And he wouldn’t have gotten me at all if I hadn’t been so hellbent on seeing Lucy. But I just sigh. “Yeah, well, what can ya do? I really wanted to get my dick wet.”
“And apparently real, real bad,” X chuckles. “But hey, at least I gave you your knife back.”
“Oh please, I would’ve gotten that back regardless. You owe me a jacket and don’t try to get out of it.”
“Alright, fair enough. I’ll get you a jacket from the flea market then. How ‘bout that? It’ll be newer than the one you had. Now let’s go. We’re already late.”
But I scoff. “The flea market—?”
X opens the door and cutting me a glare that could only mean, Shut up.
I glare back a look that could also only mean, I wouldn’t have even been talking if you had just simply waited for me to finish before opening the door instead of making a dramatic entrance, asshole.
One side of his lips twitch, but that’s all he gives me before he enters the room and gestures for me to follow. He steps inside and closes the door after me, pulling back his hood and balaclava, revealing himself for the first time.
He’s older than me, but not by much. Orion’s age, or late twenties maybe.
His thick black curls are cropped short like his goatee, and eye black smears over his bronze skin and amber eyes like a bandit mask.
It’s more intact now than it was last night, when he likely rubbed most of it away in frustration after I annoyed the shit out of him.
Once inside, he stands with his legs apart and hands clasped in front of him, kind of like all the Secret Service dudes in action movies. At a loss of what else I’m supposed to do, I assume the same position, and face forward to find…
Well, shit.
Every strip club joint I’ve been into has the shitty office with papers, and usually—disgustingly—some sort of porn director wannabe casting couch. I ain’t never been in one that looks like this though—a hoity toity gentleman’s library vibe fit for a gothic version of Mad Men.
The walls are a rich green, almost black matte hue with only the door behind me, a door across from us, and the long, wide picture window that takes up most of the wall to my left. To my right is indeed a couch, but the rich buttery brown leather soaks in the Tiffany-green lamp’s golden glow.