Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
“What are you doing here?” a stripper with the name Jewel seethed.
I took a deep breath and centred myself. I didn’t have the time to deal with petty bullshit tonight. The way I felt, I would have rather gone home. My tolerance for bullshit was at an all-time low and I didn’t think it was a good idea for me to talk with any of these girls, but I needed to know what was going on with the hit.
“I need to talk to Andria,” I told her. I couldn’t believe I had to be here yet again. The last place I wanted to be was in the back with all these strippers, especially the one Hunter dated for six months.
What was it with this place?
“What about?” she asked.
“You’re not doing yourself any favours by barring me from the back.”
“I’ve heard everything about you. From what I know, Sapphire wants nothing to do with you, so you’re not gonna get anywhere near her. She doesn’t want to look at your face and be forced to remember how you stole her boyfriend from her.”
“First off, I’m not here to speak with Sapphire. I didn’t steal Hunter from her. It’s not my fault she fell for the wrong guy.”
“Listen here bitch, you might have been in here all the time to fuck Charlie, but he’s not here anymore. So you don’t have access to all areas of this establishment.”
“If you don’t let me back there to talk to Andria, I’ll move you and your fake tits out of the way, Jewel.”
“We don’t have to answer to you anymore. We’re under new management, and Cole doesn’t touch white trash bimbos.”
“Why don’t you just go stick a dick in your mouth and be happy,” I told her.
“Why you little bitch!” She lifted her hand to slap me, but I stepped to the side and avoided her wrath. Cole would hate it if I roughed up of one of his headliners, so I tried to avoid acting instinctually.
“Jewel, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” a woman’s voice called out from the dressing room behind her.
I turned and was surprised to see Andria standing in the dressing room surrounded by all the other strippers. It was the last place I thought she would hang out. Then again, I hung out in a biker bar all the time, and I could still pass for angelic when I wanted to.
Jewel placed her hands on her hips and replied, “This bitch was trying to get in the back to talk with Sapphire.”
“Hi, Harleigh. Cole probably sent you back here, didn’t he?” she asked me, clearly ignoring the psycho guard dog.
“Yeah, he told me I could find you back here. I was hoping you could help me with a case I’m working on.”
“What kind of case? Are you a cop now or something?” Jewel interrupted.
I glared at her. She knew right well I wasn’t a cop. The only reason she probably mentioned it was so that all the girls in the back would clam up and never talk to me again.
Stupid cow.
“Jewel, go get Sapphire and tell her to stay away from the back office.”
“Why?”
“When my father decides to pay you for more than stripping and sucking off customers, I’m sure he’ll be the first to let you know. Until then, you just keep shaking your tits and sucking dick.”
“Yes ma’am,” she responded and slinked away like a dog with a tail between her legs.
“Sorry about her,” Andria told me.
“No biggie. My skin is thick enough that I won’t allow some coked out stripper to make me upset.”
“Follow me. Let’s go talk in Cole’s office.”
“You don’t call him dad?”
“I use his first name because it carries more clout when I’m talking with people.”
“Fair enough.”
I trailed behind her through the club and down the familiar hallway leading to the back office. I followed her through the door and we both sat down on the couch.
“Sorry, I should have asked you if you wanted a drink?”
“I’ve got my bike. It seems to draw more police attention, wouldn’t want to get pulled over and get a DUI or something.”
“Understandable,” she responded.
“So, what do you have for me?” I asked.
“We don’t have a name yet, but the cop works at the number two precinct.”
“That’s not enough to go on.”
“Do you mind me asking why you care if some cop gets offed?”
“We’ve all got rolls to play. It’s not cops and robbers without the cops. If he deserves it, I don’t care.” What I didn’t want to tell her was my interest went a little more personal than just another cop getting killed. “Basically, we don’t need to draw any more attention to us. If someone kills a cop, they’re all gonna hit the ground running. They’ll sweep through all of our establishments looking for the culprit.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” I echoed. “Thanks again for the info.”
“Expect my call in the next day or so.”
“Sure thing,” I told her as I got up.
I made my way to the door, which was held open by one of their many thugs. After yet another visit to Heaven’s Lace, I knew one thing for sure. There was more to Andria Martin than her and her so-called father would like to have known.
* * *
The day before our next scheduled meet, Liam called me. I hoped he was going to hand over the information I needed.
“We need to talk,” Liam told me over the phone.
“I’m not working tonight.”
“Come on over then,” he responded.
“Did the check come back?”
“I’ve got everything, but I’m not sure what to think of it.”
“So it’s not good?”
“It’s neither here nor there, but I think we should talk.”
“I’ll be right there,” I told him.
It took me twenty minutes to get to Liam’s.
As expected, before I hit the bottom of his steps, Liam’s discovery airdropped to the secured tablet I used for all of my business. When I hit the bottom, I scrolled to the first page.
It seemed there was more than meets the eye to both Cole and Andria Martin.
Both names were aliases, and they weren’t from around here.
First off, neither of them bore the last name of Martin. In fact, after Liam’s deep dive into their backgrounds, he came up with a whopper of a discovery. Andria, who was born Alexandria Chiara Andretti, wasn’t the daughter of Cole Martin.
Nope.
She was the younger sister of Niccolo Vesuvio Andretti, who was the bastard son of the deceased head of the Andretti Crime Family, Antonio Alexander Andretti.
If everything Liam had found out about them was true, I needed to be on alert in here. Being allied with new players on the scene could either be beneficial to our organization or severely detrimental. We had some crossovers in our businesses, but they seemed to be more on the criminal side of things.
However, it looked like they didn’t agree with some of the dealings of the current organization. They didn’t seem to want anything to do with the skin trade. From what I could see, they still wanted to be involved in drugs and guns. Only the latter would be an issue to us. Since our father was murdered, we withdrew from selling drugs.
We didn’t care if others sold them, as long as it wasn’t in our territory and wasn’t to children.
That was when all bets were off.
Now that I knew who they really were, I could redirect my energies elsewhere.
“Thanks for this,” I told Liam. “Did you find anything more about the hit?”
“I did, and you’re not gonna like it.”
“What?”
“Whoever put out the contract is willing to pay one hundred thousand to the first one who provides proof of death.”
“Provides proof of death for who?”
“They want your boy toy Braxton dead,” he responded.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought you would say.”
I had to go.
“Look, thanks for everything. I’ve gotta go.” I got up and started for the door.
“Call me,” he pleaded. “I miss my best friend.”
I sighed. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around enough. We really need to go out again sometime, but I’ve got so much on my plate between school and what the fuck this hit is.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” I replied before I took the stairs back out of his basement.
* * *
I knew he was there before I closed the gate. I turned and put my back against the bushes so I could see the entire street.
“Are you following me, officer?”
Braxton startled. He was wearing plain clothes tonight. Jeans and a tight fitting shirt; his tattoos peaked out from beneath the arm sleeves.
“You know, you're the one person I can't shake from the life,” he responded, evading the question and stunning me almost to silence.
“You have to.”
“What if I don't want to?” he asked.
“I don't date cops.”
“But you'll fuck one.”
“A dick is a dick.”
“Mature.”
“You're the one who stopped calling.”
“I had no choice.”
“A little heads up, you would be in my city would have been nice.”
“You want to know what would have been nice?” he asked, then continued before I could respond. “It would have been nice to know you were underage while we were fucking, too.”
“You didn't care about my age,” I argued. “You only cared that I was wet and willing.”
“Sue me for assuming you’d be over eighteen in a biker bar. Didn’t they card you?”
“Fake ID, genius.”
“God, you can be such a bitch.”
“And you're an asshole dick bag.”
“Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?”
“Fuck you,” I replied, blood boiling.
“That's right, you did.”
“You're an infuriating sack of shit.”
“Big words.”
“I have a four point oh grade point average, you hillbilly pig. I’ve been on the dean’s list every year.”
“How many cocks did you have to suck to earn the extra credit?”
“I don’t know what I ever saw in you. You’re a fucking asshole.”
I had to stop thinking about the other night. It was only one time. Even if it was a mind-blowing, life changing dirty fuck in the bathroom, it just had to stop.
“You wanted a live dildo,” he sneered.
“What the fuck are you doing all the way over on this side of town, anyway?”
“I live at the end of the block and I heard your bike. Imagine my surprise when I looked out the window and saw you,” he replied.
Leave it to him to come back with the one answer I wasn’t expecting.
“Let me guess. You thought I was a figment of your imagination?”
“Star of my wildest dreams,” he responded.
How the hell was I supposed to tell him the hit was on him?
“I don’t have time for this conversation right now,” I groaned. “You are so fucking hot and cold. I don’t know whether I’m in the Caribbean or walking near the polar ice caps.”
He was so all over the place with his emotions around me. One moment he trusted me, the next he was accusing me of acting threateningly.
“Let me prove it to you,” he said.
“Prove what?”
“That I want you,” he told me as he stepped into my personal space.
I huffed. “What you should do is get out of town.”
“Are you threatening me now?”
“I just found out tonight that there’s a hit out on you. I suggest you put in for an extended vacation and get your ass out of town.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he told me.
“It’s your funeral,” I gritted out, then I stormed away, ignoring his calls for me to stop. I got on my bike and sped out of there, a little more pissed off at the world than I was before.
If he was going to be an ass munch, I wouldn’t sit around and watch it happen.