4. Harrison
4
HARRISON
“W e’re here, senor .” My driver’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror as he pulls up in front of the club.
I straighten my suit. “Thank you, Toro.”
“Are you sure you’re ready?”
I frown. “It’s a Thursday night like any Thursday night.”
Except it doesn’t feel like it. My body is humming, braced for a fight or coming off of one.
I shift out before Toro can open my door. He follows me around anyway, stubbornly taking the car door in his aging hands as I fasten my jacket.
“It’s a new club. The renovations are only just complete. And new talent,” he goes on as I start for the entrance.
I pull up, turning to cock my head at him. He only nods before retreating to the driver’s side.
New talent indeed.
I head to the back door. Security stands at attention when they see me.
A man with a purpose is dangerous to the world.
A man without a purpose is dangerous to himself.
When I enter a room, it’s to tell people what I want and make it immediately clear I’m going to get it. The faster they see that, the more painless it is.
My first acquisition was filthy and spare, cobbled together like the money I used to finance it. Now, I stride down a private hallway used for deliveries and talent, absorbing the fresh paint and shining floors with a grim satisfaction.
When I bought Debajo, everything was in disrepair, as if its name meant not only “beneath” but “forgotten.”
It takes a particular eye to see what others miss. But for a man who looks beneath the surface, one who’s as relentless as he is patient...
There is treasure to be found.
Now, the club is a cool kiss. An elegant reminder of how far I’ve come.
I wish my parents could see it.
The twinge in my gut sneaks up on me, lingering like the burn of bad whisky.
A budding actress who’s rising to stardom makes her way toward me, coming from the direction of the club.
“Hello, gorgeous,” she purrs, the telltale enthusiasm of alcohol lingering in her voice as she stops in my path with an inviting smile. “Haven’t seen you stateside for way too long.”
“You came to find me and enjoy my hospitality,” I reply evenly. “So, my plan worked.”
She slips her hand inside my shirt, and I smoothly withdraw it, my grip firm enough there’s disappointment in her eyes.
A hundred men in this place would take her home tonight.
I’m not one of them.
I used to enjoy beautiful women, particularly ones who made a lifestyle of being enjoyed.
No more.
Not since I let myself believe one could stand at my side and be what I needed. Trusting a woman with my life, my home, my future, cost me far more than the years I invested in that relationship.
It won’t happen again.
I straighten my shirt before I continue down the hall, making eye contact with the security guard at the end and nodding to him to keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t find trouble.
I feel the pulsing music through the leather of my dress shoes before I hear it. I approach the door that leads to the club, then turn and take the stairs up to the second level. At the top, security opens the door. Pulsing music flows into me, through me.
The metal grate flooring creaks beneath my feet on my way to my private booth next to two other VIP booths upstairs. Below, revelers drink and dance to the opening act.
I pause, one storey up with a perfect view of the performers and the crowd.
I’ve been out all day but have confirmed with Natalia and Toro that my newest contractor intends to play tonight.
I knew she would see reason. She might be fiery, but there was no way she’d abandon this. I’d sue her fast enough she’d land on that curvy bottom.
The first time we met, at the island wedding of my friend Tyler, she was fury itself. Barely waiting until after the cake had been cut and the couple rode off into shining bliss to rain righteous hellfire on me.
I told her the same thing I’d tell anyone criticizing my business:
Thank you very fucking little for your input.
Evidently, she wasn’t pleased with my reaction.
A single social media post condemning my business caused the door income of my best club to drop by half overnight and spurred a bloody mountain of paperwork and hostile media inquiries my team had to deal with. Most of them made their way up to me and ruined a string of otherwise good days.
A small consolation was that she exploded in an equally destructive way.
My PR staff told me that while a few fans had applauded the move, many were ambivalent. More importantly, no club owner from London to Miami would touch her for fear she’d find fault with their operations.
Part of me envies her idealism. We were all na?ve once, even if the last time I knew so little of the world I was still in knee socks.
“Whisky, Mr. King?” the upstairs VIP bartender asks, and I nod.
“In my booth.”
“Sí, senor. You have a visitor.”
Before I can demand who the fuck is in my private space, the bartender’s gone. I round the corner of my booth and stiffen.
“Let me guess—half your renovation budget was for the club and half for whisky.” The last person I’d expect is sitting in the booth in khakis and a polo shirt, nursing a drink.
“Ash. I didn’t realize you were coming.”
My brother Sebastian is a decade younger, and has a propensity to avoid me unless he wants to lay blame at my feet.
“Premier League has been over for a week.” He flashes a grin. “Thought I’d raid the bar at your newest club.”
“I’ve bought two more since.”
“Yet you’re still here. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were hiding.”
Ash doesn’t miss a thing. He’s the smarter of the two of us, yet he plays professional football and I’m the one running a corporation.
“I’m not hiding. I’m relaxing.”
His smirking gaze runs from my dress shoes up the suit to my tight face.
“You look positively rejuvenated,” he quips. “When will you stop this relentless quest for acquisitions? When you own every entertainment venue in the world?”
I accept the thirty-year-old Glen Scotia whisky the bartender brings on a monogrammed napkin. “We’ll find out.”
“Our parents wouldn’t want you to do this,” he says.
My grip on the glass tightens. “You don’t know what they’d want. You were a boy when they died.”
My brother shifts out of his seat. He has the same hair and eyes as me, but he’s a few inches shorter. He’s made the most of what he’s been given and is now a forward for the second-best professional football club in England since getting drafted out of uni last year.
“I thought you’d started to mellow when you were with her .” My brother leans over the railing next to me. “You stepped back from the business. Started genuinely enjoying life a little. It was good to see, Harry.”
I sip, and the smooth alcohol lingers on my taste buds. “Love is an illusion. I was a fool to think it was more.”
The tabloids paint me as a richer-than-Midas entertainment mogul with no greater pleasure than adding to the piles of money I’ve made.
It’s easier for me that they do.
Their needling over superficial flaws and supposed weaknesses doesn’t bother me.
It keeps them from digging at the real ones.
The crowd below us is dancing, losing themselves in the music pounding through the speakers, reverberating off every wall.
“Leni texted this afternoon to say I should come down to see a show,” Ash says over the music. “She also said a woman tore you a new one.” His grin flashes white for a second before the club lights go dark.
The hairs on my neck lift in anticipation.
The DJs change over. It happens every night between the opening act and the headliner, but tonight, I feel it.
It’s a tug in my gut, a thrumming in my veins.
It’s why I came, though I’d never admit it.
The way she spoke to me earlier… No one challenges me like that.
She can’t honestly think she’ll get out of this deal. The fact that she’s here means she’s admitted the truth.
She’ll bend to me, like everyone else does.
When the black light comes on, the crowd erupts.
She’s on stage, her hair, trousers, and cropped body-hugging top glowing white before the lights change to a more normal range.
Out of costume, off stage, she’s moody, seething. A girl who hissed at me like a cornered animal.
On it, she’s vibrant.
Her clothes cling to her body in a way that draws attention to her curves but also lets her move uninhibited. A long, blond wig is a stark contrast to her warm skin and dark lashes, thick and lowered as she studies the computer in front of her with the intensity of a rocket scientist navigating a launch.
“Little Queen,” Ash observes. “The name suits her.”
I’ve always preferred women as careless as they are beautiful. But there’s something about her that makes it impossible to look away.
“She owes me,” I say at last, my voice gravel. “And even queens must pay their debts.”
This arrangement is supposed to be strictly business, but the idea of seeing her admit she can’t fight me is oddly appealing.
Fuck. I need to get laid if a na?ve young American hurling insults at my decency and my empire makes my cock hard.
But I’m still watching her, trapped in the limbo she creates with her energy, her music, leaning in like a shameless voyeur.
She’s the rebel girl every horny teenage boy at boarding school badmouthed, then secretly fucked his hand to at night while wishing it was her pussy instead.
I expect my brother to rip into me for being soulless. When I finally force my attention to him, he’s watching her, as entranced as every one of the drunk and high patrons below.
“She’s pretty.”
Alarm coils in my gut. Before I can snap a response, or even decipher the layers of my reaction, the track changes.
Boys want a fight
Want to prove they’re right
Let them scratch and hiss
Circle when they piss ?—
The words seep into my skin.
My gaze narrows on the DJ, and as if she senses it, she looks up toward our booth.
And in a move as graceful as it is deliberate, she flips both middle fingers.
Ash barks out a laugh, the genuine kind I haven’t heard in far too long. “Fuck, Harry. I think I’m in love.”