Epilogue
DANTE
“C ongratulations, Mr. West. You own a new club in Las Vegas.” Blake Reed, my business manager, shook my hand once I signed the last of the paperwork. “It’s about time. How long did it take me to talk to you into this?”
“I love it when you can’t leave well enough alone.
” I gave him a sour look, heading to the bar on the other side of my office on the second floor of my club.
The action was unfolding downstairs, with monitors revealing images of happy, horny customers who paid handsomely for admission to one of the most exclusive establishments in LA.
Within months, we would be ready to expand the first time to Las Vegas. My hometown.
I most certainly needed a drink.
“What finally convinced you?” he asked. The distant, distracted quality of his voice made me glance over my shoulder.
What I found wasn't surprising. He was watching the feed from the main floor, observing the revelry taking place as people dressed in all levels of club and kink gear mingled, drank, and danced.
“I ran out of reasons not to do it.” That was pure bullshit, not that he would know any better.
Blake and I had worked together for years, and there wasn’t a day I had come close to regretting our relationship.
That didn’t make us good friends. There were aspects of my life that nobody knew about. Parts of myself I kept private.
Like the fact that I’d promised myself I wouldn’t go back there. Spending the weekend was one thing. Scoping out the competition, seeing what the club owners in Sin City considered elite, exclusive. Coming up with ways to outdo them.
But expanding there? Blake considered it a no-brainer, and maybe it was. I mulled it over as I took the first sip of my scotch.
“I’m damn glad,” he announced. “Talk about untapped potential. Now that the Jansen clubs are closing, there’s a vacuum.
” Dick Jansen had run three of the most popular and profitable adult clubs in Nevada, but he was an old man and no longer had an appetite for business.
Rather than sell out to someone like me, he had chosen to close down, to take his money and live the rest of his days on a beach somewhere.
Once rumors of his retirement had started circulating, there was no feasible way to turn Blake down when he suggested expansion yet again. I couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t get me laughed out of the room.
To me, though, it was no laughing matter.
“Honestly, I don’t know how you stay up here all night with so much going on down there.” He couldn’t stop looking at the monitors, and I couldn’t blame him. He worked in an office, took meetings, and handled our legal team. What was every day for me was still exotic for him.
“I love a good steak,” I mused. “Prime rib, preferably, but I wouldn’t turn down a porterhouse if it landed in front of me. Medium rare, tops.”
“Your point?” he asked, chuckling.
“If I ate it every day, I would get tired of it.”
“Gotcha. I see how it would get boring.” He finished his drink, checking his phone. “Better go. I don’t feel like being bitched out for being late.”
“A new woman?” I asked, vaguely curious but more interested in a blonde lingering on the fringes of the crowd down there.
She was a virgin to the scene. Anybody with eyes could tell once they observed the way she stood with her arms folded over her middle, chewing her lip, her eyes shifting around.
Most of her face was concealed by a black lace mask, but she could not conceal her nerves.
“The same woman for the last few months, hence getting bitched out. Take a woman out enough times, and she thinks it gives her the right to carry your balls in her purse.” He shook my hand one final time after gathering up the contracts I’d signed. “I’ll follow up with you tomorrow.”
I was glad to see him go, since there was only so much sidestepping I could do when it came to explaining my reservations about expanding. I didn’t have the luxury of warm, happy memories when I looked back on my youth. There were good times, sure, and plenty of people had it worse than me.
It wasn’t as if I’d be going home with my tail between my legs either, far from it.
I was more successful than I ever dreamed of being ten years ago when I left home for the last time after graduating college.
I had packed up my things, along with a shit ton of bitterness and regret, and I’d moved to Los Angeles.
Since then, I’d opened the clubs here and in New York, where countless patrons relied on my staff to be discreet and professional, to keep them safe and let them feel free in the way they couldn’t in their everyday lives.
I was providing a service, and I had made a mint.
I could sail into town with my head held high.
It was a big city. There was practically no chance at all of me ever seeing her again. No, I was more concerned that the proximity would drive me out of my skull, and I would have no choice but to find her. Just to take a look, to hear her voice again.
Lenny. The thought of her stirred something in my chest that had been dark and cold since the day she walked out of my life. The day I forced her out.
The blonde wandered the floor, a lost lamb in a room full of wolves.
Wolves were being watched closely not only by me but bouncers whose sole job was to keep rule breakers from ruining anyone else’s night.
There was no room for second chances in a business like this.
One strike and the person responsible wasn’t welcome in any of my clubs ever again.
At the moment, a man whose body language I didn’t like was watching her, following her, waiting for his opportunity to strike. He would only spook her if he came on too strongly.
It was none of my business. I paid people to take care of shit like this for me.
Yet something compelled me to grab a mask from my desk drawer and tie it in place over my eyes and nose on my way out of the office. For some reason, this was not the sort of job I wanted to leave up to my staff.
Perhaps because it meant not getting the chance to protect that beautiful blonde lamb myself.