5. Chapter 5
Chapter 5
DECLAN
I wait until Vivian leaves the room and then I move from my seat. I still can’t get over how beautiful she is. She is so striking—not just her looks, but the way she reacts to me too. There is just something about her. I could tell that my behavior rattled her, but she is so calm in spite of it. She didn’t fly off the handle or lose her cool. She is just matter-of-fact.
I like it. I like her.
My phone goes off in my pocket and I check it as I leave the classroom. It’s Joey, and he’s texted me to say he has some interesting findings. I wait until I reach my car and call Joey to find out that there has been some sketchy stuff going on at our Flint location. Apparently there has been an increase in patronage in that bar, but the cash flow doesn’t reflect it. And there have been reports of a weird interaction between these customers and a particular busboy named Dennis.
After talking to Joey, I reach out to my dad and relay the information to him, and we agree to meet at the Flint bar. I make my way there and park in the back of the parking lot. When my father pulls alongside me, I get out and go over to his car.
“What do you think?” Dad asks.
“I think I should head in, try to see if I can see anything funny,” I tell him. “I haven’t been here in months, so they won’t know who I am.”
My dad nods. “Sounds good. I’m just waiting for our HR reps to arrive.”
I nod and go back to my car, grabbing a flat brim cap and throwing my hoodie up over it. I head inside, passing a lazy-looking bouncer who doesn’t even look at me, and make my way to a dark corner of the bar. I sit at a stool and cross my arms over the top of the bar in front of me, leaning down a bit to shield my face.
The bartender looks my way and I see recognition flash in his eyes, but I shake my head slightly and he immediately turns the other way. He’s an older guy, and has worked at several of our places for the last few years. This isn’t my first time checking in on things at the bars, and it isn’t his either. He slides a water my way and moves on to finish his count of the stock.
I sit there sipping from my glass for about ten minutes and start to think maybe tonight will be a bust. I’m about to call the bartender over when a woman and two men come in and talk to the bouncer. One of the guys is in a T-shirt, scratching at his arms, his eyes darting around. The woman has one of her hands fisted, like she is holding something tightly. The final guy is busy on his phone, a flip phone no less, and he is texting like crazy. They are directed to a table by the bouncer, and they move quickly to sit.
The group isn’t sitting for more than thirty seconds when the kitchen door swings open, and out comes a busboy with an apron and a dish bucket. However, there are no dirty tables anywhere. The busboy stops at the table that has just been occupied by the new, sketchy people, and he starts clearing off the fresh silverware that’s on the table. The woman very obviously drops something to the floor and the busboy, who is much slicker than she is, bends and picks up the dropped item and hands it back to her. Or so it seems. But I watch as his hand goes into his pocket and he gives her whatever he extracted.
After his trip to the clean table, the busboy returns to the kitchen. I look around at the other staff, but since it is a weeknight, there aren’t many of them. The only waitress is busy between two tables bringing out orders, and the bartender has been doing the weekly stock while also tending bar. This bar is one of the older ones, and it isn’t generally busy during the week, so we keep staffing to a minimum. Apparently that has led to things slipping through the cracks.
I am pulled from my thoughts as the crew the busboy has just interacted with are now quickly getting up and leaving. They all but run to the door, the guy who has been on the phone fist-bumping the bouncer on his way out.
I lean forward, and the bartender comes over to me. “How long has that bouncer been here?”
“That one? Two weeks,” he says.
“And?”
“He doesn’t speak a lot of English. He’s quiet.”
I nod. “And the busboy?”
“He came about the same time. He’s up to no good,” he says. “I can’t prove it, but bad vibes.”
I nod and get out my phone, sending my dad and brothers a text, then I take my hat off and head to the back kitchen. I say hello to a couple of guys I know back there as I make my way to the dishwasher area where the new employee is standing with his back to me.
“You Dennis?” I ask him.
He’s a short shit, maybe five feet six, and when I say his name, he whirls around to me with a sour look on his face and looks me up and down. “Who the fuck wants to know?”
Silence falls over the kitchen.
I’m tolerant of a lot of things, but one thing that makes me rabid with rage is being disrespected, especially in my own bar. And for this fucking piece of shit to do it in my own family business, in front of my employees, makes me see red. Dennis seems to see the fury rise in me, and I see a tremor of fear run through him, but I have to hand it to him, he doesn’t back down.
“I’m Declan Falco,” I say softly and watch as the color drains from his face. “And it’s time for your employee review,” I tell him, giving him a humorless smile.
Dennis’s eyes widen. “I—”
I shake my head. “Oh no, please, let’s finish this talk in the office,” I tell him, putting my hand firmly around his throat. “I believe the rest of the HR team is awaiting our arrival.” I drag Dennis by his neck out of the kitchen through a side door and down a long corridor, then into the office area of the bar.
My father is sitting behind the desk when I get to the doorway with Dennis, and my brother Slade is leaning against the front of the desk. Slade is a friendly looking fucker, with his blond hair and blue-gray eyes. He looks like the boy next door, and it always deceives people. He is good at putting people at ease. People look at him and see kindness. Slade hides his crazy well.
This is a quality I have never gotten the hang of.
“Welcome!” Slade says jovially. “Heard you’re new here.”
But even with Slade’s welcoming appearance, Dennis seems pretty hesitant to enter the room. I give him a healthy shove inside to help him make the right decision, and then slam the door to the room shut.
“How did you get this job?” I ask Dennis, as I shove him into the waiting chair and then go stand near Slade.
“I heard about it from a friend,” Douche Dennis says, his eyes wide but his voice surprisingly steady. He’s playing it off well, but I watch as his pupils dilate and his eyes dart around. He’s ready to fight.
“And what’s this friend’s name?” Slade coaches.
“Marco.”
I tense at his brief reply. “Marco who?”
“I don’t know his last name—”
“Listen, kid,” my father cuts in from his spot at the desk, his deep gravelly voice level and soft. “I have been sitting here for thirty seconds awaiting a very simple answer that you haven’t given my sons. They have shown great patience, but let me assure you my patience is just about to fucking snap. I don’t have it in me to slowly drag this shit out of you. So start fucking talking.”
The door to the office crashes open, and a bloodied lump is thrown into the room, followed by my brother Axel. I recognize the lump, after some squinting, as the bouncer I’d seen just minutes earlier at the door.
I look from the bouncer to Dennis, and Dennis is suddenly a lot paler than when he first entered the room.
“Vavito,” Dennis spits out quickly at the sight of the lump on the floor. “His name is Marco Vavito.”
“Why did he tell you to take this job?”
“He said he wanted me to start moving some product here. Th-that it would be a gold mine.”
Dad nods slowly, taking in what Dennis has said, and then he turns to my brother. “Axel, I see you’ve had a discussion with our other new hire. Am I correct?”
“I did,” Axel grunts out.
“Okay, well, let’s see how these stories match up, shall we?” Slade says, smiling widely and clapping his hands together like a game show host.
Dennis starts to visibly shake. “Wait, I—”
“Oh no,” Slade interjects when Dennis tries to speak. He goes over to Dennis and slaps his cheeks. “You’ve had your moment in the spotlight. Now this fellow”—Slade gestures to the lump on the floor—“gets his turn.”
“What did he have to say, Axel?” my father asks.
“Said at first this is Vavito’s plan.”
“At first?” I clarify.
“Mm-hmm,” Axel says. “But after some further discussion, he relented that Perez put them both here and told them to pin it on Vavito if anybody pushed them.”
“Perez told him that?” I ask Axel.
“So he says,” Axel says, angling his head to the guy on the floor. “Says he offered him 50k and ground floor on his new operation.”
Silence envelops the room. The only thing breaking it are the groans from the bouncer on the floor. “So Perez is trying to put us in the middle of his drug war?” I ask Dennis, my voice softer than before but clearly more terrifying to Dennis as the kid starts to shake.
“He didn’t tell me what he wanted,” Dennis rattles out quickly. “He told me to come here and start slinging. Says if anyone asks, to say I was sent here by Marco Vavito.”
My father studies Dennis from behind his desk for a few seconds, then moves over to him, picking him up from the chair by his stained white T-shirt. “You better not be fucking lying to me, you little shit,” he growls in his face.
“I-I swear, man, I swear to God I don’t know any more than that. I started working for Perez six months ago. I’m a low man. I get my orders from Cruz, and I just do what he tells me to.”
“And did he tell you to sing like a fucking bird the second you were cornered?” Axel queries, earning a chuckle from Slade.
“Please don’t hurt me,” Dennis whimpers to my dad and I watch it soften him a little. I know he is looking into the face of this guy, who is probably barely eighteen, and he sees one of us in the kid’s face. My dad isn’t made of stone the way he likes to project.
My dad throws the kid back in the chair he’d ripped him from and starts rubbing his bald head, motioning for Axel to come to him.
Just as my dad’s and Axel’s attention is drawn away, I notice Dennis sliding his hand into a cargo pocket on his pants and starting to pull something out. I spring, grabbing his arm, and a small pocket pistol is in his hand.
“Dennis,” I say softly as I crush his hand in mine, making him scream like the little bitch he is, “you fucking scumbag.” I pull the pistol from his hand easily, having crushed many of the bones in it. I examine the gun, empty the bullets from it, and then while holding the small gun in my palm, I slap him across the face with it. Dennis lets out a high-pitched squeal, and I grab him by the throat, squeezing. “Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare scream like that, like you’re a victim,” I hiss at him. Dennis glares back at me, and then spits blood into my face, and I explode.
I throw Dennis against the wall and pummel his face with my fist of the hand that is still holding the gun. It’s not until Axel pulls me off that I stop and release Dennis, watching the kid slide to the floor. I turn around and face my Dad. “There is more to this, a lot more. This fucker was about to shoot one of us.”
“Yeah,” Axel says, nudging the man he’d brought in with his boot, “and this guy had two guns and a knife on him.”
“I don’t know what Perez is playing with, but we need to find out,” I tell my father.
My father nods. “But right now, boys, we need to pack up his trash and return it to him, with a message of our own.”