SEVENTEEN
Benedict winced as he stepped into Saveur, straightening his bow tie and adjusting his cuffs. The door banged shut behind him, drawing Sassa’s attention. Her glower softened into something that seemed … almost affectionate.
“Boss-man,” she said.
He nodded. “Sassa.”
“How’s Ozzie doing?”
Benedict inhaled through his nose. This had become a nightly ritual between them. He was glad Sassa cared so much about Oz, but …
He preferred not to think about Oz at all, if he could help it. It was proving rather difficult. He’d taken to staying out of the house as much as possible. He told himself it was because the Vetruvian needed to rest, and he wouldn’t rest if Benedict was there pestering him. Truth was, Benedict just couldn’t stand the sight of the Vetruvian in his bed. Could barely handle that he needed to help Oz change the dressing on his wound twice a day, and oh, that meant touching, and …
“He’s fine,” he said gruffly, then cleared his throat, as if that would sweep away his thoughts about his fingertips lingering on Oz’s strange, smooth skin, about Oz lying in his bed. All he’d have to do was?—
“Table Four is looking a bit rangy,” Sassa said, giving him this almost coy look she had as she jerked her head in the direction of the rowdy table.
“Sure thing,” Benedict said, then grabbed a couple of menus and plastered on his best customer-service smile as he sauntered around the bar and sidled up to the table.
A few weeks ago, he wouldn’t have been able to imagine himself doing something like this. Customer service was one thing—the brothers were very good at it. Flirting was another thing entirely, but it felt almost natural now. Almost normal.
“Evening, gentlemen and gentleladies and gentlekin,” he said as he approached the table, earning himself a couple of glowers and one appreciative glance.
A few of the patrons leaned back, and he nearly dropped the menus as they revealed Vito, slouched low at the end of the bench, his hat over his eyes. He flicked it up with a claw-tipped finger, his intense gaze locking with Benedict’s. “Benny,” he said.
“Vito,” he returned.
“Do you like this place, Benny?” the mobster asked, tilting his head to the side.
“I—”
“Guess you must,” he continued over Benedict’s reply. “Your auntie would be rolling in her grave to see you like this.” He raked his gaze over Benedict, making it clear what he thought this was. “Serving like the other whores she has in here.”
Benedict felt his spine stiffen. “They’re not whores.”
Vito laughed nastily. “Now you sound like your auntie! She always said the same thing, didn’t she?” He grinned at one of his compatriots. “Ain’t nothing wrong with whores, though; good, honest work. Not like the wheelin’ and dealin’ your auntie was into, hm?”
Benedict tightened his grip on the menus. “What do you want, Vito?”
“Me?” The mobster feigned surprise. “What anyone else wants when they come to this place, ah? Sweet drinks, sweet conversation, something sweeter to look at.”
“Right,” Benedict said stiffly. “I can send Sassa over?—”
“Nah,” Vito drawled. “You’ll do. You look good in that get-up. Keep dragging your feet, and tell ya what, you can wear it every night when Saveur’s mine and you work for me, hm?”
Benedict scowled. Vito grinned. “Just keep it in mind, hm? I’m a patient man, but your time is running out.”
“I understand,” Benedict said, instead of any of the myriad things he wanted to shout at the mobster—mostly just tell me what the fuck I owe you!
Vito glanced at his compatriots. “Anyway—bring us some bubbly, hm? I think Cobull here feels like celebrating, don’t ya?”
An alien covered in horns from head to toe smiled back nastily. “Yes,” he agreed. “I finally got my hands on a human slave.”
Oily laughter echoed around the table, and Benedict’s stomach twisted unpleasantly. Slavers. He was serving a bunch of slavers.
He slammed the menus down on the table before he could think better of it. “Get out,” he snarled.
Confused and startled looks scattered across the faces of the criminals. Vito was the first to recover, a scowl gracing his face instead. “Benny.”
“I said get out,” Benedict snapped. “Get out—never come back here. This is my club, and while I own it, I won’t have a bunch of slave owners and drug-runners sitting around, toasting each other for buying and selling other people’s lives!”
“Ah, c’mon now?—”
“Out!” Benedict roared, gnashing his teeth at the nearest hand, and the alien—a Rurarkian at least three times Benedict’s size—leapt to his feet and stumbled toward the door.
Someone else slid out of the booth, and soon enough, the entire party was slinking outside. Vito went last, spinning around and spitting, “Call us when you get off your high horse and realize you’re just as bad as the rest of us— slaver .”
He whirled on his heel and slammed the door on his way out, leaving Benedict staring after him.
Slowly, Benedict turned back to the dining room, finding all eyes glued to him—patrons and staff alike. Heat rose in his cheeks instantly; such an outburst was unbecoming. As much as the cads he’d chased off were vile, temper was still a sin, marking him as unworthy of God’s grace.
Still, he found himself seething as they stared at him, judging him. How dare they pass judgment on him when their own hands were likely dirtier than his own?
“That goes for the rest of you!” he roared. “Drug dealers, traffickers, murderers, warlords—the lot of you! Get out of my restaurant, don’t ever show your faces here again!”
More staring. He gritted his teeth; he felt his claws spring forward, seemingly of their own accord.
That got a reaction. There was a lot of grumbling from the various tables, followed by patrons slowly slinking out of their seats, toward the door, proverbial tails between their legs—and, on occasion, literal ones as well.
Benedict waited until the door had swung shut for the final time before he exhaled and straightened up, letting his claws retract.
A pinch on his ear made him yelp. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sassa hissed, then dragged him toward the bar.
“I—”
She shoved him behind the bar, then practically kicked him into the kitchen. When the swinging door settled down on its hinges, she unloaded. “The fuck?! You just chased off almost all our patrons! What the fuck is wrong with you, how do you expect to keep the lights on if there’s no one spending any money here, because you came in here all high and mighty with your goddamn moral s?—”
“I don’t want to do business with them! I don’t want their filthy money!”
“If you don’t take it, someone else will!” Sassa’s teeth were frighteningly sharp and close to his face. He wondered if he’d looked anywhere near as angry as she did. “You’re just fucking us over, how the hell are we going to keep the doors open?!”
“I—”
“What are we going to do?!” She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “I don’t get any tips tonight, my debt’s going to be even higher?—”
He smacked her hands away. “What debt?”
She let her hands drop to her sides. “My debt,” she echoed. “What I owe La Chef, what I have to pay to get my life back?—”
Benedict shook his head, reaching out to her as she dropped her head in her hands, sobs suddenly wracking her shoulders. “It was impossible before, but I’ll never get out—never?—”
“Sassa.” He clamped his hands over her shoulders, like he could stem the emotional breakdown she was having. “Sassa, look at me. Listen to me.”
She sniffled loudly, but she lifted her watery gaze to meet his. “We don’t need their money,” he said.
Her face contorted in disdain, her lips curled around the desire to argue. He shook his head furiously. “ You don’t need their money. I … I’m going to erase your debt. I’m going to set you free.”
She stared at him for what felt like an eternity. “How?” she asked at last, her voice very faint.
“I … I don’t really know yet,” he admitted. When her ears flattened against her skull, he added hastily, “I have to see the books and sort that out first. And then there’s paperwork. But on my oath, Sassa, I’m going to do it. I’m going to set all of you free.”
The desire to argue was still written on her face, so he tried a smile. “Believe me,” he offered. “And I’ll find a way to keep this place open, and if you want, you can still work here. For a wage. Or you can go find another job.”
“Another job,” she murmured, like the words were honey.
“Give me some time,” he said in his most cajoling tone. “I have to figure out what Vito wants, then get the books straightened around and understand where we are. But there won’t be anything added to your debt in the meantime, and … and if there are tips, those go in your pocket, not … not toward your debt.”
“What about rent?” she asked. “Meals? The water bill?”
He winced. “I haven’t got it all figured out yet, but I will. I owe it to you and Shakes and everyone else here. What my aunt did to you … it’s wrong. Vito wasn’t wrong—but I don’t want to be like them. So I’m going to find a way to fix this for you. For all of you.”
He thought about Oz, lying in bed in the penthouse, how awed the Vetruvian had been about clean sheets and a mattress with springs, and his heart wrenched. He’d dragged Oz back to his apartment—if the place could even be called that, more like a room or a hole in the wall—the night he’d been shot. Even now, he recalled the visceral sensation of wanting to be sick at the sight of how a slave on Kateria—how Oz—lived. One room, moldy windows, holes in the walls, a mattress that barely counted as one, and moth-eaten blankets. Nowhere to cook—a sort of camp stove-burner-type thing was how Oz heated his food, most of which seemed to be tinned slop. The shower barely had hot water, and Benedict wasn’t sure it had ever been scrubbed down.
There was no way in seven hells he could have left Oz there to recuperate. He hadn’t wanted to leave anyone there—he’d seen skeletal children in the courtyard of the place, filthy adults in rags with scarcely any more meat on their bones. Some of them were cooking over a fire in a barrel in the middle of the courtyard. He hadn’t wanted to know what was on the menu.
He’d told Abbot Bartholomew he was going to come here to proselytize, but seeing this side of Kateria—the dingy, dirty underbelly of the place, not the glass towers and neon tourist traps that gleamed like a beacon visible from orbit—he wondered if that was truly what he needed to be doing.
Maybe his aunt’s criminal empire could be turned into something good. Something that benefited the poor and disenfranchised who toiled in the shadows of the neon glow, hidden and forgotten, uncared about.
Maybe. He needed time to think about it, to organize the solution. He needed to write to Abbot Bartholomew, asking him for advice and assistance.
But first, he had to figure out what the hell Vito wanted or he was going to lose it all.