Chapter 27
Word travels fast in our world. A whisper in Brooklyn becomes a roar in Manhattan by morning. Right now, the city is fucking loud. And it’s all because of the Armenians—men who are more loyal to the twisted and depraved world that Alek’s father had built than Alek.
The Diva Lounge, a club we helped Alek quickly get off the ground in Brighton Beach, has developed a reputation over the past week.
A reputation we are not even remotely okay with being associated with the King name.
The staff of dancers we had hand-picked have been replaced with a group of barely eighteen—or maybe younger—girls who all recently arrived from Armenia with the hopes of caretaker jobs and a better life.
Young, naive girls who are not dancing by choice but to stay alive.
Girls who are finding themselves being ushered from the pole and into back rooms, where they are locked into nightmares.
They might be rumors, but they absolutely fucking stink of the truth.
The validity of what we’ve been hearing is so strong that I’ve found myself in Brighton Beach just shy of midnight with Cillian and Enzo.
We are meeting Alek at The Diva Lounge, under the guise of grabbing a drink and checking in on the club we own part of.
We walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke at the door as we make our way into the club.
Inside is nothing like Kings Temptation.
This place reeks of cheap perfume, like it’s being used to mask the fact that it hasn’t been properly cleaned in far too long.
The scent makes my stomach twist—knowing it’s masking the most vile things in the back rooms.
The club is crawling for a Friday night.
Red lights strobe over the stage, matching the steady thump of the pounding bass.
One girl is working the pole, the others are lined up along the stage.
Dressed in nothing but skimpy thongs and glitter, all of their eyes dart toward us nervously when we walk over to them.
I fucking hate this shit…
My brothers and Alek should have just let me come in here guns blazing, sorting out the rest over the dead bodies beneath our feet.
With Cillian moving like a shadow on my right, and Enzo on my left, they both take in every inch of the place as we make our way to Alek, waiting for us at a table by the stage.
He greets us with a forced smile, pretending this is nothing more than a good night out.
“Relax,” he says quietly, gesturing at the seats surrounding him and eyeing the hand I didn’t realize was firmly wrapped around the gun tucked into my waistband.
I would, but all I can see is the sharp looks being exchanged between his lieutenants when they manage to pull their stares away from the three of us. They look more desperate than loyal—not that they’re exactly loyal—and that makes them fucking dangerous.
“How’s business?” Enzo asks, getting comfortable in an oversized faux-leather seat.
“Running as it should,” Alek lies for appearance’s sake. “Drinks are flowing. Men are spending. And the girls are earning money hand over fist.”
The girls are earning… I struggle not to roll my eyes. Is that what we’re calling it?
A waitress flutters over the moment we’re all seated at, bending low and garnering us all a few of the tits spilling from her top, to hand us menus that none of us need.
“Two whiskeys on the rocks and a vodka neat,” Enzo shouts over the pounding music.
He draws a smirk that causes the waitress to blush. “Thanks, sweetheart.”
She no more than steps from our table before a group of three girls waiting near the stage is instructed to join us.
They’re all similar in appearance—tall, curvy, long hair–but the two blonde girls look far too young to be here.
“Are any of you gentlemen interested in a private dance?” the brunette of the group asks, with a too-rehearsed smile and accent so thick it makes Ani sound like a native New Yorker.
With her sugar-laced voice pleading for us to say yes, her sad eyes defiantly scream for us to decline.
Her gaze flicks over us one by one, waiting for an answer.
When it doesn’t come, she swallows hard and continues, “You can even take all three of us if you want.”
I shouldn’t. I fucking know I shouldn’t, but if we’re going to find out if the rumors are as true as we believe them to be, one of us has to go. Leaning back in my chair, I flirtatiously arch a brow. “Depends. What kind of dance are you offering?”
“For you, handsome? The best the champagne room has to offer.”
Ignoring the glare from Cillian, I give her a quick nod and rise from my seat. Her hand slips around my wrist. She leads me through the haze of the club and down a narrow hallway. The thud of music in the club fades as she walks me toward the champagne room.
It’s dim, likely hiding what I can only imagine are the stains on the plush velvet couch I’m about to sit on. The walls of the tiny room are mirrored, and there’s an already open bottle of cheap bubbly in a bucket of mostly melted ice on the table. Classy.
“Sit,” she purrs.
I follow her request, uncomfortably taking a seat.
She climbs onto my lap, straddling me, and immediately begins grinding against me.
My jaw clenches, and my whole body stiffens in response.
All I can think about is Ani. In my bed…
laughing… curled up against me in our bed.
My wife would spit fucking fire if she saw me like this.
Guilt burns at me, and I fight the urge to remove the woman from my lap.
She leans close, rubbing her tits along my chest as her lips dust against my ear. “What’s your name, handsome?”
“Nik,” I answer curtly. “Yours?”
“Sonya. But for enough money, I’ll be whoever you want me to be.”
“And for enough money, what else can I get?”
She grinds over my lap, reaching between us toward my belt. “You want more than a dance?”
Unable to bring myself to answer, I nod my response.
“Fifty to blow you. One fifty to fuck.”
There it is… That’s all I need.
Grabbing her hand, I pull it from my belt buckle before she can finish undoing me.
“No?” she asks, her eyes laced with confusion. “You sure? A little more money and I’ll let you do the things your wife won’t.”
I know it’s a line—one she’s been fed to get money out of the club’s customers—but I can’t help the effect it has on me. With my hands high on her waist, I shove her back gently, enough to stop her from grinding. “I’m not interested.” I shake my head.
She slides off my lap. “Do you want the other girls instead?” she asks, her voice quivering with uncontrolled nerves.
“No.” I shake off my jacket and slip it over her shoulders. Pulling out my wallet, I remove all the bills in it and shove them into the breast pocket.
“Wha—”
“Put it on,” I insist, helping her into it. It’s big enough that it falls to her thighs. “Go out the back door, go to the bus station, and get as far away from this city as you can.”
We walk from the champagne room, and Sonya pauses in the hall, staring up at me with hesitant eyes. “Go,” I softly insist, nudging her toward the unmanned door at the end of the hall. “I’ll make sure they don’t come for you.”
I watch her walk down the hall as I pull my pistol from the front of my pants and flip off the safety. “Thank you.” Her voice carries down the hall as the heavy fire door closes behind her.
When I step out from the rear of the club, Cillian shoots a glance toward me, silently asking, ‘Well?’ My answer comes in the form of two bullets into Aram’s chest.
That takes care of one of Alek’s—now former—lieutenants.
“Maybe we weren’t clear enough,” I spit, crossing the room as Cillian, Enzo, and Alek shove from the table, firing bullets of their own.
“No trafficking. No prostitution.” Another bouncer lunges at me, his fist swinging.
I manage to catch it, twist, and slam him face-first into the table as chaos erupts in the club.
Cillian and Enzo move with efficiency, breaking faces and leaving bullet-ridden bodies in puddles of blood on the floor.
All of us are fueled with rage. This isn’t about pride or the fact that these men disobeyed us.
This is about girls like Ani—and Madison and Eavan—who weren’t blessed with the right social status or powerful family to protect them.
Girls who were so desperate for the chance of something better that they wound up trapped and abused.
I won’t stand by. And neither will my brothers.
By the time the club falls silent, the air is thick with blood, and the floor is covered in broken glass and bodies.
A lone member of Alek’s mafia family remains, a broad-shouldered blond man who can’t be much older than Alek, who shielded a few of the girls as bullets flew through the room.
Enzo stalks toward him, his gun at his side, with the protection of ours just behind him.
“You just got promoted.” He laughs with a huge fucking smirk, slapping the terrified kid on the shoulder.
“The girls stay if they want to. You pay them and treat them with fucking respect. If we hear the slightest fucking rumbling about some old fuck getting head in the champagne room, we will be back.”
“And you will be joining your friends,” I add.
“They’re not my friends,” the kid mumbles.
“Good.”