Chapter Two – Sasha
“Hey, hey, what the fuck are you doing?” The man protested, as I grabbed his arm and steered him towards the door.
”You really don’t know?” I snapped at him. All night, this guy had been causing trouble for the women in the Flood; hitting on them, getting up in their business while they were dancing, grinding on them even when he was told in no uncertain terms to fuck off. I didn’t care who he was, I wasn’t going to turn a blind eye to that kind of behavior, not when I was meant to be making this place safe for all the patrons.
”Let go of me,” he snapped, pulling his arm out of my grasp. ”Don’t you know who I am?”
”I don’t care who you are,” I replied bluntly. ”You’re leaving. Now.”
”I pay good money”
”I told you, I don’t care,” I told him, as I pushed him towards the exit. And I meant it. I didn’t care what kind of reputation this man had – he could have been the most important man in the city, but I wasn’t going to let him get away with acting like a creepy asshole around these girls. They deserved better.
”Go,” I told him, crossing my arms and blocking his path back into the club. ”And don’t try anything stupid.”
He parted his lips, clearly intending to protest more, but then, when he saw the look on my face, he thought better of it. He sloped out of the door, his shoulders slumped down shamefully, and I watched until he had vanished halfway down the street. Good riddance.
And, just as I turned to head back into the bar, someone blocked my way.
”Who was that?” Adva demanded, narrowing his eyes at me. I shrugged.
”I don’t know,” I replied. ”Just some guy who was acting creepy with the girls here. I got rid of him. That’s all that matters.”
Adva pushed past me, to look at the guy before he disappeared into the night – and, when he saw who he was staring at, his eyes widened.
”That’s Oliver Uva!” he exclaimed, as though that name was meant to mean something to me. I shrugged.
”Am I meant to know who that is?”
”Are you fucking kidding me?” Adva snarled. ”He’s one of the most powerful mafia bosses in the city! You can’t just kick him out of here.”
”You should have seen the way he was acting,” I replied, flashing him a cocky grin. ”If you think I was going to stand by and let him ruin the nights of all those girls-”
”I expect you to know better than to turn out an ally of the Antonovs,” he fired back at me sharply. Shit, I was getting tired of this Adva guy, and I had barely worked at the Flood for a month. He had just arrived back from some mission across the city, managing the set-up of a new compound for the Antonovs to work out of, and he had been driving me crazy since his return. Throwing his weight around, acting like the big man, and for what? Just because he seemed certain that he should be calling the shots? Yeah, that wasn’t how this worked. The Antonovs had hired me to do a job, to look after the club and make sure there wasn’t any trouble; I was going to fulfill that duty, no matter who got kicked out in the process.
”You need to go after him and apologize,” Adva told me. I rolled my eyes.
”You think that’s going to be a good look?” I asked him. ”I kick him out, and then I go back to him and grovel?”
”It’s better than letting him walk out of here and think that the Antonovs have a problem with him,” he growled. ”Now. Go. Before he leaves.”
”No.”
I refused, crossing my arms over my chest, and practically daring Adva to fight me on this. He glowered at me, those gray-blue eyes burning into mine. I didn’t shift my gaze for a moment. I knew he was pissed at me, but it didn’t bother me. I’d dealt with scarier guys than him over the years, and I had to prove myself to the Antonovs, who had hired me because they knew I could handle my shit. What would it have said to them if I’d gone running down the street to plead on my knees for forgiveness to the kind of asshole who was likely just going to cause trouble here anyway?
”You’re going to get us into some serious shit for this,” Avda snarled at me. I shrugged.
”If that happens, you can tell them it was all my idea,” I promised him. ”Send them my way. I’ll deal with it.”
”That’s not how this works-”
”Then I’m going to make it work that way,” I replied, widening my grin as I stared at him. His eyes flicked down to my mouth for a moment, and I could tell he was just getting more and more pissed at the way this conversation was going. He thought he was the big man around here, and now, here I was, making his life a whole lot harder than he wanted it to be.
”You’re going to be trouble,” he told me. For a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of amusement on his face – like, maybe, there was some part of him that liked the idea of trouble.
”I’m just doing my job,” I shot back. ”And if you don’t mind, I’m going to get back to it.”
I pushed past him, my shoulder clashing with his for a moment as I made my way back to the dance floor to make certain there were no problems in this place. Now that Oliver was gone, it seemed as though everyone was starting to relax a little, unwind after the tension of how he had been conducting himself. The girls he had been hitting on were dancing again, laughing together, and I even noticed one of them shooting a flirty look in my direction.
Yeah, not going to happen. I was working tonight, and I hadn’t been here long enough to get caught slacking off on anything. Especially with Avda looking over my shoulder the way he was. Look, I got it, he took his job seriously, but did he have to act as though I was some problem waiting to happen/ The Antonovs had hired me because they understood that I knew what I was doing, and they weren’t going to let anyone in on their operation unless they had stone-cold proof that they were good at their jobs.
And me? I’d been out here making a reputation for myself since I was a teenager, and I’d started working for Bratva families to pull in a little extra money to support my mother and sister. Of course, they didn’t have a clue what I was really doing out here, and I was fine with that - as far as they knew, I just had some high-paying bodyguard work, and I was able to send money back to keep them housed and fed while my sister focused on looking after our mom, since she’d had her fall and had to take some time away from work.
When they had found out what I’d been doing though, they had cut me off. Told me they didn’t want anything more to do with me. And, being young as I was, I had let them cut me off, let them push me out, too proud to give up this career I had worked so hard for. I wasn’t going to let them shame me out of it, not a chance in hell.
And the hours I worked were hardly hospitable. I didn’t want them to know the true details of everything I got up to, and I figured it would likely just put them in the firing line for anyone who wanted to cause me trouble if people found out I had a family.
I glanced around and saw Avda making his way over to the bar, head down. I could tell he was still pissed from our encounter earlier, and I couldn’t help but smirk to myself. Childish? Probably. But I had never been good at listening to the people in charge, and if he thought I was going to do exactly as he said just because he had been here longer than I had, he had another thing coming.
Stretching my arms above my head, I made my way to the back room to grab a coffee and give myself the hit of caffeine I needed to get through the rest of the night. It had already been a busy one - and I got the feeling it was far from over yet.