Chapter 42 Damien
Damien
“Idon’t know how we didn’t see it,” Diego says as he plugs away on his laptop. Meanwhile, I am pacing behind him, biting my lips hard enough to chew them off.
After the incident with Jocelyn at the Opal Room, I took a week to sober up, and not just from the bottle of whiskey I consumed that night.
I’ve been thinking. Alone. In the dark. No witnesses.
Just…wrapping my brain around all of it.
Everything from the betrayal to my…feelings…
about Ellie. And I’ve come to some conclusions–conclusions that are hard to swallow.
“She was a nobody,” I answer.
“A nobody who has been obsessed with you since the first time she applied for the personal assistant job. If you remember, which you probably don’t, she applied for the position and you turned her down flat.”
“She didn’t appeal to me,” I say.
“And you sent her packing. Then…a couple of months later, when whoever you hired didn’t make the cut anymore, she reapplied.
And you realized she was going to keep trying unless you did something.
So you hired her for the job she has now.
Or had. Meanwhile, she’s watched you go through assistant after assistant from a front row seat.
And then…along came Ellie. Who, as you say… is different.”
It does make sense. But still…I need to be sure.
“What else have you found? On Dylan and Ellie?” I ask.
“They worked together at the Suerte. She was above him, advancing quickly, and he couldn’t keep up.
Then they started dating. And miraculously…
he moved up. They were on the same rung of the ladder.
But she was always the one to take the next step.
And he sabotaged her. Cheated on her with the secretary, made a scandal of it.
And Ellie was so destroyed by it that she left. She left and she–”
“Came to the gala,” I finish the sentence. Because the entire story, all of its parts, are tied together perfectly. “Where she met me. And…”
Luca is mine. Nothing else makes sense. Because Ellie is not a liar.
“And then…by happenstance,” I say.
“By fate,” he corrects me, and I let it slide.
“She walked into the Redwood in search of a job. And I was bewitched again.”
It’s enough that I need to sit down. But the grin on Diego’s face tells me he’s not done.
“There’s more,” he says.
Fuck.
“Decker might be easier to take down than we thought.”
I narrow my eyes. “How so?”
“Your bartender at the Opal Room, she hears a lot. Because girls talk. While the clients are busy tossing dollar bills at the dancers, their dates sit at the bar and they talk. Decker has been embezzling money from his hotel. It’s how he’s managed to open a gentlemen’s club. If his investors knew–”
“He’d be toast.”
“Exactly,” he grins. “Ice the cake with the minor detail that some of his girls at the club are just that–minors.”
“Jesus Christ…” I let out, wiping my hand down my face.
“Congratulations, boss. We’re going to bury him.”
The Diamond Back is exactly what I expected–a glorified strip club.
At first, the guard isn’t willing to let me in.
Decker must have told him not to. Pussy.
I get around that by lifting my shades and stepping closer to the man, unintimidated by the fact that he is bred to kick people’s asses for a living.
“I am going to have a conversation with your boss, whether I do it here or hunt him down somewhere else,” I tell him subtly. “And when I do, you will no longer have a job because this place will be gone. Take me to Decker and I can offer you a job at the Opal Room.”
“The Velvet Lounge,” he pushes.
I nod once, and he takes me inside.
We wind through the flashy lights and subpar dancers into the back. With cheap furniture and a pop-up bar, it is a cheap knockoff of my club, but I’m not surprised. There are also photos of snakes everywhere, probably a play on the name. It fits.
We find Dylan on a chaise lounge, with a girl on each side of him. He opens his eyes, as if he can sense my presence, and then sits up.
“Andrew, why is this man in my club?”
I pass Andrew my card, and he walks away without speaking a single word to his boss. Dylan stands up.
“What do you want, Graves?”
“We need to talk.”
“Considering I was escorted from the Opal Room by force, I think it’s safe to say you are not welcome here.”
I take another step forward, and I swear Dylan actually takes a step back.
“We are going to talk, Decker. And we can do it here, where everyone can hear what I have to say, or you can take me somewhere more private. I think the latter would work more to your advantage.”
Dylan chews on that for a moment before nodding towards a door. It leads us down a hallway to an office, where he closes the door behind us.
“Talk,” he demands.
And I smirk.
“How did you pay for this place?” I ask.
“Money,” he answers.
“What money?” I press.
Dylan snorts. “If you haven’t noticed, I am a CEO. I have money. All CEOs do.”
“But here’s the thing about that. Not all of that money is legal to access. And if it’s spent, say without banks and investors knowing, there’s a word for that.”
“What are you accusing me of?” he grits out.
“Exactly what you’ve been doing. It’s enough to take you down, Decker. And even if it wasn’t, the fact that you don’t vet your employees, is.”
“Are you saying my girls aren’t clean enough to be here?” he asks.
“I’m saying they’re not old enough to be here. Not all of them. So here is what we are going to do. You sell everything to me, at a generously discounted price of course because of how generous I am being with you. And you get lost.”
“Or?” he growls.
“Or, I blow it wide open and you go to jail. Either way, what’s yours is mine. In every way, if you know what I mean.”
With that, I’m done. I see myself out, all the way to the front door. The night air is warm, as usual for Nevada, but it is refreshing nonetheless. I am feeling lighter already, though the biggest hurdle is still on the horizon.