CHAPTER FIVE
Nadine
“Wow. It’s so pretty,” I said, as I stepped up onto the sidewalk with Carmen. I was getting the official tour of the clubs. I’d barely been able to sleep the night before. I’d still been processing the crazy whirlwind of the previous day. And I’d been excited to see where I’d be working.
Carmen looked around as if seeing her surroundings for the first time. “Yeah, it is.” She gestured to the buildings before us and pointed to the next several blocks. “All of this is Salazar property. It all belongs to at least one of us. But we’re going to focus on this block and the next one.”
I tried not to be overwhelmed, but I totally was as I stood back so I could take in the three connected properties on this block.
They were all built with the same light red dappled bricks.
All the buildings in downtown West Bay seemed to use that same beautiful brick, just like they all had black, wrought iron gas lights attached to them.
All the signage on the buildings was also made of tasteful black metal with metallic gold lettering declaring the name of the business.
There were no buildings with neon lighting or aluminum siding like I was used to seeing in Puckins.
“This is Bailar,” she said, pointing to the first building.
It was huge, and at least three stories tall.
“It’s a dance club with a cover charge that caters to the twenty-one and up crowd, but the major patrons are students from West Bay University.
Most nights there’s a very long line to get in.
” We walked several feet to the next building, which was longer than the first one, but not as high.
It was clearly a restaurant, since it had a rooftop bar with lots of outdoor seating.
A wrought-iron fence ran the length of the top, with ferns and ivy trailing down the sides every few feet.
“This is Bahia Del Sol,” she said, stopping in front of it.
“It’s one of my twin brothers’ restaurants. They have several in town.”
“What does that mean?”
“Bay of the sun. My dad is Spanish, so we have a lot of Spanish influence in our lives. And my mom is from West Bay, so we also have a lot of Southern influence in our lives, too. Probably more Southern than Spanish because of growing up here. We’ve only visited Spain a few times over the years.”
I nodded, though I knew enough about the Salazars to know they were part Spanish.
It wasn’t surprising to me that some of their businesses had Spanish names or a Spanish influence.
Though I sure as hell would be bad at pronouncing them.
My Spanish teacher in high school had given up on me being able to pronounce any Spanish words correctly.
I didn’t have an ear for accents, apparently.
At least, that’s how she’d explained it.
Mama had just said, “Lord, girl. Even I can say ‘hola’ without pronouncing the damn ‘h.’”
I made a note to myself to try not to say any Spanish words around Carmen. I didn’t want her
to hear how bad I was at it.
“How many brothers do you have?” I’d read stories about the Salazars over the years, but I’d never thought I would be living in West Bay. I hadn’t taken in very many details about the family except that they were half-Spanish, wealthy, powerful, gorgeous, and a little scary.
“Five. Nico owns the clubs with me, as I’ve told you.
We make a good business team. The twins are Leo and Joaquin.
You’ll meet them soon, I’m sure. They love the strip club.
And the sex club, of course. Then there are Enzo and Javier.
They both work in real estate and investments with my dad, Carlos.
My mom, Gloria, is… a lot. She’s very involved in charity work in town.
” She squinted and shaded her eyes from the sun as we watched some people laughing and talking at the outdoor bar of Bahia Del Sol.
“Six kids, huh? That’s a lot. Are you the youngest?”
She laughed. “Not even close.” She held up her fingers and ticked off each Salazar child.
“It goes Enzo, Javier, me, Nico, and then Joaquin and Leo.” She glanced up again.
“I love the rooftop bar at Bahia Del Sol.” She looked at me.
“Don’t tell Nico, but it’s my favorite place to hang out at night. ”
“Why wouldn’t you want me to tell Nico?”
“Because he and I own five establishments that have bars, Nadine. He wouldn’t like it that my favorite bar isn’t one of ours. And lord, don’t tell Joaquin or Leo, either. They’d hold that over me for years.”
“Oh.” That made sense.
“Let’s keep going or this will take forever.
” Her heels clicked as she continued on down the sidewalk.
“This,” she said, pointing to the last building on the block, “is Salazar Nights. It caters to a bit older crowd, mainly thirty and forty somethings. It’s more sophisticated.
There’s no cover charge or membership required, but there’s a strict dress code.
It has a 1920s, over-the-top luxury vibe. We host a lot of events here.”
The building was the exact twin of Bailar, the two tall clubs flanking Bahia Del Sol like bookends.
“But I won’t work at Salazar Nights?”
“Only if we need extra waitresses during an event or something.” She stopped at the end of the sidewalk and looked both ways before stepping down onto the cobblestone pavement of the road that separated the city blocks.
We crossed the road and stepped up on the sidewalk of the next block in our tour. There were five buildings on this block, all two stories tall. I knew I’d be working in one of these clubs. I just didn’t know which one was Sugar.
“All the businesses on this block are named after spices, as I told you yesterday. This is Saffron,” Carmen said, as we passed the first one. “It’s a gym on the bottom floor and a spa on the top floor. I don’t hang out here much, but Nico likes to work out here with his friends.”
I had slowed down to look in the windows at the people working out and had to hurry to catch up with her as she moved on to the second business. “This is Salt. It’s another one of the twins’ restaurants. It’s upscale casual at lunch, but reservation only at dinner.”
I didn’t know what the hell ‘upscale casual’ meant. Just from the outside I could tell that it was much nicer than the best restaurant in Puckins. And to me? Casual meant fast food. I decided not to share that thought with Carmen.
When she got to the third business she stopped. “This is it. This is Sugar, where you’ll be working. This is the strip club,” she said. “Come on inside. It’s the nicest one you’ll ever see.”
I gulped. We were about to walk into the place I’d be working for who knew how long.
I followed her through the door and had to stop myself from gasping as I looked around.
It was beautiful. It was nothing like the strip club in shitty Wilkins, with its rusty aluminum siding, neon sign with the outline of naked women on it, and gravel parking lot full of broken bottles. This was… elegant.
The walls were painted a color that was somewhere between blue and gray.
The lighting was muted, and the fixtures were the nicest I’d ever seen.
The flooring was some sort of shiny, dark tile.
There were circular black marble tables of varying sizes scattered throughout the building, some in front of some brightly lit stages and some in a large, recessed bar area that still had a good view of the stages.
In fact, the stages were set up in a way that they were easy to view from anywhere in the area.
Carmen smiled as she watched me take it in. “What do you think?”
“It’s… so nice.” I was shocked.
She laughed. “It is. I wondered what you were picturing when I talked about a strip club.”
“Not this!”
“I didn’t think so. My office is here in Sugar. It’s where I spend most of my time. We’ll come back here in a bit to talk about everything, but I want to show you the other two clubs first.”
“What’s upstairs?” I asked.
She grinned. “Those are the VIP rooms.”
My eyes widened. “Will I be working up there?”
“No. Those rooms are for private groups, like bachelor parties, and where members can receive special services. Those range from lap dances to… other things. You’ll either be a hostess—that’s what we call the waitresses here—or you’ll be onstage.”
I glanced at the stages again. There were three, all large, and all with a stripper pole on them.
They were separated from each other by a thick, dark curtain.
Again, I was surprised by how classy everything was.
Besides the pole, I would have thought an orchestra would set up to play at night, or some lady with a harp or a violin or something.
Looking around the place, I got no strip club vibe at all.
Carmen seemed to read my mind. “A lot of the men who come here do it to drink, talk with their friends, conduct business deals—things of that nature. The dancers and hostesses are just nice to look at and have in the background for a lot of them. Don’t get me wrong,” she said, “Most of our members end up in the VIP rooms upstairs or next door at Cayenne at some point, but they’re not the kind of crowd to yell and go crazy over the dancers.
When they leave tips it’s done discreetly, not stuffed in the girls’ G-strings. ”
She watched me take in my surroundings. “We’ll come back here and talk for a bit about how this all works. But for now, let’s go check out Cayenne.”
I swallowed hard. “Will there be, um, people…”
“Will people be fucking in there at,” she checked her watch, “ten in the morning? No. The cleaning crew will be there working, and some bar employees might be working on re-stocking or ordering supplies, that kind of thing.”
“Okay,” I breathed out a sigh of relief, even though I was slightly disappointed. I kind of wanted to see how a sex club worked.