18. Konstantin
KONSTANTIN
Leaving Rose without having a chance to speak to her isn't how I wanted the morning to go, especially after last night's revelation, but the world always has other ideas.
A higher-than-normal intake at one of my dance clubs demands my attention, as the manager fears counterfeit currency, so I travel there with Ethan as soon as I can.
"You're distracted," Ethan remarks as we climb from the car. "What's wrong?"
I shake out some light cramp in my legs and glance over at him as he walks around the car to my side. "Too much."
"It's only too much if you don't talk about it."
"Rose," I reply with a grunt. "I fucked up."
Ethan's brow lifts. "How? I thought you two were…" He clicks his tongue and smirks. "Is it not all sunny?"
Before I can reply to him, the doors to the club swing open and the manager, Teigan, rushes out with a pile of papers under one arm. "Boss! Thank god you're here. I want you to know that we shut early last night as soon as I noticed the discrepancy!"
"Take a breath," I instruct quietly as we walk up toward the door. "Talk me through what is wrong."
"Well, at the first count of the profits, we noticed we were thirty thousand over what we usually make.
Now, you know we pull in a crowd, and we make a lot, but thirty thousand extra is abnormal.
We're typically ten thousand over at most. So I ordered everyone to stop, I pulled all the CCTV and the ID's of everyone who visited and I stored all the cash in the office.
So you can like…" He pants slightly as he holds the door open and then ushers Ethan and I inside. "You can do that thing you do."
"The thing?" I follow him down the red carpet, past the reception, and into the main club, where several poles stand absent their dancers. The women are all clustered near the bar where they drink and sit, but among all the curious glances are a few very pissed off ones.
"Yeah!" Teigan grins at me. "Can't you run the ID's and see who runs in the counterfeiter circles? Because then you'd know who is trying to screw you over."
"Hey!" calls one of the women from the bar. "When the fuck are we getting paid?!"
"In a minute!" Teigan yells back, then he turns to me with an exasperated sigh. "You can run that kind of check, right?"
I stop walking and glance back at the bar. "Teigan, have you checked the money?"
He adjusts the stack of papers in his arms. "Huh? What do you mean?"
"Did you check your takings to see if any of it was even counterfeit?"
By the owlish look on his face, this never even crossed his mind, and he stutters slightly as he speaks. "I-I mean, we're thirty thousand over, boss. That's alarming as it is!"
"I see new faces." At the bar, only a few recognizable ones stare back at me. "You have new girls?"
"Oh yeah, a handful."
"New faces bring in new customers." My attention slides to Ethan. "Check the takings first."
Ethan nods and immediately strides away toward the back office. After some bumbling hesitation, Teigan takes off after him, and the women return to their drinks at the bar.
Places like this remain the backbone of my business but not because of the money these women pull in.
It's the perfect place to ship and split my product, and no one dares to look because strip clubs make even criminals nervous.
Taking a seat at the nearest booth, I keep one eye on the women and the other on my phone to deal with a few other urgent calls that come my way.
After an hour, Ethan returns and sags into the seat across from me.
"All of it was legit," he groans. "What a wasted trip. Teigan is fucking stupid."
"Might not be wasted," I reply quietly. "Take a look at the bar and tell me what you see."
Ethan twists in his seat and rests his arm on the back of the booth, gazing across the dance floor to the bar. "A lot of strippers. A lot I haven't seen before. What am I looking for?" As he speaks, he suddenly stiffens and glances back at me. "I count… three?"
"Three," I agree. "Three do not look over twenty-one."
"Shit."
"I want this place closed and audited immediately, staff included. Everything needs to be legal and aboveboard before this place sees a lick of business again."
"Already on it," Ethan replies, buried in his phone.
"And find out where the new girls came from." Something about this stinks. It's painfully common that one or two underage girls can slip through a net, but not with the security protocols I have in place.
My cover businesses keep everything aboveboard, but now first the extra cash and then dancers who look far too young to be here.
By the time Ethan sends out word, Teigan has several furious, unpaid dancers on his hands and we leave him to it while my other team takes over.
Back outside, the sun's high in the sky once more and I groan.
"This heat will kill me."
"Speaking of hot," Ethan remarks. "What were you going to say about Rose?"
We reach the car, and I rest my arms on the roof while watching Ethan hurry to the driver's side. "I told her about me. That I am infertile."
He pauses and looks up at me. "Did it go badly?"
"No. It went well. She took it in stride and made jokes about how fun it is to try anyway. But she had put all this pressure on herself to have a baby. I feel… guilty for not telling her sooner."
"But she took it well?" Ethan asks.
I nod.
"Maybe she really likes you. It's not too hard to imagine, given how she seems. Life exudes from her. She's always smiling."
"That does not mean she is happy," I point out. "But I am… concerned."
"Why? You have a beautiful wife, business is good outside of the Italian fucks, and she's happy to keep trying. What's to be concerned about?"
"Me. Rose is… she is like sunshine. I worry that too much time with me will dull her light. I do not want to be the reason she becomes a shadow."
“Boss…” Ethan shakes his head. “Is this because of Lianna?”
I meet his gaze. “No.”
“Your brow twitches when you lie,” Ethan replies. “Look. What happened to Lianna was tragic; there’s no denying that. But it was her choice to have an affair with that guard. It was her choice to let him in that night. It was not your fault.”
“Was it not? In her eyes, I am sure I pushed her by neglecting her.”
“You forget that I was there. I was always there. She was distant from the start. You both performed a duty but her heart was never in it. Maybe that’s why you’re feeling so much guilt for Rose feeling that same dutiful weight.”
“I did love her,” I say softly. “Lianna. I would have done right by her.”
“She betrayed you,” Ethan reminds me. “She got a lot of people killed because of it.”
“Yes. But she was still mine.” I turn my gaze skyward and close my eyes. “I do not want to repeat the same mistakes. I do not want to be a source of pain for Rose.”
Ethan's face twists slightly as he nods. "Well, about that, I think her family might be winning that battle."
"How do you mean?"
"I haven't been able to find anything on her mother or her sister. They exist but they've vanished. But when I called her father, he spoke fondly of them and then hung up on me."
Interesting. I mull it over as I climb into the car and as Ethan joins me, an idea springs. "Invite her father to dinner. Only her father. I do not want to deal with Mathew. Perhaps speaking man to man will get me some answers. If there is a problem or pain there, I want to help."
"Sure. I'll call him," Ethan agrees. "We could head there now, actually, and just pick him up for lunch?"
"No, not now. I have something I need to organize."
"Rose?"
"I wish. That Italian bastard, Leo? He wants to meet."
"The Don whose son you killed?"
"Mhm. He contacted me while you were in the back office."
"You know that's got to be a trap, right?" Ethan frowns deeply. "Meeting him can't be a good idea."
"It is a trap," I agree. "But I am tired of this war. So we will organize a meet and we will see what he has to say. And if I have to kill him then so be it; he's been more trouble than any partnership is worth."