Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Lou
It’s a beautiful Saturday morning, and despite my missing cornicello charm, luck might be on my side for once. Clay’s car pulls out onto the highway, speeding away as I step into the back lot.
I’ve got the bar to myself. Time to find out what’s in those bags under the bed.
I might not have much time. Clay turned toward Havenwood. A quick trip to the grocery store likely buys me forty minutes, but he could turn around and come back anytime, so I don’t hesitate to pull the key Keith cut for me from my pocket and let myself in.
The room is as tidy as it was last night when I showered. The historical romance he was pretending to read is on the bedside table, open face down with no care for the already cracked spine. He’s three-quarters through it, if he’s actually reading it.
I can’t help the small smile that steals across my face. That man can behave like he’s so cynical and jaded, but there’s a curiosity in him that he can’t keep in check. Reading my books and helping himself to my drink.
Finding this charming is wasting my time, so I shake the smile off and get straight to business, dropping to my knees next to the bed. This is where it gets tricky. He can’t know I’ve got a key or that I’ve looked in these bags. They’ll need to go back exactly how they are.
I lift the covers on the bed and study the placement. The closest one sits a little apart from the others and looks a little less full. I reach for it, but freeze at the sound of a car.
It carries on down the highway instead of pulling into the gravel parking lot, and I let out a relieved breath.
I snag the bag and pull it out.
The zip sounds unnaturally loud in the silent building, and I hold my breath, expecting the worst. A mother-load of meth. Guns and pipe bombs. A Jordan Peterson book—you never know what depraved shit someone might be hiding.
It’s cash. Bundles and bundles of cash.
A low whistle escapes as I stare. I’ve never been near this much money before. I start to count, but I give up halfway through and sit back on my heels, feeling light-headed and oddly detached from my body as my brain spins out a rough guesstimate on autopilot.
I’m rounding up, but there has to be close to two million dollars here.
And I attempted to chase Hayden down for a lousy 60k.
A laugh bubbles up out of nowhere, and now that it’s coming out, I’m not sure I can stop it.
Two million—if each bag is the same, there’s something like ten million under the bed. No wonder he wouldn’t budge on sharing the apartment and refused outright to take the camper himself.
How did he get it? Maybe Benji’s right, and he pulled an Ocean’s Eleven.
The laughter dries up in my throat, replaced by something queasy.
Shit, if he robbed a bank or a casino or something, and the feds come knocking—I don’t want to be tangled up in the mess, and I’ve just put my fingerprints all over the evidence.
What if they take me for an accessory? My prints are already in the system, thanks to a few incidents over the years, mostly involving the baseball bat I keep behind the bar and the kneecaps of unruly men who didn’t take kindly to being denied service.
Because I never fucking learn, I open a side pocket to see what else I can put my prints on, and pull out a photo.
It’s an older one—a family photo, professionally done. A beautiful, well-dressed woman with golden hair has her arms wrapped around two children—a girl with dark hair and a sweet smile, and a little blond boy with a serious expression.
It’s Clay’s family. That little boy has to be him.
He has his mother’s eyes. Her smile appears well-practiced, serene, and completely fake.
There was a man in the photo, though it’s impossible to tell if there’s any physical resemblance between him and the little boy because only a bit of his chest and one arm remain.
His face is a hole, burned out of existence.
Not the picture of a happy family.
Carefully, I wipe the photo with my skirt, hoping it’s enough to obscure any prints I left should the feds catch this man, and tuck it back in the side pocket. I give the other bags a quick poke. They feel the same as the bag I opened, so I don’t bother to look inside.
Ten million.
My hands are shaking again. I’m not going to attempt to count the exact amount, but there’s close to ten million dollars in my bar. Where anyone could break in, find it, and take it.
I could.
I could take one or two of these bags, hop in my car, and go anywhere.
I could be in California dipping my toes in the Pacific in a couple of days.
I could buy a camper like the one I’m staying in and a car that could tow it, and drive around the country.
I could live off that kind of cash for a long time.
Buy a dive bar somewhere and do what he’s doing, what my great-grandmother did. Start over.
But I’m not Hayden. It might not be Clay’s money, but it’s not mine, either. I don’t want the life it could give me, even if it’s a pleasant little fantasy.
I also don’t want to end up in prison.
I push the bag back under the bed, exactly like I found it, and flip the blankets back down, smoothing them out. I haven’t touched anything else, so I walk out, locking the door behind me.
A rural dive bar is as good as a dry cleaning business for laundering money.
Gallo’s opened as a front for my great-grandmother to take the gangland money her prison-bound husband left her and turn it into something legal.
The business didn’t exactly thrive solely due to a thirsty local population in those early years after Prohibition.
It still doesn’t. Rita encouraged locals to pay in cash, nominally as a fuck you to service fees, and that tradition has carried on. Most locals pay in cash most of the time. My own accounting is…creative. It’s how I manage to pay the staff we hire a living wage rather than a minimum wage.
Clay can be reasonably—and incorrectly confident—that I wouldn’t find his money, but if he’s cooking the books? Of course I’d notice. Yet he hasn’t tried to discourage me from looking.
The office smells like his cologne. It’s nice. Fresh. Lighter than I’d expect from him. More citrus grove than smoky, boozy jazz club or expensive leather.
I catch myself inhaling the lingering scent deep into my lungs, picturing him, sans shirt, with a fragrance bottle in hand, fresh from a shower, the hard planes of his body dewy from the steam.
This has to stop. I cannot be physically attracted to a man dumb enough to hide ten million under his bed like some porno mag from the pre-internet era.
I drop into the chair and turn on the old computer.
It doesn’t take long to find the evidence.
Our nightly profits are up, especially on Fridays and Saturdays.
It’s not gratuitous, but it is obvious, at least to me.
Gallo’s has also made several payments for repairs to a company I don’t recognize, as well as a larger payment to a business consultant.
He’s cooled it in the four days since I came back—just the continual injection of his illegal cash into our nightly earnings.
How much trouble am I in? I don’t think he’s going to get Gallo’s flagged for this yet, but that money could bring bigger problems than an audit, depending on what he did to get it.
“What are you doing here?”
I jump at the sound of his voice, my heart slamming into overdrive.
Clay’s lips thin as he slouches against the doorway, hands in his pockets. He keeps his body turned so as not to block my exit, like he’s trying to make himself appear smaller and unthreatening after the jump scare he gave me.
“It is my office, too.” I lean back in the office chair. Do I want to confront him right now? How will he react if I do? He might be trying to look as non-threatening as possible, but is he harmless? I force a smile and try to ignore my still-pounding heart. “I wanted to talk to you.”
His shoulders tense, ever so slightly. “Oh?”
I can’t tell, but I imagine his heart just went into double time, too.
“Next month is usually pretty big for us,” I say casually. “I want to try some drink specials. Maybe order in some newer microbrews to capitalize on all the people from the Twin Cities up for family vacations. Do you mind if I make some adjustments to the order you placed?”
His shoulders relax. “Order whatever you want. You know the business best.”
I do, because it’s my bar and he’s making me complicit in this shit.
Clay’s wary gaze follows me as I join him in the doorway.
His citrus cologne is warmer and greener on his skin, like fresh-cut grass drying in the sun and sparkling lemonade.
The temptation to lean in for more is overpowering—and that’s the real danger here.
It isn’t the money under the bed or what he’s doing with my bar.
It’s that I want to press my lips to his and feel his hard body against mine, even though he’s using me.
Well, my bar. By extension, me.
It pisses me off.
I pat his chest, his eyes darken, and I can’t pretend I don’t know. Fuck the consequences. We’re doing this now.
“Maybe I know the business best,” I say, forcing sweetness into my voice to cover my anger, “But you’re bringing in the profits.”
He doesn’t grab me. Doesn’t threaten me. No switch is flipped, turning him into an aggressive asshole. Instead, he sighs. “You looked at the books.” There’s disappointment in his voice, like he didn’t expect me to figure it out.
“I’m not stupid, Clay,” I call over my shoulder as I stomp down the hall. He underestimated me, and that’s his fucking mistake.
He follows me at a leisurely pace. “My escort work hasn’t fully been above-board.” The lie trips right off his tongue, sounding reluctant and everything.
Maybe it’s not a lie. Maybe some wealthy person paid him ten million in crisp, glorious cash for his company.