Chapter Thirty-Seven-Nico
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN-NICO
“ W ell, nice place you have here.”
Margaret O’Doyle is sitting at the bar in a red miniskirt and barely there halter top. She looks like something someone could buy, and maybe that’s the point.
But I’m not buying. I’m not even looking.
“What are you doing here?”
“Can’t a girl just stop in to say hi to her betrothed?”
I don’t bother to sit. It’s early yet and only a few regulars are inside the bar, imbibing their cocktails and letting loose.
The Vipers’ Den is a popular hangout. It’s Friday night, so I know we will be packed.
It isn’t a place just for my guys, but for locals and people looking for a Manhattan vibe in a Jersey City bar. The Den is dark with a sleek city theme, all iron, steel, and cement.
It’s clean too. No drugs. No whores. No fights. Nothing obvious, anyway. Nothing that would make any hotshot cops curious.
I don’t need that kind of aggravation.
I prefer to conduct business in my office below, but this woman is not an associate. She’s nothing to me at all. And my patience is wearing thin.
“I’m a married man, Miss O’Doyle. And you and me, we’re nothing.”
“Oh please, your marriage is just a nuisance. A pittance that can go away with a simple signing of papers. We can have something good. I can fit in here,” she says, and she is eyeing me like a spider eyes its dinner.
Repulsion fills me and I let her see it. She shrinks back.
“Nico, my f-father is gonna cut me off. And worse. He’s gonna sell me to some old as dirt business associate and send me to live in some Eastern European country I can’t even pronounce if I don’t come back and tell him you said okay to this,” she begs, and I see something I want to ignore.
I see fear.
Fuck.