1. Chapter 1 #2
Nik moved to the next filing. “The liquor authority suspended us over the kid with a fake ID who assaulted a cop last April, and they claim we pose a threat to public safety. Xyst is now dry.”
“No alcohol means no club.”
“It means bleeding money, angry members, and the press sniffing around.” He shifted to the third document. “And this is the private complaint.”
He glanced at me.
“Sarah Farris is the private plaintiff in a civil suit,” he explained. “She’s not Isabella’s client. Not directly. Delgado represents the City in enforcement actions. Sarah is the sympathy play, the victim narrative. The alleged assault story they want the press to repeat.”
“So when she said she represented the plaintiff—”
“She was blurring the lines on purpose.” Nik’s voice stayed flat.
“The City is the hammer. Farris is how they make attacking Xyst look like protecting women. The SLA is the noose. And the Sixth Precinct gave the city the police incident report they needed to turn an underage drinking, fake-ID, officer-assault mess into a public-safety case. Someone tied it together and sent a city lawyer into Xyst with men from a precinct that should’ve answered to Luca. ”
I dragged a hand over my mouth. The documents on the screen blurred for half a second before I forced them back into focus.
“Are they claiming Xyst committed the assault?”
“No. They’re claiming Xyst served the underage kid who later assaulted Farris and a responding officer. Negligent security. Failure to protect patrons. Unlawful service to a minor. Dram shop liability.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Dram what?”
“A type of bar liability,” Nik said. “Their way of saying Xyst helped create the danger by putting alcohol in the kid before he hurt someone.”
“The kid was drunk and underage. That part we knew.” My voice came out in a growl. “Ana was handling the club’s business side back when it happened. She said Luca dealt with the rest, and no one mentioned a woman had been assaulted until now.”
Nik’s fingers paused.
“That wasn’t in the original charges?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I remember a drunk rich boy with a fake ID. I remember him getting stupid enough to put hands on a cop and learning fast that a rich father and a fat bank account couldn’t protect him inside Xyst.” I leaned forward.
“I don’t remember any woman being involved.
And I sure as hell don’t remember the Sixth coming to us with that kind of allegation. ”
Nik studied me.
“Anyone who knows us understands we’d burn our own club to the foundation before we let a woman get hurt inside it or because of it and shrug that off.”
“Yes,” was all he said.
Nik had been forged in the Russian bratva and knew the underworld’s violence firsthand. Luca represented generations of mafia power, backroom deals, dirty money, and handshakes that ruined lives. None of us was a saint. But even men like us had lines we didn’t cross.
The true monsters were the ones who had no lines, then smiled for the cameras and sold themselves as decent men while girls disappeared behind them.
“Is this Hayes’s dirty work?” I asked.
Andrew Hayes no longer occupied the mayor’s office, but he still had enough political reach to make trouble from City Hall to Washington.
Nik’s mouth tightened. “It has his fingerprints all over it.”
“Too bad Lucian didn’t fucking kill him.”
“Hayes is hard to kill,” he grunted.
“He’s a politician. They usually are.”
“His influence only grew after Lucian put a bullet in him.” Nik leaned back, eyes on the documents.
“City Hall. Albany. Federal friends. Donors. Men near the White House who think favors are currency and women are collateral. Hayes still has pull, and he’ll use every bit of it to win that Senate seat. ”
“That cat has to be on his ninth life,” I said. “And it’s time someone stopped him from landing on his feet.”
“Yes,” Nik said. “But not before we know who’s pulling the strings.”
His hands moved again in controlled, precise keystrokes. A pause, then another command. Another file opened because Nik asked, and security systems had a habit of obeying him.
From the sofa, I couldn’t read every window that filled the monitors, but I followed along as Nik dug deeper into the assault charges.
Court records gave way to old addresses, sealed filings, employment history, government databases, and a few black screens that looked like places honest men weren’t supposed to go.
Nik didn’t hack like men did in movies. There was no grin. No dramatic bullshit.
He simply walked through closed doors without getting out of his chair.
“Sarah Farris,” he murmured. “Thirty-four. Yonkers. Petty-theft conviction, cocaine possession, missed court date, rehab recommended but never completed. Her employment history is erratic at best.”
“So how does a woman like that end up tied to our fake-ID kid?”
“Good question.” His fingers kept moving. “Middle-class background. No violent record. Enough wreckage to control her, enough normalcy to make her sell as sympathetic in front of a jury.”
A cold thread of understanding slid through me.
“She’s exploitable.”
He opened another file, then another, and paused. “This is interesting.”
“What?”
Nik’s eyes narrowed. “Ms. Farris has a second life. She’s been working under an alias for the last few months.”
My molars ground against each other. “Doing what?”
“Escort work,” he said. “Name on the bookings is Tammy Bondi.”
I huffed. “Classy.”
“She works for Elysian Companions Group.”
The name sounded expensive.
“That’s what hooker services call themselves when they want rich men to feel respectable,” I said, leaning forward and resting my forearms on my thighs.
A corporate org chart appeared on the screen. Nik grimaced and leaned closer.
Then he stopped and scrubbed a hand over his chin.
“Elysian Companions connects to Leon Brands.”
I raised a brow. “Never heard of them.”
“You’ve heard of their world.”
“Does that mean anything useful, or are you being dramatic?”
Nik gave me a look.
I shrugged. “No sleep, remember?”
“Leon Brands is a fashion and makeup empire. Lingerie, modeling-adjacent products, private events, mentorship programs, and women’s leadership foundations. They’re respectable on paper and clean enough for charity galas and boardrooms.”
“Sounds like the billionaire class doing what they do.”
“It is,” he growled. “It’s also access. Pretty girls want in. Girls with dreams of modeling, dancing, acting, internships, travel. Girls who think proximity to money means hope for an amazing future.”
The back of my neck prickled.
“Franklin Whitaker,” Nik said.
The name had been in the air since Scarlett and Lucian came back from Spain with files linking him to the global sex trafficking network behind the monastery.
Nik’s expression hardened. “He’s a predator with an Ivy League education and better manners than Delgado. He doesn’t need gangs on street corners. He needs men with money, influence, and appetites they can’t show in daylight.”
My jaw locked.
“He worked his way into Leon Brands through the billionaire who built it. He started as a financial adviser and made himself the gatekeeper. Now he manages the money, foundations, real estate, private events, and access to models. He runs the kind of rooms where a man can shake hands with a senator at noon and choose a girl from a private list by midnight,” Nik continued.
“Scarlett and Lucian brought back enough from Spain to prove the monastery wasn’t an isolated nightmare.
Every file opens into another institution and another girl. ”
He dragged the corporate map wider.
Leon Brands sat near the center of the web.