1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Fourteen Read online

  A starlet of a stripper who looked a good deal like Dolly Parton, who also likely got home the night before, earliest, three in the morning, and was right then, only hours later, back on the stage helping another girl by teaching her some moves.

  “Marcus, brother,” Smithie’s voice came at him. “You got a problem with the way I do business, and I give you reason to have that problem, then we have a talk. I don’t give you that reason, we don’t have conversations like this one. That’s our deal.”

  Marcus listened to him while he watched Daisy talking to the other girl and then she ran across the stage, doing it gracefully in platform sandals, her stone-washed jeans tight on her ass and hips and all the way down her legs. Still, after she ran the four steps, she launched herself high, grabbing on to the pole at least three feet higher than she was, her body swinging around by just her hands.

  When the swing ended, she climbed up the pole, hand over hand. Doing this quickly, taking herself up another four feet, she flipped her bottom half over, wrapping her skinny legs around the pole. She dropped back, her hair flowing down, and with her only hold on the pole being her legs, she arched her back and slid down slowly, somehow circling the pole as she did it.

  She ended this doing a layout with her hands on the floor, her legs in slow and controlled movements coming over her head one after the other. Her hands pushing off, she was up.

  Standing straight with perfect posture.

  And smiling like she hadn’t moved an inch, much less just accomplished a feat of gymnastics—in a pair of tight jeans—that had to take a good deal of strength and effort.

  Fuck.

  That face.

  That smile.

  Fuck.

  “I’m thinkin’, watchin’ that,” Smithie kept at him, “you got a clue that every asshole who runs a club in Denver, Jefferson, Arapahoe, and Adams counties has been breathin’ heavy down that girl’s neck in hopes of recruitin’ her. You think to take her off private dances and give her less time on the stage, she likes me. She likes the class of Smithie’s most those other clubs don’t have. She likes the other girls. She likes the velvet rope. She likes the Porsche she bought herself last month. What she ain’t gonna like is that.”

  Marcus said nothing, watching her spot the other girl as she tried to do the same maneuver Daisy had.

  And watching as the girl failed.

  “And the other girls don’t care, Marcus,” Smithie kept at him. “She packs the place. Every night, gotta send men home from the line without them even getting in the door because the joint is jumping. That’s cash in the cash register for you and me, brother. Cover is higher to get in with Daisy headlining. Bottles behind the bar getting empty and quick. My weekly order of booze has doubled. But it’s also cash in the pocket not only of the dancers, but the bartenders and the waitresses. Everyone is happy.”

  Marcus turned his attention from Daisy to Smithie.

  “Cut her back a set and a song each set and no private dances, Smithie.”

  Smithie became angry. “Been in this game seven years, Sloan. And those seven years, been waitin’ for a talent just like Daisy to take Smithie’s, and all the souls I got workin’ for me who depend on it, to the next level.”

  “Increase her salary by half a million, give her four weeks’ paid vacation, and cut her back a set and a song and no private dances, Smithie.”

  Smithie’s eyes grew large.

  “Half a mil?” he choked.

  “I’ll cover that.”

  Smithie’s face got hard but his mouth moved.

  “The other part of the deal is that I work to buy you out as soon as I can. I’m about two months from doin’ that, now Daisy’s here. I don’t need you deeper, and no disrespect, I don’t want you deeper. You knew that from the beginning too. I needed you and you stepped in for me and you got my gratitude for that. You got it from the heart,” he thumped his chest, “and in the bank. But this is my club, brother, and I want it back.”

  “I’m not buying deeper in, Smithie, I’m covering the adjustment to Daisy’s salary.”

  “And when I buy you out? Who covers Daisy then? I don’t take a percentage of tips. Those are the girls’. I take a shave off the price of a lap dance of all the girls, but Daisy’s elevated pricing goes to her. How do I cover half a million fuckin’ dollars after you’re gone?”

  “You won’t have to.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Because she’ll be gone.”

  Smithie’s brows shot up.

  “She’ll—” he started to explode.

  He shut his mouth and stared at Marcus.

  Then he whispered, “Motherfucker.”

  He wasn’t calling Marcus that.

  It was a muted exclamation.

  Such was his shock, a surprisingly quiet one from Smithie, who was not a quiet man.

  It took him a moment to compose himself and Marcus gave him that moment.

  When he did, still quiet, he also seemed to brace, now surprising Marcus because it looked like he did it with a hint of fear, and Marcus had known Smithie for a long time and he’d never known the man to show fear.

  “Don’t go there,” he said.

  “I’m sorry?” Marcus asked.

  Smithie shook his head. “Again, respect, brother, you got that from me, you know it, and I’m still askin’ you not to go there.”

  There was the reason behind his fear.

  Smithie might be a soft touch in some ways, but he was a hardass in all others.

  But no one in Denver challenged Marcus Sloan.

  Marcus turned fully to him.

  Smithie took a small step back before he held his ground.

  “Why would you ask that?” Marcus queried.

  “She’s a good girl.”

  Losing patience and having other things to do, Marcus crossed his arms on his chest, prompting, “And?” when Smithie said no more.

  “She needs…” he started but didn’t finish.

  “She needs what?” Marcus pushed.

  Smithie’s focus sharpened on him.

  “Peace.”

  Marcus felt that one word stab through his chest, feeling it and remembering the vision of a beautiful woman with lots of hair and a big smile, hiding the fact she had to be tired in order to help out a friend.

  “Peace?” he whispered.

  Smithie shook his head again. “She and me, we throw back a few. She’s got time not dancin’, I hang with her during some of it. Took her a bit. She don’t trust easy. But she shared. And what she shared, Marcus, I’m askin’ you, man, just don’t go there.”

  Now Marcus was angry.

  In fact, furious.

  He did not show this outside the steely edge that was now in his voice.

  “I would not harm a woman.”

  “Brother, you got a stable of whores.”

  “I do not,” he clipped. “I oversee the management of a network of men who run escort agencies and I do this to make sure these men run this network appropriately.”

  “Like I said, you got a stable of whores. Or a network of ’em.”

  “You know that story, Smithie,” Marcus said softly, the soft not gentle, just quiet.

  And dangerous.

  Smithie did know that story so he left that but didn’t leave it alone.

  “You got other shit you—” he started.

  “Not your business.”

  “It is, you tie her up in it.”

  “She’s not your business either.”

  Again, Smithie’s eyes got big and he threw an arm toward the window. “She’s a Smithie’s girl and she’s not my business?”

  Marcus had had enough.

  “Do you want a problem with me?” he asked.

  “Of course I don’t,” Smithie spat.

  “Then cut a set, cut a song in each set, no private dances and increase her salary, Smithie.”

  “Goddammit, Marcus,” Smithie bit out.

  “Do it,” Marcus ordered then dr
opped his arms from his chest and moved toward the door.

  He stopped and turned back when Smithie called his name.

  “I won’t have no problem havin’ a problem with you if you make problems for her,” Smithie declared. “Do you get that?”

  They talked, Daisy and Smithie.

  Smithie knew.

  Peace.

  Marcus nodded.

  Smithie jerked up his chin in agitated anger and turned his back on Marcus.

  Marcus walked out of the office, down the stairs, and through the club, not sparing Daisy a glance.

  At that moment, he had business to deal with. He needed his head in that.

  When it was time for Daisy, he wanted his attention fully on her.

  But it would be time for Daisy.

  Soon.

  * * * *

  Daisy

  “Who’s that tall, dark drink of handsome water?” I asked Ashlynn, my eyes on the tall man with broad shoulders and fabulous suit who was sauntering out of the club in the manner of a man who owned it.

  In the manner of a man who owned anything he wanted.

  “Don’t go there,” Ashlynn answered.

  I looked to Ashlynn.

  “What, sugar?”

  She shook her head. “He’s hot. Knew a girl who’s had him and I’ll repeat, he’s hot. Took her out four times. All to fancy restaurants where she had to buy fancy dresses and shoes. And he gave it to her good at the end of the night, and I mean real good, the way she described it. He also, like, opened the car door for her and everything.”

  Opened the car door for her.

  And everything.

  Oh my.

  “Ended it with her giving her a gold bracelet,” Ashlynn carried on, recapturing my attention. “Pure class.” Her look got intense as she stared into my eyes. “And he’s trouble.”

  I glanced to the door that he’d obviously gone through because he’d disappeared, then back to Ashlynn.

  “Trouble?”

  Ashlynn didn’t answer that question.

  She just shook her head again and declared, “He wouldn’t date a stripper anyway. Like I said. He’s class.”

  I felt my mouth get tight.

  I was not a big fan of judgment. I’d had that shit shoved down my throat from the time I could cipher. A mother like I’d had. A father like I’d had. The creeps, losers, and assholes my momma had no problem parading through her daughter’s life, our home. The jobs Momma would get and lose and the reasons she’d lose them. The clothes I had to wear, bought at yard sales, garage sales, thrift shops. The crap people would say, not even worried I might hear. I didn’t matter and my feelings sure didn’t so they might not say it to my face, but they didn’t do anything to shield me from it either.

  I got out of that and it didn’t get much better. Pretty much every bitch and dickhead felt they had a highly-tuned white-trash-o-meter and took one look at me, thinking it binged at the highest frequency.

  Okay, so my momma wasn’t all that. My daddy really wasn’t all that.

  But I’d gotten on a bus and left all that behind and never looked back.

  Did that matter?

  Hell no.

  Yeah, so I’d found my own trouble in a variety of ways, mostly after Miss Annamae died, doing a stint at juvie that wasn’t all that fun and learning my lesson.

  And yeah, so I’d hooked up with some boys who weren’t much to write home about, mostly because I liked boys, boys liked me, and a girl’s gotta have a first kiss (and second, and third, etc.) and they were the only ones who asked me out.

  They might not have been much, they might have been trouble, they might have treated me like crap, but at least they all (every one) were f-i-n-e, fine. I could pull in a looker like no other even before one of them bought me my boob job. It just sucked they were all also varying shades of asshole.

  But I got my first job when I was sixteen and I was never late, never sick. I worked hard and showed respect that wasn’t showed me, eating shit when I had to, pulling the knife out of my back and getting on with it whenever someone shoved one in there. I got my high school diploma. I might not have graduated with honors but I was on the AB honor roll every term.

  No matter, they saw a woman with big hair and big hooters with a Southern drawl, a way with eyeliner and a penchant for rhinestones, and they thought they knew me through and through.

  Sure, now I was a stripper.

  And I’d been a cocktail waitress. A hotel maid. A grocery store clerk. And the hostess at a restaurant that, even though I’d been young, I still knew the majority of the clientele were scary individuals in the sense they were feloniously scary individuals. I knew I got that job and got paid good to do it because I had huge knockers and the ability to keep my trap locked shut.

  What I was not and never had been was white trash.

  Miss Annamae knew exactly what I was and she knew everything.

  I could work a rhinestone, a lip liner, and a G-string, but I was a good girl where it mattered.

  “He’s also loaded,” Ashlynn broke into my angry thoughts. “Men who got money like he does got the means to get themselves some that don’t gotta shake it in guys’ faces in order to make it.”

  “Well, if he’s got a problem with seein’ past that shit, sugar, then he might not want me even if he did expend the effort to look at me, which he did not, but I don’t want me any of him, either.”

  Ashlynn looked like she let out a sigh of relief.

  Whatever.

  I turned my attention back to the door. “What’s his name?”

  “Daisy—”

  I looked back at Ashlynn. “Don’t wanna know it to go after him, honey bunch. Wanna know it to avoid him.”

  Ashlynn nodded. “His name is Marcus. Marcus Sloan.”

  Oh yeah.

  That name said it all even if the suit and the hundred dollar haircut didn’t.

  He was class.

  He was loaded.

  He was trouble.

  And I was a good girl.

  So he’d been a good view for a few seconds.

  And just like you always had to do in life, you took the good when you got it as you got it.

  And when it was time for it to be done, you didn’t hold on.

  You moved on.

  So I put Marcus Sloan out of my mind and I moved on.

  Chapter Two

  Nothing

  Marcus

  “Run the tape.”

  “Sir, Smithie says—”

  For the first time in a very long time, Marcus Sloan’s composure slipped.

  “Run…the goddamned tape,” Marcus ground out through his teeth.

  The man in front of him sitting in the chair at a bank of monitors swallowed visibly, his eyes shifting only momentarily to the man at Marcus’s back before he turned to the controls.

  He hit some and all of the monitors blanked except one came up and the tape ran.

  Marcus stood still and forced himself to watch.

  It didn’t last long.

  He was not a man unaware that acts of lasting brutality could be delivered in shockingly short periods of time.

  In fact, he’d built an empire on this.

  He had just never seen anything like that.

  The monitor cut out when the action on it had played out and the man turned it off.

  But Marcus’s eyes didn’t leave it even when he asked, “Where’s Smithie?”

  “He’s cut up about this, Mr. Sloan. Fired Milo ’cause he fucked up. Lost his mind when he did it. I was there. Thought he’d rip his head off. He—”

  Marcus’s gaze moved to the man.

  “This was not the question I asked,” he said slowly.

  “He’s…I think…” the man moved uncomfortably in his chair and said no more.

  “I won’t ask again,” Marcus told him quietly.

  “I…I heard someone say, uh…he and Lenny… That is, I heard they went to go see Shirleen Jackson and Darius Tucker.” />
  Lenny, Marcus knew in keeping tabs, was one of Smithie’s bouncers. Good kid, working his way through college providing security at a strip club. Marcus had met him once, and if he’d gotten a whiff of what he needed from the man, he’d have recruited him. But Smithie shared Lenny wanted to devote his life to finding a cure for cancer, something he’d lost a grandmother and aunt to, so he was studying biology in hopes one day to do that.

  He might be studious but he was also a large, dark-skinned black man with a talent for security.

  And if he’d seen what Marcus just saw, now he was a man with a mission that might put his future plans in jeopardy.

  That did not factor to Marcus.

  Only one thing factored.

  And Shirleen Jackson and her nephew Darius Tucker, both colleagues of Marcus’s, though they played different games on different turf, were a good start.

  But only a start.

  He turned on his foot and moved from the room, his man Brady following him.

  Once they’d cleared it, they walked through the silent strip club, now closed when it should be open, lit only by its copious red neon.

  When they were halfway to the front door, Marcus kept moving and didn’t look to Brady even as he ordered, “I want a meeting with Lee Nightingale.”

  “Uh, sir?”

  He stopped when they arrived at the door, his hand on the handle, and looked to Brady.

  “Liam Nightingale. He’s recently opened an investigations firm in LoDo. Get me a meet. Immediately.”

  “For what?” Brady asked.

  “I’ll explain that when I sit down with him,” Marcus answered.

  Brady got closer.

  His man was tall, lean, cut, pretty-boy features, light-brown hair, all of this hiding his ability to get a variety of jobs done in a variety of creative ways. In other words, however he needed to do it to get it done.

  He was uncomfortable, not with what he said next. Marcus had no problems with the people he trusted around him speaking their minds and Brady knew that.

  He was uncomfortable with Marcus making any moves that might be unsafe.

  This didn’t happen often. In fact, it happened rarely and only when the need arose. But Brady was protective in more ways than it being part of his job description to protect his boss.