And it did it well.
My most lucrative business was money lending. Loan sharking, if you will. However, I didn’t run an ignorant, uncouth operation. My interest rates where structured in a manner that made it reasonably possible for people to pay me back. You couldn’t collect money from a dead man, and though I’ve killed my fair share over the years, it’d never been as a first result.
I also ran a bookie operation, but the people I lent money to were not allowed to bet on my books. I didn’t get off on exploiting people’s sicknesses. And it didn’t benefit me financially to having someone lose all the money I just lent them. I was about making money.
Period.
The door to my office opened, and I didn’t bother looking up from the tally sheets I’d been looking at. The only two people who had keys to the hallway door that led to my office were Atticus and Xavier. And since I knew Atticus was having dinner with Pryce tonight, it could only be Xavier.
Xavier was my best friend and pseudo-bodyguard. We had crossed paths seven years ago when I’d caught some assholes trying to jump him behind The Alto. As big as Xavier was, he’d been handling all four assholes fine on his own, but when I had noticed a glint of metal coming into play, I had jumped in and evened the odds.
After we had left them for dead in the back of the ally, I had Xavier follow me back into the club where I let him get cleaned up. I had been willing to call the police for him, but he had quickly declined and had wanted to just get the hell home. When I had asked him where home was, he had admitted to not really having one. He’d just been dishonorably discharged from the Army for nearly killing a fellow soldier who’d been racist as fuck, and since the military was supposed to have been his life, he’d found himself wandering.
I had offered him a job as a doorman at The Alto, to kill time until he figured out what he wanted to do next, but within two months, he’d become one of my only true friends, and it’d been easy to see his intelligence was being wasted as a doorman.
Six years later, he wasn’t only my best friend, but if Atticus was my right-hand man, Xavier was my left. I trusted the man with my life and everything in it.
“So, I found out what Kimberly Alba’s complaint might be about,” he said, manners and salutations not needed between the two of us.
I looked up from the tally sheets. “Oh, yeah?”
Xavier nodded. “You got a problem with Hugh Hamel.” Hugh Hamel was one of my shift managers at The Opera.
I leaned back in my chair. “How so?”
Xavier got comfortable in one of the armchairs placed in front of my desk. “The man doesn’t think sexual harassment in the workplace is a real thing, apparently.”
Goddamn it.
“Are you serious?”
Xavier nodded. “I hit up Lacey about how things are going at The Opera, and you know the woman doesn’t know the meaning of the word discrete.” I let out a soft chuckle because he wasn’t wrong. Lacey Filmore was a lonely middle-aged widow who loved to talk to whoever will listen to her. She was harmless, though. “Anyway, she let it slip that she overheard an argument between Hugh and Kimberly last week, and Kimberly was threatening to report him if he didn’t knock his shit off. When I asked Lacey what she thought that meant, she said Hugh was known for shopping close to home.” Xavier grinned. “Her words, not mine.”
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“He doesn’t work until tomorrow night, dinner shift, but Kimberly’s meeting with Kelsey is due to take place this evening, after Kimberly’s shift is over.”
“Since Kelsey will come to me immediately if Kimberly’s complaint is one of sexual harassment, I’ll know by tonight what we’re dealing with,” I said.
“If it is sexual harassment, then we’ll need to interview all female employees who have ever had a shift with him.”
I arched a brow. “The male employees, too,” I instructed. “In this day and age, we can’t assume too much or too little.”
“Good point,” he agreed. “Do we call in the employees who are off, or wait for them to come back?”
“Nah,” I leaned forward and put my arms on the desk. “I don’t want to ruin their time off. We can interview them when they come back on shift. Even if Hugh is gone by then, I don’t want any of them to think their input or experience with the man doesn’t matter.”
“No problem.”
“Also, let Atticus know what’s going on, and have him contact legal and fill them in on what’s going on. If we’re going to be sued, I need legal on standby.”
Xavier nodded. “Anything else?”
“If this does become the shitstorm I think it might, I’ll need you to sit in on the interviews for Hugh’s replacement.” Xavier looked like he was about to comment, but I beat him to it. “I trust Kelsey’s judgement, but if this is sexual harassment, there’s no room for error at The Opera after this.” I leaned back in my chair. “Hell, there shouldn’t be room for any type of that shit anywhere, but we really don’t need to make the mistake of replacing a douchebag with another douchebag.”
“So, we pick a woman,” he suggested.
“Women can be douchebags, too.”
