I wandered around Club D for a while after the exchange, doing what he paid me to do, still on autopilot. My body knew we had a job to do, and it was waiting for the moment my mind would take the fall and hit the ground—then body and mind would return to reality together.
The sight of Abe Ruth sitting at one of the poker tables in the gambling room sobered me up some. Maybe it was because there was something that existed between the three of them that fascinated me to a certain degree.
I stood by the door and examined the room before I allowed my eyes to linger on him. Gambling wasn’t allowed in New York, but to men who felt they ruled the world, nothing was off limits.
In fact, the more laws the government came up with, the more these men made them into opportunities because it meant money. They knew how to manipulate and overcome, then make a huge profit.
If men could make a living off of killing, there really was no limit to how deep darkness could run. It was like the woods that existed outside of this place. Fathomless.
Take, for example, the two men sitting at the table in front of Abe Ruth. Both of them were high government officials. I’d seen them before—eating, gambling, swimming, breaking bread and drinking wine—on more than one occasion with the very men they claimed should be behind bars. As bright as their smiles were, their souls were just as dark, as Lady M would say.
She also said that men like them were the reason why most Italians didn’t trust the government. They were more Machiavellian than any man in the life, but they hid behind moral superiority, well-rehearsed speeches, and perfect family lives.
The sound of Abe Ruth’s voice calling for one of the girls gave me an excuse to look at him. He was a hulking guy, not a man easily forgotten. Out of the three men, he seemed to be the most temperamental. He’d never outwardly shown any signs of it in Club D, but there was just something about him that made me think he’d take a life for a reason other than a contract. Like maybe if someone stepped on his shoe on accident.
Narrowing my eyes some, I couldn’t decide if he was truly handsome, or if he only had a dangerous vibe that made some men attractive.
The girl nodded her head after he spoke to her. I didn’t even need to hear what he’d ordered to know. A Rusty Nail.
There were only a handful of girls who worked this room. They were hand-chosen for a reason. They were all utterly forgettable. In other words, not a distraction. When these men were high-stakes gambling, it was dangerous to put something in the room that might cause an issue, because they might claim it was done on purpose.
This was one of the most low-key rooms in the entire building, except for the amount of money that passed in and out of it, but if the word “cheat” was ever used, it might start a war.
Quentin King was who I found next.
He was in the gym, where he usually was, pumping weights. There was no doubt that, out of the three men, he was the most charming. He had an easy smile and a deep laugh, which made him equally as dangerous to women. He always wore a fedora and a rosary around his neck. He was wide-shouldered and built. Probably not an ounce of fat on his body. As he lifted the massive weight, smooth brown skin stretched taut over the equally impressive muscle.
He was from Harlem, and from what I’d heard, rivaled any gangster that came from the neighborhood—and beyond.
His abs rippled when he bent down to put the weight on the floor, and when his eyes met mine, I moved them as if I was scanning the room, making sure all was good and the women were working.
It had occurred to me a few times that I was creeping on these men, trying to figure out more about them, but I could never figure out why. I thought maybe it had to do with the fact that they knew Aniello, and if someone knew him, I wanted to know them. Aniello didn’t seem like the kind of man to associate with just anyone. His circle seemed small.
Maybe these men would give me a glimpse into his life that he never would, or maybe just a piece of the man who didn’t always seem human. Out of the three men, Aniello was the coldest. The hardest. The most indifferent.
I was truly screwed. To have this much of an infatuation with a man who would relocate me, or maybe bury me alive, if he ever found out about my…whatever this was with him…was a dangerous game. After my accident, though, maybe my wiring had become even more tangled, or even loose, because I couldn’t seem to stop playing. I never crossed any lines or tempted fate too much, but what I was doing was not leading me any place safe.
Maybe that was what this was about. I needed to be led somewhere, following the smell of smoke and drifts of ashes, to what I’d been missing. My memories. I didn’t know why it bothered me so much, the void, but knowing there was one was like trying to remember a word on the tip of your tongue. I couldn’t let it go.
Two women passed me, chatting about the bath house. If Club D had a most requested area to work in, that would be it. By a landslide. The private rooms had deep tubs with naked men in them. This was cause for a lot of conversation outside of Club D’s doors. The women liked to compare what they saw and either applauded or laughed about it.
This thought seemed to conjure up a physical reaction—the gold around my wrist vibrated. We didn’t have watches, but we all wore a fancy bracelet with a square screen on it. It didn’t keep time, but it kept tabs on all the workers inside of the building. It was a GPS and a message system all in one. It kept track of our location and told us where we needed to be.
I hesitated for a second. I hadn’t been assigned to the bath house since before my accident. I couldn’t remember the last time I was, and when I’d brought it up to Big Bismo, he told me it was none of my concern and waved me out of his office.
Big Bismo was our “head manager,” and in our world, he was like the Wizard of Club D. Nothing slipped past him. He knew all.
“You’re being summoned to area 11,” Burt said, ambling by me.
Burt was another one who knew everything, but mostly kept to himself. He was our Mr. Fix It. If anything needed to be done to Club D, Burt took care of it. The bosses didn’t allow outside influences in. At all. To step inside of these doors was by invite only. Burt was older, and at one time, homeless. He lived on the premises, and he never left. The lake in the back was as far as he’d go. He liked to fish.
One of the girls stopped me before I changed into the bath house uniform, which reminded me of something from a proper spa. She nodded toward a door, a suspicious look on her face. It belonged to The Titanium Candle, or as almost everyone called him, Candle. Especially the women. Because he wassohot.
Internally I rolled my eyes, but I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like he belonged to any of them, or even me, but it still irritated me. Though I liked the fact that he never really let anyone into his private bath suite. Which was probably why the girl gave me the look she had. It was odd for him to request anyone.
I took my heels off and held them in my hand because the floor was slick, and the private rooms were behind the main pool area. There were two alcoves—to the left were the rooms for members, and to the right were the private suites that belonged to the bosses and exclusive members. There were only eleven of them.
Aniello’s suite was in the middle. Steam purled out from beneath the door, and I could smell sweet tobacco in the air. It wasn’t from a cigar, but from whatever he used in the water. It brought me back to the old speakeasy days, where tobacco and whiskey were probably a staple in every forbidden room.
