CHAPTER
ONE
Never in hiswildest dreams would the younger Hudson Taylor have pictured himself counting down to midnight on New Year’s Eve at Manhattan's hottest gay nightclub.
Hudson had been kind of a geek as a kid, right into his late teens. More into Dungeons & Dragons than drugs and dancing. His older twin sister, Connie, had been the social butterfly of the two of them. If she could see him now, she'd laugh at him, ask him if he was sure he didn't need a different job than working at Kismet Nightclub.
Hudson, who was currently standing outside the break room waiting for the night’s takings to be counted, smiled as he thought of his sister. Her memory was still bittersweet, but he liked to think that she would have been happy with his choice of employer, given her own love for the Morelli Family. Nights like this, another milestone without Connie, made her feel further away and closer at the same time.
On the whole, working for the Mob was not quite as bloody as Hudson had expected. But then, he wasn't technically working for the Morelli Family, but for the Don’s husband: Finch D'Amato, the nightclub owner.
Privately, Hudson found Finch more terrifying than Luca D'Amato. Luca was a stone-cold killer, but Finch’s changeable nature and tendency towards sudden, life-changing decisions made him scarier than the Boss as far as Hudson was concerned.
Speak of the Devil. Finch D'Amato himself walked by, nodding at Hudson. The last patrons had finally been kicked out, and most of the staff had gone home, but Finch was still there. Once the guys had finished the accounting in the break room, Finch would accept the takings for the night in his office upstairs and pay out wages to the last few staff members. He was trailed by his bodyguard for the night, Gio Carlucci.
Gio's eyes slid towards Hudson as they passed, and Hudson quickly looked straight ahead. Gio hadn’t even been rostered on as Finch’s bodyguard that night, so Hudson wasn’t sure why he was here instead of Teo Vitali, the guy Hudson had been expecting. Gio was a relatively new addition to the rotation of Finch’s regular bodyguards, so maybe Teo had pulled rank and insisted on having New Year’s Eve off.
Finch and Gio were heading across the empty dance floor to theStaff Onlydoor on the other side from Hudson. From there they would go up a flight of stairs and into Finch’s office, where Gio would stand like an unobtrusive statue behind and to the right of Finch, like he usually did.
Hudson didn't like Gio.
He didn't reallyknowGio, but the guy reminded him of several boys from his youth. The kind of guy who was really into Connie, and saw Hudson hanging around as a necessary sacrifice they had to make to keep the interest of his sister.
Connie had always loved those dark-eyed Italian types, and the truth was, Hudson had found himself painfully sexually attracted to many of Connie's early conquests. So any man who reminded him of them tended to take him back to that awkward time when he was still uncertain of his own sexuality—and still ashamed.
Connie had been the one to help him get over that, like she’d been there for so many other things in his life.
But now she was gone.
Gio Carlucci was six-months-made with the Morellis, despite having relatives in more than one rival Family. There had been a lot of discussion over whether to take him into the Morelli fold or not, but Gio had passed whatever tests the Boss had come up with, passed the background checks, and the clincher? He was gay.
So he’d been okayed.
But the way Gio always side-eyed Hudson when they passed in Kismet Nightclub made him nervous. He wasn’t sure what to make of the way Gio looked at him sometimes.
Behind him, Hudson heard an argument start up in the break room again.
He wasn't supposed to go in there while they were counting the money, because the fewer people in there, the fewer people would be to blame if the takings ever went missing, God forbid. But there always had to be two of them counting, to watch each other. It had been a huge night, as they’d expected for New Year’s Eve, despite the shitty DJ who was in there counting out the takings with Ziggy, another staff member. Now it was well past 4 a.m. and Hudson was ready to go home.
When empty, Kismet always felt melancholy to Hudson, as though it only came alive when filled with dancing bodies. Now it was silent and dim, a deserted temple.
The voices in the break room behind him surged again. There was definitely an argument going on.
Uncertain, Hudson knocked timidly on the door. “Everything okay?” The voices stopped, mid-shout.
“We're fine,” called back Ziggy. Hudson relaxed. Ziggy was solid, a longtime associate of the Morellis. Hudson liked him, though he’d mistaken Ziggy more than once for Gio. They didn’t really look the same, apart from having dark hair and eyes. They were even different heights, plus Ziggy was in his forties. Maybe it was the way they walked, Hudson had decided—confident. Swaggering, even. So sometimes Hudson got a little jumpy when Ziggy first walked into the club each night, but he was trying to cut that out.
Anyway, the problem wasn't Ziggy. The problem was the idiot in there with him, their current house DJ Bradylixer, which Hudson thought was the stupidest name he’d ever heard for a DJ. Even now, as Hudson scuffed his shoe against the floor, just for something to do while he waited, he rolled his eyes about that stupid name. Brady had joined Kismet a few months back on recommendation from another club downtown, when the previous Kismet house DJ moved out of state.
But tonight was Brady's last at Kismet. Finch planned to let him go. The club would be closed for a week anyway, since Eddie, the manager, was visiting family in Miami, and Finch was planning a trip away with Luca. Eddie had advised closing for a week once New Year's Eve was done, since in his experience thecrowds who came out in the week after that were inevitably more trouble than they were worth.
And if there was one thing Finch didn't want, it was trouble. Kismet was supposed to be a clean arm of the Morelli operation on orders from the Boss himself. That meant no drugs, no weapons, and no troublemakers. Everyone had to check their coats, and a metal detector was installed for patrons to pass through before entering the club itself. Kismet also had a policy—enforced by security—of no cameras, no cell phone photos, no recordings of any kind.
So far, things had been sweet. And for Hudson the job was fun, the money was great, and the company was usually friendly. Even waiting around as he was then for the takings each night, though boring, was easy enough.
For all of that, he could put up with Gio Carlucci giving him strange looks from time to time.
The voices raised again in the break room behind him. They seemed to be having the same argument they’d had before, beat for beat. Hudson felt a momentary sympathy for Ziggy. They’d all be happy when Brady was gone.
