Damien
“Idon’t know how we didn’t see it,” Diego says as he plugs away on his laptop. Meanwhile, I am pacing behind him, biting my lips hard enough to chew them off.
After the incident with Jocelyn at the Opal Room, I took a week to sober up, and not just from the bottle of whiskey I consumed that night. I’ve been thinking. Alone. In the dark. No witnesses. Just…wrapping my brain around all of it. Everything from the betrayal to my…feelings…about Ellie. And I’ve come to some conclusions–conclusions that are hard to swallow.
“She was a nobody,” I answer.
“A nobody who has been obsessed with you since the first time she applied for the personal assistant job. If you remember, which you probably don’t, she applied for the position and you turned her down flat.”
“She didn’t appeal to me,” I say.
“And you sent her packing. Then…a couple of months later, when whoever you hired didn’t make the cut anymore, she reapplied. And you realized she was going to keep trying unless you did something. So you hired her for the job she has now. Or had. Meanwhile, she’s watched you go through assistant afterassistant from a front row seat. And then…along came Ellie. Who, as you say…is different.”
It does make sense. But still…I need to be sure.
“What else have you found? On Dylan and Ellie?” I ask.
“They worked together at the Suerte. She was above him, advancing quickly, and he couldn’t keep up. Then they started dating. And miraculously…he moved up. They were on the same rung of the ladder. But she was always the one to take the next step. And he sabotaged her. Cheated on her with the secretary, made a scandal of it. And Ellie was so destroyed by it that she left. She left and she–”
“Came to the gala,” I finish the sentence. Because the entire story, all of its parts, are tied together perfectly. “Where she met me. And…”
Luca is mine. Nothing else makes sense. Because Ellie is not a liar.
“And then…by happenstance,” I say.
“By fate,” he corrects me, and I let it slide.
“She walked into the Redwood in search of a job. And I was bewitched again.”
It’s enough that I need to sit down. But the grin on Diego’s face tells me he’s not done.
“There’s more,” he says.
Fuck.
“Decker might be easier to take down than we thought.”
I narrow my eyes. “How so?”
“Your bartender at the Opal Room, she hears a lot. Because girls talk. While the clients are busy tossing dollar bills at the dancers, their dates sit at the bar and they talk. Decker has been embezzling money from his hotel. It’s how he’s managed to open a gentlemen’s club. If his investors knew–”
“He’d be toast.”
“Exactly,” he grins. “Ice the cake with the minor detail that some of his girls at the club are just that–minors.”
“Jesus Christ…” I let out, wiping my hand down my face.
“Congratulations, boss. We’re going to bury him.”
The Diamond Back is exactly what I expected–a glorified strip club. At first, the guard isn’t willing to let me in. Decker must have told him not to. Pussy. I get around that by lifting my shades and stepping closer to the man, unintimidated by the fact that he is bred to kick people’s asses for a living.
“I am going to have a conversation with your boss, whether I do it here or hunt him down somewhere else,” I tell him subtly. “And when I do, you will no longer have a job because this place will be gone. Take me to Decker and I can offer you a job at the Opal Room.”
“The Velvet Lounge,” he pushes.
I nod once, and he takes me inside.
We wind through the flashy lights and subpar dancers into the back. With cheap furniture and a pop-up bar, it is a cheap knockoff of my club, but I’m not surprised. There are also photos of snakes everywhere, probably a play on the name. It fits.
