When Honey stepped outside his office, letting the door slam behind her, she watched as another dancer, Candy, scrambled away from the door. Honey looked at the short woman and then the door, imagining that Candy had her ear pressed against it, being the nosey gossip she was. But instead of looking embarrassed from being caught, Candy wore a smug grin as if she had just won a prize.
“I guess it doesn’t pay to be the favorite,” Candy said as she smacked her gum loudly. “Maybe you should stop pretending to be better than everyone else and give in. I would.”
Honey stepped to Candy, invading her space like the girl had invaded her private conversation. Honey towered over the short woman, glaring at her enough that Candy shrank back.
“Mind the business that pays you,” Honey told her, “And stay out of mine.”
With that, Honey shoved her as she walked away and ignored Candy’s pouts and exasperated sounds because they were just that— meaningless nothing. After working at clubs for the past five years now, Honey had learned one thing— hold your own.
In this business, it was easy to be torn apart and weighed down by the misery and darkness surrounding most people in this industry. It hadn’t been her first battle with other dancers. She had dealt with the same problems in Uptown. But there, the girls were tougher, and fists were exchanged instead of words. Candy and the other girls here who didn’t like her were merelyannoying pests that she wanted to swat. They immediately exited her brain once their conversations ended.
Honey stepped from behind the curtain that led to the floor, ready to get herself a drink to calm down her annoyance. Right now, a cranberry and vodka would do her justice. As she crossed the floor, bypassing the men who tried to pull her in for a floor performance, in the corner of her eye, she noticed Antonis’s nephew in the back.
He sat in the darkly lit corner of the room, receiving a lap dance from one of the dancers. Honey paused in her steps, taking the scene in with a frown on her face. Usually, she wouldn’t care and didn’t bother with other people’s business inside the club besides her own. But this was the third dancer she had seen Antonis’s nephew with within a week. He was running through the girls in the club like he was on the track team, hurtling over goalposts.
And Honey knew what a regular lap dance was versus an intimate one. Mostly all of the lap dances at the clubs were impersonal, though, for their customers, it might seem like more, depending on how skilled of an actress the dancer was in creating the scenario their customer wanted. But Allison, the girl dancing with Antonis’s nephew, one of the few girls Honey got along with, was grinding on the young blue-eyed man like she was digging for gold, teasing him and letting him touch her freely in the way she wouldn’t with other customers.
Antonis’s nephew caressed her thighs as Allison swirled in his lap. He then whispered something in the girl’s ear, causing her to smile genuinely as she stood, pulling him up with her and tugging him over to the double doors that led to the private rooms.
Honey shook her head as she headed for the bar. She had a feeling he would cause nothing but trouble in this club. That was all the pretty ones ever did.
C H A P T E R
6
HIP-HOP MUSIC BLARED THROUGH THE SPEAKERS AT UPTOWN. The crowd clapped and applauded as the dancers on stage clapped to the beat, twirling around the poles. Money flew up to the ceiling rapidly as two dancers on the same pole performed together, causing the crowd to go into a frenzy. But an entertaining performance wasn’t the only thing happening at the club tonight.
The people on the first floor of Uptown could not hear what was taking place in the back. But over the hard snares, 808s, and the applause from the crowd in attendance, a different barrage of noises was made in the back room.
Thumps and grunts filled the room as fists connected with flesh and thick boots connected with bones. Antonis Tsagkarakis’s men, who had just stormed into the building a few minutes ago, blending in with the dark shadows of the club and missing the eyes of the entertained clubgoers while slipping into the back, acted out their boss’s orders, punishing the man who owed him money, and Nikos stood in the thick of it.
Nikos watched as the crew he had come in with beat down Big Diamond, the club’s owner, and his people. It felt like watching a massacre. Blood splattered like paint staining the tile floor, and Diamond’s woman screamed repeatedly, begging them to stop, but no one bothered to shut her up, knowing that no one could hear her from where they were.
In the front of the club, a party was happening, while in the back, it was a massacre. Nikos clenched his fist and gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to be here, but it was his first serious task outside of the work his uncle had him doing inside the clubs. Knowing that he was being watched, Nikos pushed his disdain to the side and showed why he was the youngest of three boys.
Having two older brothers like his forced him to learn to defend himself early on. Aris taught him how to fight, wanting him to be able to protect himself, while Pierce had always been his first bully, picking on him and throwing him around so that Nikos had to learn how to defend himself against Pierce. By the time he was a teenager, he knew how to fight better than grown men, and that had always been his strength.
When a man with twists tried to throw a punch at him, Nikos easily dodged it before throwing a forceful right hook of his own. The punch alone was enough to make the man slump to the ground and pass out. It went like that for a while, throwing punches and thrashing, until all of Diamond’s men were down, including Diamond himself, who was curled up in a fetalposition, trying to protect himself from the boots digging into his stomach, but it was futile.
“Shut up, bitch,” Jackson, one of his uncle’s men, barked to Diamond’s girl. The Hispanic woman instantly stopped her wailing, her eyes bulging wide as she looked at the tall man looming in front of her. Jackson sneered, glaring at the shorter woman before he stalked away. Though he was gone, Diamond’s woman continued to stand there wide-eyed as tears fell down her face, refusing to look at the beating her boyfriend was taking.
Jackson came over to him and squeezed his shoulder, giving him a nod of gratitude for helping him earlier when one of Diamond’s men attempted to sneak up on him. Nikos nodded back before turning his attention back to fetal-positioned Diamond and Christos, the man running the raid and the person Nikos had been shadowing for the past few weeks.
Christos slammed his foot into Diamond’s stomach until the man was coughing up blood. There was a cold look in Christos’s brown eyes, different from the usual easygoing nature he had outside of this. It felt like Nikos was looking at a different person until he remembered that all of Antonis’s men were like this, except for Jackson, who was like this all the time. All of them had a switch inside them that turned on whenever they got one of these tasks, tasks that required fearlessness and physical strength. Nikos would have to be the same way even though he didn’t want to be.
“Where is Antonis’s money?” Christos barked, and when Diamond didn’t respond, Christos kicked him again. “Huh?!”
“I-don- I don’t have it,” Diamond grunted out.
“You don’t have it?” Christos questioned as he bent down, yanking on Diamond’s jewelry. “Then what’s all of these diamonds on your neck, huh? Or are they fake?”
“I’m Diamond, man. My jewelry could never be fake,” Diamond said as he tried to sit up. Christos kicked him down again, releasing his jewelry.
“So, you’re using Antonis’s money to buy chains and watches, huh? Shouldn’t expect less from people like you,” Jackson said. Diamond lifted himself up again, but this time Christos didn’t stop him. Once he was on his knees, Diamond glared at Jackson, hearing what was insinuated.
“Like I said, I don’t have it,” Diamond said as he wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. “Tell Antonis I’ll give it to him next week.”
“You think someone like Antonis is going to wait to get his money on your time? You’re the one that wanted the responsibility of a man, and so now you must be a man and pay what you owe. Did you only think you’ll get to reap the benefits of selling snow?” Christos asked. Diamond gritted his teeth.
