The pounding is so deep it feels like it’s thudding into my bones and through my veins. Red and blue rays arc across the room, where a couple of women are suspended from the ceiling in huge Perspex domes that swing through the air. The crowd beneath raises their arms in time to the music. They’re having a blast.
My teeth are on edge. This has been yet another washout. A wild goose chase. I’d managed to reach one of Andy’s old college friends. Seems the girl has a taste for partying and insisted on meeting up here. Apparently to tell me if she’d seen Andy. Yanking my damn chain is what she’d done. I shouldn’t have bothered, but at this point, I’m out of options, desperate to try anything that might be a lead. When I’d walked up to her, I was pretty certain she was on some kind of drug. Pupils dilated, touching me too much. She’d have stripped me right where I stood if she’d had the chance.
Yet it’s not the first nightspot I’ve been to in what is beginning to feel like a fruitless quest. Raoul has had me running a merry dance, too, with all his so-called leads. I think he’s trying to get me out of the apartment. The cunt. Probably trying to get my mind off a woman who clearly doesn’t want anything to do with me.
What the fuck is wrong with you, Ricci?
I barge through the throng, elbowing my way to the exit. The doors of the club swing shut behind me as I step out into the blissful silence of the street.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, grateful to be out of the pounding maelstrom of flashing lights and thumping beats. The press of bodies around me had reached the point that I was ready to smash a fist into the face of the next poor fucker who bumped into me.
What did I expect? It’s a fucking nightclub, for God’s sakes.
“Hey, gorgeous. Leaving so soon?” a female voice filters across the street to me. The slick club is in a small side street in Brooklyn. I glance up to see a couple of women sharing a cigarette nearby. One in hotpants and a sequined tank top. The other girl is wearing jeans that could’ve been sprayed on.
Saw you inside there,” Hotpants Chick says, sashaying closer. Her friend is a step behind, running her eyes over me. “Me and Taylor here had an eye on you for a while in there.” She looks over at the club, then they link arms as they step up in front of me. One blonde, one brunette. Barely twenty. Both stacked. “You look lonely.” She licks lips that are too puffy. “Wanna come home with us and play?”
The invitation leaves me cold.
“Not tonight, thanks.” I step away. The girl in jeans pouts and reaches to run a fingertip down my chest.
“You sure, honey?” When she turns her hand and opens it, palm-up, she’s clasping a handful of pills. “We could party so well together. I got just what you need.”
“I said no!” I snap. Jesus, they’re practically jailbait.
“Aww…” the other one says. “You’re no fun.”
So fucking persistent. But more than that, what the hell is wrong with me? A promise of no-strings sex and drugged oblivion for a night with a pair of hot girls? How many men in my position would turn that down?
I don’t care.
I want Andy. I don’t want to obliterate the memory of her. Even though I’d sworn I’d seen her in one of these clubs last night. A copper-haired head tilted at just the right angle to make me look twice. Arms had been twined around the neck of some guy, lost in a kiss…I’d felt my gut clench. When I gripped her arm and yanked her toward me, I had stared into horrified blue eyes that were nothing like what I’d been looking for.
Not my woman. But for that brief instant, the surge of relief, followed by the knife twist of pain in my chest… It had been too goddamn much. I’ve never been one for sappy emotion but the thought of her kissing someone else is unbearable. It was probably a good thing it wasn’t her. I would have broken the fucker’s neck if I’d caught her with someone else.
Where the fuck is she?
I turn away from the girls, ignoring the coaxing calls that eventually become jeers as it becomes clear that I’m not biting.
Why aren’t you biting?
I should be wiping her out of my head, once and for all. But I can’t. Not until I know that she’s safe.
“Why did you let her go?” I curse myself for the thousandth time since she left. I shouldn’t have let her run. I should have gone after her after what she saw in my study. Should have explained all of it. What I was doing. What I still have planned.
I should have told her how much she meant to me.
This woman is going to be the end of me.
Chapter 6
Mateo Ricci
I’m in yet another nightclub. What the hell is it about this fucking fiasco that demands that I spend all my nights trolling the seedy underbelly of this city? Although this time, I’m back in Prism, and at least this place is a little less rowdy.
Thick red carpeting mutes my footsteps. On a stage to one side, a woman in a giant golden birdcage is crooning into an old-fashioned microphone. Round tables are dotted about the large room, with waitresses in tight black skirts and transparent blouses carrying trays to various patrons. There are booths around the outskirts, offering more privacy to those who need it. It had been in one of these booths that Raoul and I had met up with a couple of his “associates” a few weeks back.
I’m hoping that the reason he called me here is to share more news of what he has uncovered since then. They’d had a man on the inside of Mark’s organization who’d stumbled over evidence of several of his crimes. Seems old Mark likes to keep trophies of his exploits. Raoul took on the task of delving deeper into that quagmire. I know it’s not all for me, of course. Getting dirt on Whitlock will suit Raoul; the man’s been getting tangled up in Caraldi business and war is looming. I imagine that getting him behind bars would be a much easier solution. I hope Raoul will see that too, see things my way.
