I slid off the barstool and made my way back down into the hallway. I unlocked the door to the room with the beds with a key strapped to my hip and peeked in on the snoring female. She was out like a light, and probably would be until the morning. Which meant I had a hell of a long night of work ahead of me.
I always stayed the night in the office when women were sleeping shit off in that room.
“All right,” I said as I started down the hallway, “let’s get on with it.”
The second I walked into the office space, Goose and Angel turned around to clap. I took a mocking little bow before we all busted out laughing, then I flopped down into my chair at the computer. I toggled the mouse as a sigh left my lips. I hated nights like this. Nights when, had it not been for us, yet another woman would’ve become yet another statistic.
“Wait, what the hell is this?” I asked breathlessly.
I had an email in my inbox from Reaper, our Tech Officer. He had been stationed at Clutch tonight since we were having issues with the new security system that had been installed a month ago. He was in the process of bypassing a few of their own safety protocols to make the application and software work more fluently for what we needed from it, and the title of the email caught my eye.
D.R. Sighted. Chased Off.
“Shit,” I hissed as I opened the email.
Viper’s voice appeared behind me. “Got Reaper on the phone.”
I didn’t bother turning toward him. “Viper, go check on him at Clutch. The Devil’s Rage have paid our club a visit.”
“On it,” Viper said.
“You need someone to go with him?” Goose asked.
I read the email quickly before I swiveled around in the chair. “Why the fuck are these assholes suddenly making moves on our nightclubs? Didn’t they learn their lesson with Heist a month ago?”
Viper strode out of the office. “I’ll take Fangs with me.”
“Good idea!” I called after him.
Angel folded his arms across his chest. “You know damn good and well they’re trying to drive our customers away. They provide a less-than-suitable atmosphere for their strip clubs, and suddenly we’re the issue when we give everyone a nice atmosphere to go to.”
I slid my hand down my face. “I want to laugh about it, but if they keep ramping shit up, they’ll throw us into yet another turf war.”
Angel chuckled. “You think we can’t handle it or something?”
I shook my head. “It’s not that…”
I turned back toward the computer screen and read through Reaper’s email one more time. It didn’t seem urgent, which told me that he had probably chased those fuckers off before they could do much damage. But, for all we knew, they were simply casing our joints.
We have to be on our guard.
“Oh, my God!” someone shrieked.
I’d never moved so quickly in all my life. The music had stopped pumping and the lights of the club shut down. The bright, fluorescent lights that were only turned on during office hours in the afternoons illuminated the entire place, causing everyone to shield their eyes. People cursed around us while a couple of other screams came from the upper VIP level of our club.
And as Angel and myself climbed the stairs two at a time, it didn’t take us long to figure out what the hell had happened.
“Holy shit,” Angel hissed.
The body laying right there at the top of the steps dripped blood onto the floor. Women shrieked and started toward the back stairwell emergency exit and burst through the doors, sounding alarms that caused everyone to stampede out of the fucking club. I looked around and found a suede blanket hanging off one of the couches upstairs. I ripped it off the arm of the piece of furniture and tossed it over the man’s body, who had been rumored to be part of the mafia in the first place.
While I didn’t care much for the outside proclivities of many of our clients, I knew this was bad.
“He was in a private fucking room all night,” Angel said flatly. “I guided him up here myself and gave him the key. Hadn’t seen him since.”
I gestured down to his lifeless body. “Well, obviously he left at least once.”
He bent down and picked up the blanket. “I don’t see any injuries. No broken bones. He’s just… bleeding a hell of a lot from his eyes, ears, and his—”
