SERGEI
When I stepped onto the club floor, the difference was immediate. Music pulsed through the speakers, the bass vibrating faintly beneath my boots, but the place no longer carried the chaotic edge it had when I’d first walked in days earlier. The bartenders moved with purpose behind the bar, instead of clustering together to gossip. Servers wove through the growing crowd with trays balanced high, their routes efficient. Security rotated their posts without needing to be told, and the updated radios clipped to their shoulders crackled occasionally with quiet updates.
It wasn’t perfect by a long shot, but it was better.
I paused near the edge of the dance floor, letting my gaze travel slowly across the room the way it always did when I entered a space. Out of habit. Every face, every movement, every shift in posture registered automatically in the back of my mind as I searched for any threat.
Nik leaned against the bar beside me, swirling a glass ofsomething amber and expensive as if he wasn’t on the job, but I excused him, having worked with him long enough to know it would be his only drink for the night. He was watching an attractive couple on the dance floor, dancing, and the look in his eyes was carnal. Jess had dragged a protesting Darius into the crowd, and he was barely moving. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there, but a small smile clung to his lips as Jess gyrated against him.
“Fuck, they’re hot,” Nik said with a growl. “I’m gonna have to borrow your suite on the top floor after this dance.”
Normally, I would remind him that Jess and Darius were here for fun, while he was still on the clock. But with those two distracting him, it was the perfect opportunity for me to slip away and check on Leo. He would be safe with Darius, who would rather have died than let anything happen to him when they were just best friends. And now that they were in a relationship, I would only bet his protective instincts toward Nik were worse.
“Just don’t leave any spunk behind,” I said, to which Nik let out a bark of laughter.
My eyes lingered on the door security as two bouncers checked IDs with the level of attention I demanded from them three nights ago. Good. I hadn’t seen anyone underage make it past the threshold tonight, and I would like to keep it that way.
Nik clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Look at you, running a whole damn territory. I’m almost proud.”
I shrugged the hand off. “Don’t get sentimental. There are still people here who need to go.”
My attention shifted to a flurry of movement along the corridor that led to the staff areas behind the bar. Hazel appeared, walking toward the storage rooms with long, decisive strides. A bouncer followed a few steps behind her, the expression on his face tight and displeased. He was one of theguys I intended to let go. Quiet on the surface but always running his mouth when he thought I was out of earshot. I also had it on camera that he was one of those who were supplying drugs.
Hazel pushed through the staff door without looking back, and the bouncer followed her inside.
I stepped away from the bar, Nik noticing immediately and straightening from where he’d been watching his partners. “Trouble?”
“Maybe.”
“Need backup?”
For one guy? Hardly. “Nope.”
I moved toward the corridor, the music from the dance floor fading. Through the small window in the staff door, I saw Hazel stop beside the metal shelving units.
The bouncer closed the distance between them, leaning into her space. Hazel didn’t step back as I silently cracked the door open. She stood her ground in her four-inch stilettos, one hand braced on her hip, the other balled into a fist.
“…don’t take orders from you,” the guy was saying, his voice thick with contempt. “You think with the new guy around, you get to call the shots? Vasiliev had no issue with us doing our thing once he got a cut.”
“I’m not asking, Blu,” Hazel said, her tone cool. “Go do that shit elsewhere. If you got a problem with that, you take it up with the new guy.”
Damn, I was proud of her, and I didn’t have an ounce of regret that I’d made her the manager until I had a better solution. She hadn’t wanted the position at first, but she’d taken to running the place with the efficiency of someone who’d worked this scene for years and knew the ins and outs. I needed someone exactly like her to get the job done. My real purpose might be to remove any threat to Maxim, but I would still like to turn a profit in the process.
Blu reached out and grabbed Hazel’s wrist. “You, bitch! You need to learn your place in?—”
Hazel’s free hand came up, and she drove the heel of it straight into his throat. Blu stumbled back with a choked grunt, clutching his neck as she twisted her wrist free and shoved him hard enough that he hit the wall behind him.
“Touch me again,” she said coldly, “and I’ll break your fucking fingers one by one.”
The hallway fell silent for half a second.
I shoved the door all the way open and stepped inside. My hand landed on the back of the bouncer’s neck before he even realized I was there. I slammed him forward into the wall hard enough to rattle the metal shelves beside him.
The impact knocked the air out of him, and he let out a cry. He tried to twist around, but I didn’t let him. I dragged him away from the wall and drove my fist into his stomach. Once. Twice.
He folded instantly.
I crouched down slowly in front of him. “You put your hands on my manager.”
