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“SO, WITH EVERYTHING you’re asking for,” Terry, the contractor, told me, as we headed down the stairs of the now-quiet Hennessey’s and back towards the bar. “I think we could get it up and running with the changes in about three days. You’d need to be closed through that time, but...”
As soon as he saw the look on my face, I could tell he knew I wasn’t going to go for that. There was no way I was missing out on the profit that I could pull in over a busy weekend. I didn’t care how much I had to pay these guys – it would be offset by the amount of cash I would make if I kept this place open.
“How much for you to work around the guests?” I asked him, and he furrowed his brow.
“It’s not exactly safe—”
“I’ll make it safe,” I replied. “How much?”
He paused for a moment, and I could see him considering the best way to go about this in his mind. He knew the kind of influence I had in this city, and he knew that, if he asked for too much and pushed his luck, it might not look good for him and his men. But I was willing to pay whatever it took to get him in and out as quickly as possible. I wanted this place running at optimum luxury as soon as possible, and I didn’t care what it cost to make it happen.
He quoted me a price, clearly expecting me to tell him it was too much, but I agreed at once. He looked surprised, but he didn’t argue. He probably knew it was more than his crew would make in six months working for someone else, and didn’t want to miss out on the chance to pull in some serious cash. We signed the contracts, and I checked my watch – it was early in the afternoon yet, and I knew it would be in my best interests to get out of there and let them get down to work.
But I was still in the right end of town for that Serbian store that owed me money, and I had given him the requisite couple of days that I had promised. I doubted he would have all the money that I had asked for, but it was my job to go down there and see if I could get it out of him, at least. It might not be pleasant, but it needed to be done.
One of my bodyguards, Randall, was standing outside and waiting for me as I emerged from the club once more.
“We’re heading back to that bodega,” I told him. “The one that owes me money.”
“You want me to take care of him this time?” he asked. I shook my head.
“I can handle it.”
My men usually wanted to go in all guns blazing, make a real problem of themselves when it came to stuff like this, but I didn’t need to attract all that attention to a little store like that one. Yeah, sure, they had screwed me over, but that didn’t mean I wanted to hurt him seriously. Just scare him a little. A small place like that attracting that much attention from the cops would be more than we needed right now.
He drove me down there, and I could tell from the look on his face that he was far from happy about the fact that I had declined his offer of physical help. That was how my father had run things, and yeah, it had worked for him for a long time, but I wasn’t going to be able to turn the family business into something more legitimate if I didn’t try and put some space between the way that he had done things and the way I was going to do them moving forward, was I?
I arrived at the store, and I could see the fearful look on the owner’s face before I so much as I climbed out of the car. He didn’t have the money. That much was obvious. I almost felt sorry for him, but then I remembered what I was here for. He had borrowed this cash, promising to pay off that debt, and he had failed to do so. That wasn’t my fault. He had defaulted on the deal we had made, and I had no intention of letting that slide. Being rough wasn’t necessary; I just needed him to know that I meant business.
I told Randall to wait in the car, and I pushed open the door to the little old store and stepped inside. Honestly, most of the shit on the shelves looked like it hadn’t been updated since the nineties, just like the guy who ran the place. He stiffened as I stepped in, but he managed to offer me a smile.
“Hello,” he greeted me, voice stilted.
“Good afternoon,” I replied, and I made my way over to the counter. He withdrew from me like he was trying to put some space between us, but I didn’t let it bother me. I was used to people responding to me like they thought I might pull a gun from my pocket at any moment. That was the reputation my father had left behind, and one I could bank on to make sure I got what I wanted.
“I’m here about the money—”
“I know,” he blurted out at once. “And I’ve been working to pull it together, I have. But I... I don’t have all of it.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. That wasn’t good enough, and he knew it. He’d had months to get it together, and now he was telling me he couldn’t afford to pay it back? Yeah, I wasn’t buying it, not one little bit.
“Why not?” I asked. He gestured around at the empty store.
“Nobody comes here anymore,” he admitted. “And nobody would want to buy this place, either, so I can’t even make money like that. I....”
He was about to go on, but something stopped him – namely, the sound of someone in the back room. His wife, maybe? I doubted he had the cash to hire someone else to work here for him.
His face paled, and the concern in his expression seemed to double as whoever it was stepped out of the back room to join us.
And my heart skipped a beat when I saw exactly who it was.
Nadia. I raised my eyebrows. What the hell was she doing here? Making ends meet with an extra job? Was this her sugar daddy, or something? As soon as she locked eyes with me, her expression dropped, storm clouds covering her face like she wanted me to blink out of existence on the spot. I grinned at her, and she looked away from me, turning back to the man I’d been talking to.
“Dad, what’s going on?”
Oh, shit, she was his daughter. No wonder she was working at the club – she was probably trying to make enough to keep this place afloat and pay me back. I cocked an eyebrow, looking back and forth between the two of them. Okay, this had just got seriously interesting.
“Nothing, honey, it’s okay,” he told her, but she glared at me anyway.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. Her father looked even more worried than he had before – he knew she was talking smack to someone who had way more power than either of them in this city, and he didn’t want his little girl to land in trouble with me.
“I’m here to collect what I’m owed,” I told her calmly, and her father cut in again quickly.
“I can give you half of it,” he offered me. “Any more than that, and you’re going to send this business under for good and I won’t be able to pay you back at all. I’m sorry, it’s the best I can do.”
He was desperate. I got the feeling that I could have suggested anything right now, and he would have gone along with it if it meant I would get out of here and stop talking to his daughter. Little did he know, of course, that his daughter had been grinding up on me on the dancefloor a few days ago. And that I was likely far from the first guy who she had done that with lately.
“I’m sorry, it’s not enough,” I replied, and I paused, giving him a moment to think about if this was really how he wanted it to go down. Right here, in front of his daughter?
Nadia slipped into the back room again. It was clear that she didn’t want to be here when all of this went down and I couldn’t blame her – it wasn’t exactly a good look for anyone, after all. I wished I could get her back out here, talk to her a little more, find out what was going on inside her head, but honestly, I doubted she would have let me get anywhere close to that even if I tried. I was the enemy now – more so than I had been before, that was – and I was going to have to pull out something spectacular to prove to this woman that I wasn’t just trying to ruin her family’s life.
“So, what do you want me to do?” he asked, tossing his hands in the air, clearly exasperated by the whole thing. “I – I've done all I can. If you ask me for the money now, I won’t have anything left, and there will be no way for me to keep this place open long enough to make the money back. Isn’t that what you’re more concerned with?”
He had shifted now, from desperate to angry. I wondered how long this shop had been in his family, how long he had been running this place, and how little he wanted to let it go. I knew how it felt, to hold on to something that you felt was your legacy, but was this the place he wanted to hand down to his daughter? It didn’t seem right – didn't seem like the kindest thing to do to her, to saddle her with this failing business and all of the debt that came with it. I almost wanted to point that out to him, but I knew it wouldn’t have gotten me any further. Maybe I should have sent my men in to deal with him instead after all.
“You’ll have to figure something out,” I told him firmly. I wasn’t going to back down and let him think he could just brush me off. He owed me money, and when he had agreed to borrow that amount to try and stay afloat, he had known clearly that he would have to pay it back to me one day. Maybe he’d really thought he would be able to escape it, that I would show mercy to him because we were from the same background.
My father would never have done that. He would have sent in his men a long time ago to deal with this shit, and he would have made sure he got his money back by now. And there was no way I was going to let myself be palmed off by this guy again.
I narrowed my eyes and took a step forward.
“You’re not going to—”
But before I could get another word out, Nadia appeared from behind the door again. Her face was pale, but her stance was sure – and she caught my eye at once. She was a hard woman to ignore.
“I think I have an idea,” she told me. Her father looked over at her, shocked – but I was more than willing to hear out what she had to say for herself. I crossed my arms over my chest, raised my eyebrows at her, and indicated for her to keep talking.
Because if she didn’t, her father might be in more trouble than he knew how to get out of.
