The club was silent as I walked through the downstairs, inspecting every inch of the space for any damages or if there was a need for any cosmetic repairs. The layout had changed randomly over the last few years, but I found I liked the new style of how the seating was set up, especially on the VIP level. A touch-up of paint was needed in a few areas, however, and some repairs in the bathrooms would have to be done soon. Obviously, someone was slacking in the maintenance department.
After making a few notes, I headed back to my office, ready to start the long and tedious audits on the profits since my last visit.
I was still at it when the club actually opened a few hours later. Needing to uncross my eyes and stretch my muscles after sitting for so long staring at a bunch of numbers that only barely made sense, I locked up my office and walked down to the first level of the club.
As I moved through the crowd, which was definitely thinner than the last time I came for a visit, I could feel a tension in the air. As I walked around, discreetly watching the staff, I could tell something was off. I could feel their eyes on me as they nervously went about their jobs.
I caught one of the waitresses looking at me, met her gaze and watched her skin lose its color. Seeing her anxiety made me smile.
Ah, the weakest link.
Casually, I worked my way over to her, pasting on the smile I knew would put her at ease. I had an arsenal of smiles, all of which I perfected long before reaching adulthood. This one was what I used when I needed someone to trust me. People unwisely put their lives in my hands when I flashed them that smile.
It made them think I was a harmless butterfly. Pretty, trustful, not dangerous in the least. Then they realized they were actually dealing with a tigress. A deadly predator who only had the face of that beautiful butterfly, but whose claws and teeth would tear them apart in the blink of an eye.
I always found it amusing when people discovered that part of me. How their faces would fall as realization dawned in their eyes that little Anya Volkov was about to slit their throat. Sometimes metaphorically, but more often literally.
The waitress wasn’t in danger of having her throat slit one way or the other. I could tell she likely wasn’t the reason everyone else was feeling so tense, but she could at least point me in the right direction.
“Hi, I don’t believe we’ve met,” I greeted her, holding out my hand. “I’m Anya. You must be one of the recent hires.”
After glancing around for a moment, she put her clammy palm against mine, shaking it weakly. “H-Hi. I’m Brenda. Yeah, I’ve only worked here for about four weeks or so now.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Brenda.” I released her hand quickly, already finding out what I needed to know. “Is Mr. Westin here? I needed a word with him, but he hasn’t been up to the office yet to check in with me.”
“Oh, uh…” She glanced over my shoulder, flinched at whatever she saw, and quickly lowered her gaze to just above my head. “H-He’s busy right now. I’m sure…he will be up to see you soon?”
“Right.” I amped up the wattage on my smile, and she nearly drooped with relief as she gave me a shaky smile back. “Thanks so much, Brenda. You’ve been so helpful. I will let you get back to work now.”
Turning, I didn’t head in the direction of where Brenda’s eyes had darted originally. Instead, I let her think I was going to the bar. My eyes were ever-watchful, however, homing in on every one of the waitstaff and the bouncers.
Looked like it wasn’t just the maintenance that had been lax lately. Something was definitely up with Westin, the manager who’d been put in place a year ago after the first manager the service hired quit to take care of her sick parents. Westin, I’d only met once during my last week-long visit. He hadn’t impressed me, which was why I’d decided to come back sooner than I normally would.
And another reason why I’d been ready to give in and tell Victoria yes when she’d begged me to come home. Wanting to be closer to those I loved, who loved me in return, was what my heart was missing. I needed more to occupy my mind as well. After Cristiano left me, I quit my side job before leaving the country. Most nights, when my house was quiet and I couldn’t sleep, I ached to be at Iron Hand. Interacting with people, keeping my club full of paying, somewhat happy customers, and ensuring the place stayed very much in the black.
Adrian was a silent partner, but I couldn’t expect him to worry or even care what happened to Iron Hand. He had plenty of other things that needed his full attention—not just his family, but work as well.
As I casually walked through the club, I let the nervous staff guide me to the right spot. Most people avoided looking at any place they didn’t want others to look at. But if you watched them closely, their gazes would always eventually drift back to ensure what they didn’t want people to see wasn’t visible.
Reaching the stock room, I knew immediately what was going on. As I squeezed the bridge of my nose, I silently opened the door. The sight that greeted me turned my stomach. Westin sat on top of a box of cleaning supplies, one of the other waitresses between his legs, sucking him off while he snorted a line of coke.
The door slammed behind me as I entered the small room and grabbed the waitress by the hair. She squawked in surprise as I jerked her to her feet while Westin hurriedly tried to hide his drugs, seeming more concerned for them than his still hard cock remaining exposed.
“Put your dick away, you dirty fucking bastard,” I ordered, keeping hold of the woman’s hair when she tried to get away. “Get your ass up.”
“Yeah, yeah. Give me a second.” He sniffed loudly, rubbing his nose as he stood, casually stuffing his junk away as if he didn’t have a care in the world. I bared my teeth to him as he zipped up his pants, but he was too out of it to notice the danger of the mood I was in.
My hold on the woman’s ponytail tightened, making her whimper in protest as I stepped closer to the man who had been her boss up until about sixty seconds before. My left leg kicked out, knocking Westin on his ass. He shouted as he went down, his reflexes too slow to save him as he landed hard.
I pushed him onto his back with my foot, the stiletto heel of my boot pressing right into his carotid. He gulped as he looked up at me, but he was clueless as to how close to death he really was right then. I didn’t need a gun or a knife to kill someone. With just my boot alone I could have already killed this fucker three different ways if I’d really wanted to.
“How long has this been going on?” I asked calmly, not letting either of them see just how close to exploding I really was. I hadn’t been this pissed in a good long while. Messing with my club, using it as their own twisted playground, risking my sanctuary with sex and drugs was the perfect way to find themselves dead.
Westin smirked up at me but didn’t answer. Inhaling sharply, I pressed my boot down harder, cutting off his air supply while twisting the waitress’s hair, forcing her to look at me. “How long?”
Her chin trembled as she met my gaze. “He made me do it, Miss Volkov. He threatened that if I didn’t blow him or have s-sex with him whenever he wanted, he would fire me and call CPS on me. I have two babies at home. P-please don’t hurt me.”
I could see how scared the young woman was. The dark circles under her eyes told me she’d had plenty of sleepless nights. There were no telltale signs that she was doing the drugs Westin had just been snorting up his nose, but I didn’t trust her. If I’d done a drug test on her then and there, I was sure it would be positive for something. With my free hand, I grasped one of her wrists and glanced down at her tracked-up arm. Bitch was a great actress. She almost had me convinced everything she said was the truth. But those track marks gave her away.
“Looks like he should have called CPS anyway,” I murmured. “Are you even feeding your kids, or is it all going in your veins?”
“Fuck you,” she snarled. “You don’t know me. I’m a good mother.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, sure.” At my feet, Westin had passed out from the lack
of oxygen, but he wasn’t dead yet. Taking my foot off his throat, I pushed the waitress toward the door. “Get your shit and get out of my club. If I ever see you here again, your kids won’t ever have to worry about finding mommy with a needle in her arm again.”
“Bitch,” she spat at me. “You’ll regret this.”
“Ah, sweetie. Bring it.” I waited until the door was shut behind her once again before crouching down beside the unconscious man at my feet. “I think I will keep you around for a little while, Westin, my friend. Yes. I think I will.”
Grinning at the evil thoughts in my head, I pulled my phone from my pocket.
“Anya?” Adrian sounded surprised to get a call from me.
“I’m thinking of closing the club early tonight. Do you mind sending me two of your most trusted men? It seems I need to do a bit of in-house cleaning, and I need a little muscle to move a few things around.”
There was a short pause on my brother’s end before he choked out a laugh. “Of course. I’ll send you four.”
“No, two is plenty,” I assured him. “Thanks, Adrian. Tell them to be here in two hours, would you?”
“You got it. Let me know if you need anything else.”
Standing, I located the shelf with some of the power tools on it. Finding some duct tape, I grabbed it and used it to tape up Westin’s mouth before working on his hands and feet. Once I was done, I checked his pulse, ensuring the bastard was still alive, before dusting off my hands. I had better plans than death for him. He was going to tell me everything he’d been doing in and to my club since he started working here.
Then, if I was satisfied with his answers, maybe I would let him go.
Maybe…
--
The mediocre crowd wasn’t pleased when I made the announcement that it was time to go. It was hours before actual closing, but I needed these people out so I could do what needed doing.
Westin was still in the stock room, but God only knew how many other staff members were doing exactly what I’d caught my manager doing. If they were doing drugs, then that meant they were probably selling them too. I had a strict no drugs policy, one Adrian took seriously and never let his men near the place. The security he’d supplied for the club in the past also knew if they saw drugs changing hands, those people were to be kicked out and banned from the premises.
Glancing around at my security guys, I realized I didn’t recognize any of them. None of these guys worked for my brother. That was fine. It made this so much easier. I would bitch at Adrian later for slacking on keeping up with his men. For now, these dickheads had to go because they sure as fuck weren’t doing their jobs.
The tension I felt earlier from the staff was skyrocketing now that the crowd had dispersed. I was inches shorter than the smallest person in the group, but the way they were acting now, I could have been as large as Ciro Donati. That thought amused me as I stood in front of the staff, eyeing each one of them for a long moment before moving on to the next person.
I’d been taught well and could tell which ones were nervous because they had something to hide. Which, unfortunately, was the majority of them. Fuck. What did I put my poor Iron Hand through? I wasn’t a very good club momma, that was for sure. Ignoring the place the majority of the time just because I had something as mundane as a broken heart. I was truly disgusted with myself now that I realized how these people were treating my sanctuary in my absence.
“Right.” I finally spoke, pulling all eyes to my general vicinity since no one wanted to meet my gaze. “This place is going to be closed for the next month. Every single one of you will undergo a series of drug tests. Not just one test, because we all know you can buy piss just about anywhere these days to fake that shit. If you refuse, you’re fired. If you fail, you’re fired.” I could practically hear their mental groans. “I will also be doing background checks on each and every one of you. If I don’t like what I find, you’re fired.”
“Why not just fire us all right now?” someone grumbled under their breath, thinking I wouldn’t hear them.
I shot him a twisted smile that had him sinking lower in his seat. “Because a few of you deserve to stay. They’ve put up with a lot of shit from the looks of it, and they deserve their jobs.” I could be fair when it was deserved. I wouldn’t let them all suffer just because of the bad seeds.
Once the place was cleared out, it wasn’t long before Adrian’s men showed up. I met them at the door, hands on hips. “Why the fuck have you not been working security here?” I demanded as soon as they were in the club.
“Westin told Pakhan that he was hiring a security service. We didn’t think anything of it,” Oleg, the pocked-face motherfucker, said with a casual shrug.
“Some service,” I grumbled to myself as I led them to the storage closet.
The two men were so big the three of us couldn’t fit comfortably in there together. Oleg grabbed the barely conscious Westin and tossed him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Where you want him?”
“Take him somewhere I can question him in peace,” I commanded. “I need to know exactly what’s been going on around this place the last few months. Also, I need someone to review all the security feeds for the last year.”
Oleg groaned. “Ah, come on, Anya. We don’t got time for that shit.”
I stepped into his space, pissed that he was whining like a little bitch. The man was twice my size, triple my weight, yet when I glared up at him, he swallowed nervously and all the lip he’d just been giving me stopped. “Did I say you personally, Oleg, you lazy fuck?” He shook his head like a chastised little boy. “I want Adrian’s tech guy to examine it all. Arrange for him to be here tomorrow at three.”
After they left, I locked up and sat in my office, decompressing for a moment. I would close the club for a month, do all the repairs the place needed, get a staff I could actually trust, and then have a grand reopening. Which meant I was going to be busy as hell.
Too busy to care that Cristiano Vitucci was in the same city.
Gripping the back of my neck, I squeezed tightly, trying to ease some of the tension in the aching muscles. Sleeping in the same bed with Sofia was always a workout. The girl was all over the place in her sleep. It amused me and warmed my heart to get to lie beside her and smell her sweetly scented hair fresh from a bath.
But if I was really going to stay in New York as I promised Victoria, then I needed to head back to my apartment. My place hadn’t been inhabited in five years, but Adrian made sure it got a weekly cleaning just as his own apartment still did, along with the one Theo used to share with his birth mother.
If the club was going to be getting an overhaul, I should go ahead and have the contractors do the upgrades my apartment needed, I thought as I grabbed my stuff and headed for my car. Knock two birds out with one stone, as they said.
Chapter 4
Cristiano
Meetings all day, every day, for the next week kept me busy. Taking over for Pop for good wasn’t as easy as him saying, “I’m old and sick. Take my seat.”
There were others within the Cosa Nostra who had to be convinced that I would do as good a job as my father. If the majority of them weren’t happy with me, they could overthrow my seat. With Pop so sick, this was the perfect time for one of the other families to step up and try to take over.
The meetings were more than just to appease the old fuckers. It was to suss out who might try to go against us. Against me.
Some days, I made them come to me. Others, I went out to them. Showing them respect, but also showing them that, even though Pop stepped down, the Vituccis still had all the power.
When they came to the compound, I had everyone who was vulnerable leave the premises. Our security was tight, but as Victoria had shown time and again growing up, it wasn’t completely infallible. If my baby sister could get in and out so easily, someone deadly could too.
Since Scarlett and her children had moved in to help take care of Pop, I asked her to go
to Allegra’s or Victoria’s for the days the house was full of the elder Dons. She didn’t argue with me on that regard, thank fuck.
She always took Ryan with her. Including him in everything, trying to pull him out of his shell. So far, she was unsuccessful, but we all knew it was going to take some time before he began to trust any woman again. The one who was supposed to protect him with her own life died at my hands because she was hurting him. It wasn’t going to be easy for him to trust another mother figure.
My sister wasn’t giving up, however, and that would win over my son in the long run. I hoped.
So far, nothing I’d been hoping for was happening regarding Ryan. He wasn’t settling in, wasn’t playing with his cousins—even though the girls tried to make him play with them every day and Zayne was always trying to coax him into playing video games with him in his own room. Ryan wasn’t eating much and spent all the time he was at home either by my side or up in his room.
I guess I should have been glad he was spending that time reading, but all I could do was worry about my son. He was drawing more into himself, becoming a ghost of the little boy I remembered doing nothing but giggling and running through the house in Chicago like he didn’t have a care in the world.
But that was before. Before his mother stole the innocence of a child and replaced it with the reality of what some parents were like outside in the real world. Before he knew a human could feel pain soul deep. It was a tough lesson for an adult to learn, let alone a defenseless three-year-old.
“Everyone is in the dining room,” Dante informed me as he walked into my office. “Scarlett’s idea to have lunch together wasn’t a bad one.”
Pushing all thoughts of my son from my mind so I could focus on the dangers of the present, I stood, buttoning my jacket as I crossed the room. “She would have been the perfect fit for Pop’s seat.”
“Agreed. But she has other things to think about right now, I think.” He held the door, waiting for me to go out first before closing and locking it behind us. “She needs to take it easy for the next few months.”
Her Mafioso King (The Vitucci Mafiosos Book 4) Page 4
