Frank nodded his head as I spoke. “I’m surprised Kevin didn’t go over that with you the whole time you were working together,” he grumbled.
Without saying another word, Frank walked over to the small bar he had on the far wall. He poured himself a glass of Brandy, then walked back behind his desk and took a seat. He had a blank expression on his face as he took a sip and looked at me.
I’m not one to squirm in my seat, but I didn’t like the look on his face. If anyone was looking at me the way Frank was looking at me, I would have knocked them out already. I don’t like people making me feel uneasy or uncomfortable.
Frank set his glass down then leaned back in his seat. “The TraPani’s are our rivals. There was a time when we worked together, but they have too much backstabbing and greed in their blood.” He let out a sigh, “We’ll save the whole story for another time, but what you need to know is that the TraPani’s have their business and we have ours. We don’t mix.” He leaned forward and put his elbows on his desk entwining his fingers. “This is where your father went wrong, Nick. He was trying to sell me out. The whole crew. Give all our business away. The rules are there for a reason.”
I balled my hands into fists. I envisioned myself leaping over his desk, grabbing him by the lapels, and punching him in the face. Just hearing him talk about my father, made my blood boil. I slowly unclenched my hands and rubbed them on my jeans because I knew he was observing my every move. I needed to brush it off and not let it bother me, but that was easier said than done.
“So how will I know if I’m doing business with a TraPani? I don’t even know who they are or what they look like.” This is the information I needed, since I heard Paul either talking to or about a TraPani.
Frank leaned back in his chair again with a smirk. “You’ll never do business with a TraPani, so there is nothing for you to worry about. Anytime you go do business with Paul or Kevin or even on your own, you will only be walking into one of our businesses. Now, on to what I asked you here for,” he said as he sat up and moved papers around on his desk. “The first thing you need to know is that I don’t run my operation digitally. A lot has changed since the old days, but I’m consistent in keeping everything filed. Digital technology is too easily tracked these days, so we keep it manual.”
“Okay, but how do you keep the things that have to be run digitally off the radar of the feds? I know from working with Kevin at those shipyards that some of this stuff has to be run through the computers.”
He smirked at me. “You’re right, but like I told you before, I have connections and I’ll tell you about those another time. Right now, we need to go over the front businesses and the back businesses.”
And that’s exactly what we did for the next two hours. The DiCosola family had a slew of businesses that ranged from restaurants, strip clubs, laundry mats, and construction, to pretty much anything you could think of. They even had a law firm on payroll. They would run their business on the outside, and have the illegal business ran in the back. I needed to see how it all worked to understand how he got away with it, to see what I needed to do in order to take him down.
That was one of the reasons I needed to know who his connections were. I couldn’t just run off to the police or the feds unless I had all my t’s crossed.
He went on and started explaining how the back businesses worked. All the businesses had schedules they had to adhere to. You never went off that schedule or did your own thing. If you did, he would assume you were doing something behind his back. That fell under rule #1, respect the family. Frank was old school with his rules. He never veered off them and he reminded me of it constantly that day.
I left Frank’s around four that afternoon. I didn’t have to meet Paul that night because Frank had sent him out of town to do some kind of money exchange, so I decided I would go home and come up with my plan. Knowing he was going to start sharing the details of the business, I had to figure out how I could get copies of everything and then figure out what to do with it.
The week flew by after Jules hired Sam and Doug. We spent most of our time going over company procedures and all the insurance plans Entertainment Los Angeles offered.
I also caught up on all my clients from Atlanta and then rounded up some new clients for Sam and Doug. Jules was busy doing whatever it was that Matt had her doing during the day when she was locked in her office, so I took over the responsibility of training the new hires.
During our down time, I got to ask Sam and Doug a little bit about themselves. Sam had lived right outside of Sydney, Australia, before he moved to the US to try his luck in acting. He said he was featured in some commercials, none I ever heard of, but not any big roles. He said it was too tough of an industry to break into and decided to give it up.
Doug was an older guy, probably in his mid-thirties, not very tall, married with two kids, and was born and raised in East LA. I noticed from meeting him Monday morning that he was a really shy guy and didn’t talk very much. I tried to engage him into our conversations at work, but he usually kept to himself. When we all decided to go get lunch that day, I wasn’t surprised that Doug opted out.
“Where should we go to lunch today?” Jules asked Sam as we walked out of the office.
He had been really helpful the past week, letting us know where to go and not go, foodwise.
“Let’s go to Miguel’s around the corner. They have some awesome Mexican food. That is, if you like Mexican.” He smiled at both of us.
We all agreed on Mexican and made small talk as we walked to Miguel’s. I was all for something cheap. I needed to start making a lunch and bringing it to work. The restaurants were ridiculously priced.
I looked around the restaurant as we made our way to a vacant booth. It looked like every other Mexican restaurant I had been to before, like one big piñata, and the smells were making my stomach growl. That’s what I got for sleeping in and not eating breakfast before I left the house.
Jules sat on one side of the booth while Sam and I shared the other side.
“So, now that we are away from work, I wanted to tell you the news I got from Matt this morning,” she huffed at me.
“Uh oh, that doesn’t sound good,” I said glancing over at Sam. We both looked at each other, then looked back at Jules.
“Yeah, and you’re not going to like it.”
She was so dramatic. “Oh my God, just spit it out already.”
Jules took a deep breath. “Jess is going to be here next week.”
“WHAT?” I looked around realizing I had shouted and people were glancing our way. “What do you mean she is going to be here next week? Clarify yourself. Be here as in moving here to work? Because if that’s the case, I might have to quit,” I said lowering my voice.
“She’s just coming to do client work, keep your pants on,” she snickered. “She already had stuff scheduled for next week out here. So, Matt said instead of her having to do all her computer work at the hotel like we used to do, she is going to come into the office to connect to the network.”
“Well great,” I said with a sigh. And here I thought I’d never have to see her face again. Just then our waiter arrived and took our order. I looked over the menu and decided on getting three tacos, which would definitely fill me up since it came with rice and beans as well.
“So, who’s Jess,” Sam asked as the waiter brought our drinks.
“She’s the boyfriend-stealing twatwaffle we used to work with every day,” Jules blurted.
The look of disgust on her face was priceless. I couldn’t contain my laughter.
Did she really just say that in front of Sam? I swear sometimes I think she is more upset about the situation than I am.
“She didn’t steal my boyfriend, Jules. We were already broken up, but she is a twatwaffle,” I repeated and smiled at her.
“You can’t sit here and talk about this twatwaffle without giving me some of the details,” Sam smiled, faux exasperated. Jules and I looked at each
other and then threw our heads back laughing. It was wrong to sit there and talk about her, but she did it to herself.
When we finally contained our laughter, I opened my mouth to tell him the story, but Jules beat me to it. “Here’s the short version. Jess is the office slut. She tries to get with every sexy client we have, and it just so happened that one of our clients was Kade Evans, you know the rock star from Perfectly Damaged?” Sam nodded. “Well, anyway, Kade didn’t want to have anything to do with her and only had eyes for Letti here.” She pointed at me. I smiled as I thought about seeing him in the meeting room that morning after our encounter at The Sinners’ Club. “The bitch did everything she could to get him to pay attention to her, even though she knew Scarlett and Kade were seeing each other. She acted like she didn’t know, but she knew. Then one night we went out to a club and we saw them together. How he was able to kiss that nasty mouth is beyond me,” she said, making a disgusted face. My smile faltered as she finished telling the story. Deep down, I was still brokenhearted.
The waiter delivered our food and we started digging in.
“Well, then,” Sam mumbled with food in his mouth.
“Yeah, I don’t really like talking about it,” I said, giving Jules a look.
As we fell silent eating our food, my mind wandered off to that night. Not the night at the club, but the night at Kade’s. If anything, that was the one thing I always thought about. I still didn’t understand what was going on with Kade. I had heard almost everything they had said that night while eavesdropping and I had Googled his uncle, but I still didn’t understand what that had to do with him. I had questions that would never be answered. Why didn’t he just tell me what was going on? Why did he have two different names? Why did he choose him over me? It had been eight months and I still thought about it. I wasn’t pining over him, but I did miss him … a lot. The way he made me feel seemed irreplaceable.
“So, what are you ladies doing this weekend?” Sam asked as he wiped his mouth with a napkin.
I looked over at his plate and noticed that he had scraped it clean. Jules was still working on hers, but she had eaten a lot more than me. I was so lost in my thoughts that I had barely eaten anything on my plate.
“We’re going out for Letti’s birthday; you should come, if you don’t have anything planned,” Jules said through a mouthful of food.
“Yeah, that’d be fun; you should definitely come out with us. We’re going to bar hop, but we’ll end up at Club X. Have you heard of it?” I asked.
Sam laughed, “Of course I’ve heard of Club X. How do you plan on getting in there? Me and a couple of my mates tried to go a few months ago. We waited outside and never got to go in to the damn place.”
“Yeah, it’s not easy to get in there. You’ve got to have a hookup,” Jules smiled up at Sam.
“I’ve heard that they have girls dancing in cages … with hardly any clothes on,” Sam said wagging his eyebrows at me. Then he turned to Jules. “Are you telling me you guys have a hookup to get in?”
Jules opened her mouth to answer, but I cut her off this time. “Yeah, Jules’ boyfriend Brent owns the place.” I gave an evil smile over to Jules. She hated when I called Brent her boyfriend. I really didn’t understand why, since they have been together for over a year. She just didn’t like putting a name to her relationship with him. She said they had an understanding, but I never see her go out with anyone else. I knew she was more serious about this relationship than she led on. I just didn’t know about Brent. She never really talked about it.
“Oh, I didn’t know you had a boyfriend Jules,” Sam said curiously.
Jules looked at me and gave me one of her, ‘I’m going to kick your ass’ stares. “It’s complicated.” She picked up her glass and took a drink, and then looked at me. I wasn’t sure what that look was for, but I’d have to ask her about it later.
I looked back over at Sam and smiled. “So will you come out? I think it would be really fun to have you along. Plus, we don’t know that many people here.”
“Do you care if I invite some of my mates too?”
I looked at Jules with a smile, then back at Sam. “Not at all. That sounds like a great idea.”
At that moment, I was actually excited about going out for my birthday. I knew Jules had a big heart and tried to do what she thought was right, but I really didn’t want to spend my birthday with her, Brent, and Dave. It would feel too much like I was on a date and I didn’t want that. I’d rather have a bunch of other people around so I didn’t feel obligated to give my attention to one person.
With that decided, we paid for our lunch and headed back to work. Jules and Sam engaged in a conversation talking about which bars we should hop to and from, while I pondered on our previous conversation about Jess coming into town.
I knew she was coming into town for work, but it didn’t mean I had to like it. I tried to think about how many times she’d made a trip to California after Kade had left. Could she have been visiting him when she traveled here? I shook my head at myself and looked over at Jules and Sam who were talking adamantly about our night out. I couldn’t think about Kade and Jess together; it brought back the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. As we got back to the office, I hoped that drowning myself in emails and phone calls would get him out of my head.
I woke up Saturday morning in a really good mood. Growing up, my birthdays weren’t really celebrated like other children’s. I wouldn’t say I had horrible birthdays, but when your mother doesn’t tell you happy birthday until almost the end of the day and then throws a birthday card on the table, unsigned, and never even put in the envelope, it was pretty shitty. But I guess it’s more than some kids were given, so I never said anything to my mother about it.
Over the years I wouldn’t even mention my birthday, and the days would just go by like every other day. Which is why Jules was making such a big production of my twenty-third birthday.
“So, we have everything set for our night out tonight. The guys are going to be here at eight, and then we are going to head out and meet Sam and his friends at a bar called Stan’s.” Jules walked into the living room from the kitchen and handed me a soda.
“Okay … sounds good. I trust your party-planning skills.” I smiled up at her. “So what are you wearing tonight? I have no idea what I should wear.”
A large smile appeared on Jules’ face, which could only mean she knew exactly what I should wear tonight, but I had news for her. I wasn’t wearing another damn dress. Dresses and I were done. “I’m not wearing a dress, Jules, so take that look off your face. I know that’s exactly what you were thinking.”
She gave me a pouty face. “But you look smokin’ in dresses.”
“I can also look smokin’ hot in some cute shorts or some really cute jeans,” I laughed. “Come on.” I got up from the couch and tugged on her arm. “Let’s go find something to wear. We have four hours until the guys get here.”
When I finally figured out what I was going to wear, my room looked like a tornado had whipped through it. Clothes were thrown all over my floor and on the bed, but I’d worry about that later. I decided on a pair of cute black shorts and a shear pink top that hung off one shoulder with a pink camisole underneath. I paired it with silver-strapped heels that had a cuff going around my ankle. I thought I looked really good, and after I did my hair and make-up, Jules was whistling at me.
“You are such a dork,” I laughed at her as she leaned against my bedroom door.
She was wearing white skinny jeans and a black embellished top. I don’t know how she did it, but she always knew exactly what to wear. I was the one who always needed help picking something that looked good. Jules was more fashion forward than I was.
“You look great, and the guys are going to go nuts over those shorts. I bet I could totally see half your ass cheek if you bent over,” she said sarcastically.
I shook my head and laughed, “Shut up!”
She laughed and walked toward the
living room. “Come on, it’s time for our shot, birthday girl.”
I followed her into the kitchen for our traditional tequila shot before we went out. But this time Jules said we had to take two shots because it was my birthday.
She poured two shots each. I picked up the first one and waited for her toast.
“To the birthday girl, may this year be better than the last.” She clicked our glasses together and we both downed the tequila. It burned going down and we picked up the second shot not wasting any time. “To the birthday girl, may you find a good man … to fuck your brains out like a real man should.” She clicked our glasses together as we both laughed, and then we finished off the shot.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as I felt the tequila heating up my body. This was definitely going to get my blood flowing, and I was definitely ready to party.
There was a knock at the door just as Jules was putting the tequila away. “I’m sure that’s Brent and Dave.”
I walked over to the door and opened it. Brent and Dave stood there with smiles on their faces.
“Hey guys.” I smiled back at them and moved to the side, opening the door wider to let them in.
I looked them over as they walked past. They were both wearing jeans, but Brent was wearing a black button-up shirt with his sleeves rolled up to his elbow and Dave was wearing a yellow polo shirt with all the buttons undone at the top. They both looked really good.
I followed the boys in and headed straight to my room to get my cross-body bag. I didn’t want to have to carry around a clutch all night since I knew Jules was more than likely going to get me drunk.
I walked back out into the living room to see Dave on the couch, while Jules and Brent were in the kitchen. Through the entryway to the kitchen, I could see that they were in a deep conversation, so I walked over to the couch where Dave was sitting and sat next to him.
He looked at me and smiled.
“Hey, what’s going on with those two?” I whispered, nodding my head toward the kitchen.
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