Chapter 4
Xander
This one was interesting.
Audra Moreno.
She was beautiful, but all these girls were beautiful. There was something else about her, something almost regal, that appealed to me. The way she held herself, the way she talked. The defiance in her eyes when I touched her and again when I subtly accused her of using drugs. She had spirit.
It made me sad if I let myself think too hard about it. I almost told her to leave, told her she couldn’t work here. She shouldn’t work here. A girl like her—this place, these people, would beat the fire out of her. But I couldn’t do it. They would wonder why and I’d have to come up with a plausible explanation and I was so tired of keeping track of all the lies.
I just hoped she was as capable of taking care of herself as she appeared.
Chapter 5
Audra
Brooke was the club’s choreographer. She was a small woman with platinum blonde hair from a bottle, crow’s feet along the edges of each eye suggesting she was much older than she wanted anyone to know. Or perhaps she’d simply lived a harder life than she wanted anyone to know. I suspected it was a little bit of both. But she was a hell of dancer with clear classical training.
“You ever dance on Broadway?”
She snickered. “Wouldn’t I love it if I had? But then I wouldn’t be here.”
“You’ve been trained.”
“Since I was three.”
“Why are you here, then? Why not run your own studio?”
She gave me a dark look as she dropped into a stretch, grabbing her ankles as her hair brushed the surface of the stage. “Why are you here instead of some fancy business office?” She straightened again, catching my eye. “Life happens.”
She came over to where I was standing by the pole and moved my hand further up before showing me the twirl she wanted me to do. We worked through a few more steps together, a bold stomp that had me flinging my arms back, thrusting my chest into the air in a way I was sure the crowd would go wild for. If I’d had Brooke back when I was sixteen and working in the New Orleans club, I would have made a fortune.
“What’s he like?” I asked, gesturing toward the one-way mirror looking down on us.
“Xander?” She shrugged. “I’ve had worse bosses.”
“He good with the girls?”
“As long as the girls are good to him.”
“I’ve heard rumors about him.”
Brooke shot me a sharp look. “If I were you, I’d keep those rumors to myself.”
She made me run through the entire routine three times without music, barking out direction with every spin I didn’t do quite right, with every step that didn’t have enough flounce to it. She was a demanding teacher, but good at what she did. I found myself doing things I never would have thought I could and doing them well.
“Is it true that he helps the girls bring their husbands and brothers to this country?” I asked as we wound our session down.
Again she shot me a sharp look. This time she didn’t bother to warn me off. She just walked away.
I wasn’t going to get answers from her, was I?
The club filled quickly for a weeknight. The doors opened at eight, and by ten there was standing room only. Brooke had given me a white sequined costume that consisted of shorts and a narrow vest. I tugged at the vest, feeling completely exposed. I hadn’t worn anything less than two layers of clothing in ten years. This was…uncomfortable. And the makeup? I’d almost forgotten what it was like to put it on, to feel the heavy concealer and foundation on my face. It itched.
“Love your hair,” one of the girls said as she passed by my little station.
“Thanks.”
She paused, touching one of the curls that fell from the French twist I’d styled my locks into. “Wish my hair was that naturally curly.”
“It can be a pain sometimes.”
“Less than this straight mess, though, I’m sure.” She sighed, touching her own hair. “I have to wear wigs if I want curls because I just can’t get them to stay in.”
“The same with me, but when I want it straight.”
“Why would you want it straight? This is so beautiful!”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
She sat in a chair at the station beside mine. “I’m Mercedes,” she said, holding out a hand to me.
“Audra.” I shook her hand.
“That’s pretty. Where are you from?”
“New Orleans.”
“I’m from Austin. Mexico City before that.”
“Columbia.”
Her smile widened. “That’s cool. I’ve always wanted to go there.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.” She dragged her fingers through her hair, fluffing it up a little around her face. “I’d love to travel, but I’ve only been to three places: Mexico, Austin, and here.”
“Me too. I’ve always wanted to see Europe.”
“Oh, that would be so cool! London and Paris and Italy…I’ve always wanted to go to Tuscany!”
“Rome. It has so much history.”
“Yeah. I was never good at history.”
I picked up a makeup brush and ran it over my face. She took it from me and did the same thing but with a slightly different technique, smiling at the result.
“You have family in Columbia?”
“A brother and sister.”
“You tell Xander that?”
I shook my head, gesturing to the application he’d told me to fill out. “I was about to take that up to him. Should I tell him?”
“Sometimes he helps the girls, gives them information.” She glanced around herself, then leaned forward to whisper to me. “He’s helping me get my little girl out of Mexico City. She lives with my abuela right now, but I really want her up here with me.” She smiled softly. “She’s five. I haven’t seen her since she was six months old.”
I tilted my head slightly. “You couldn’t bring her with you?”
Tears filled her eyes for a second. She blinked them away. “They wouldn’t let me.”
I touched her arm. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “I make good money here and Xander promised he’d help me bring her up if I worked hard for him for a year. My year is almost up…two more months.”
“That’s good.”
She nodded. “I already have a good apartment for us and there’s this little school not far from it where she can start kindergarten in the fall. They have a bilingual class, so she should do really well.”
She was so full of excitement that I was almost happy for her. But then I remembered the pictures Joss had shown me, and that tempered my excitement. What if she ended up in a photograph like that? What if there was nothing I could do to stop it?
But I could. And she’d just confirmed it for me.
I took the application upstairs a while later, ignoring the leers of the goons who were still standing in the hallway for some unknown reason. I tapped on Xander’s door. When it opened, it was the blonde who was standing there.
“Can I help you?”
“I was just turning this in.”
She glanced at the application, clearly bored with it, with me, with everything around her. She snatched it out of my hand and started to turn. I stuck the toe of my heel against the doorjamb to stop the door from closing.
“Is he in there?”
Her eyes suddenly sparked with life. “That’s none of your business.”
“I just wanted to…to thank him for the job.”
“You can show your gratitude by putting on a good show. You can be assured he’ll be watching.”
She slammed the door before I could block it with my foot again.
I went back downstairs and the stage manager announced I was up next. My hands were shaking as I waited just off stage, nausea suddenly twisting and turning in my stomach. I’d walked away from this life ten years ago, determined to make a better
way for myself. I was a captain in the Army, a respected officer among patriots. And here I was, back where I’d begun.
Talk about taking too many steps backward.
I closed my eyes and thought of the pictures Joss had shown me, thought about Ash Grayson and the battle against organized crime he’d waged over the past eight years. I wanted to do my part, wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself again. If this was how I was meant to contribute, then this was what I was going to do.
The MC announced my act, calling me Poppy for reasons I didn’t even want to consider. I opened my eyes, forced a smile on my lips, and strutted onto that stage.
It was fight or flight at this point. I had too much self-respect to run away like a child.
The knowledge that he was upstairs watching me made my heart pound a little harder than it probably should have. There was something about him…I had to keep reminding myself he was a killer. But even that didn’t really take the edge off. He was dangerous, yes, but that only made him hotter.
Maybe I hadn’t outgrown my dark past as much as I’d thought.
Chapter 6
Joss
I watched in the rearview mirror as she walked up the sidewalk. It was after two. I’d expected her to be at her apartment hours ago, but the detail I’d assigned to watch over her alerted me to the fact that she’d been given a job at the club. I was impressed. The first day and she was already performing.
I waited for her to enter her apartment before I climbed out of the SUV, slipping the hood of my sweatshirt over my head. I knocked on the flimsy door and she opened immediately, stepping back to allow me inside.
“How’s it going?”
She shrugged as she slipped the heels off her feet, groaning as she stepped on the dirty carpet in her bare feet. “I’m going to be very sore tomorrow.”
“How many times did you perform?”
“Twice.” She tugged a handful of dollar bills out of her back jeans pocket. “They let me bring home the majority of the tips.”
“How much did they take?”
“Twenty percent.” She set the money on the counter and pulled more out of her other pocket. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“Keep it. They’ll expect you to keep it, to use it for your daily expenses.”
She just nodded, but there was a look of disgust on her face when she glanced at the pile of money. She moved further into the small apartment, curling her leg under her as she took a seat on the couch.
“I met Xander Damico.” She reached up to tug the pins out of her hair, allowing it to fall around her face. “He seems like a typical strip club owner: pompous, chauvinistic, greedy. There’s nothing special about him.”
“Did he say anything about helping you bring your family here?”
“No. But one of the other dancers said that he was going to help her bring her daughter to the states from Mexico.”
“That’s confirmation.”
Audra nodded, but there was something about the look in her eyes that worried me.
“Are you okay with this?”
She looked up and nodded, but there was still a graveness about her that worried me.
“I know this feels like a step backward, Audra,” I said, reaching over to touch her knee, “but you are doing a big thing by going undercover for us. If we can stop these girls from being murdered, if we can stop this man from using them and hurting them—“
“I know. I just…” She shook her head. “I’m all in on this.”
I studied her face for a moment, still worried it wasn’t a good idea sending her in there with no training. She was a smart girl. Confident and strong. The more I got to know her, the more I liked and admired her. But…I didn’t want to break her on her very first assignment. What if she wasn’t ready?
“If there ever comes a time when you feel you can’t handle it, you’ll tell me?”
“Of course.” She smiled softly, a smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “It was just a long night.”
I patted her knee again. “Then I’ll let you get to bed. I’ll be in touch in a few days.”
She got up to walk me out, locking the door behind me. I hesitated a moment, unable to shake my concern. But I left, knowing it would be worse to pull her out now.
We would all have to be strong on this one.
***
I couldn’t sleep when I got home, so I went down to the study and pulled the Mahoney file out of my bag. I didn’t think I’d be looking at this thing again, not in this context. I’d never even heard of the Mahoneys until a year ago, and then it seemed like just another case, another goal to accomplish. If I’d known what it was going to do to my world, maybe I would have…I don’t know. Maybe I would have run for the hills and taken my family with me.
Ash was the one who told me about them.
“The Mahoney Cartel is a large organization that was more than likely involved with the Bazarovs all those years ago.”
Bazarov. That was a name I heard in my nightmares.
McKelty was seven when Carrington hired Gray Wolf to protect her from threats being made against her by the Bazarovs. Carrington ran a shipping company that he inherited from his father, a company he’d expanded and turned into a multi-million dollar business while raising a child on his own. The Bazarovs wanted to use his company to move drugs into the country. When he refused, they made threats. I took the case and it was complicated from the very beginning. I didn’t take cases involving kids. I didn’t like being around kids. I’d lost a child…I didn’t want the reminder of what I’d lost by being around someone else’s kid. But Ash insisted there was no other choice.
Bazarov came after us right in Carrington’s home. I shot old man Bazarov right there in the living room in order to save McKelty and her father. I have never regretted anything I did that night but the memory of it haunted my dreams.
You don’t get over killing someone even if that someone deserved what he got.
I thought it was over, but then the Bazarovs came knocking again when Ash took up with the new leader Dimitri Avdonin’s girl. Mina took it upon herself to go back to Dimitri in order to protect her newborn son, Ford. When Ash went to rescue her, he took out what remained of the group. It should have been over then. But Ash was thorough. He conducted research in an attempt to make sure there were no more threats to his family and discovered a link between the Mahoneys and Bazarovs. He eventually came to the conclusion that the Mahoneys were behind everything that had happened back then, pushing Carrington to seek out Gray Wolf, pushing us into a situation that would lead to the showdowns that took place. Mahoney wanted the Bazarovs gone from California so that he could move in.
With this information, Ash made it his personal mission to stop Mahoney before he could do anything that might blow back on his son, Ford. He contacted friends in the FBI and wrangled a part in a drug raid that was meant to bring down Jack Mahoney. His theory was that if he cut the head off the snake, the rest would die. And he was right, for the most part. But nothing ever goes according to plan, and the drug raid turned into a fiasco of epic proportions.
The first raid was called off because someone warned Mahoney and he moved his people.
The second raid ended in the deaths of several in law enforcement and the kidnapping of both Ash and an FBI agent. It turned out the FBI agent was in on it the whole time—she was likely part of the source of the information that allowed Mahoney to move his people before the first sting, her and the dirty Homeland Security officials involved—but Ash was in definite danger while he was being held. The only thing that protected him was the fact that it was Carrington—my Carrington—who was behind the kidnapping.
He’d been blackmailed, forced to act on behalf of the Mahoneys in order to protect his reputation and his daughters from learning some of the dark secrets of our marriage. Carrington had always put his daughters first in everything and Mahoney knew it. He knew exactly how to manipulate him. It was how Mahoney had thrived for
so long in his enterprise. He knew where to poke in order to get the bear to move in the right direction.
It all ended well. Jack Mahoney was arrested, all his closest associates identified and arrested. Politicians, members of law enforcement, and officials who were working on his behalf were also identified and arrested. His organization toppled on itself and imploded, mostly disappearing within six months of his arrest. I thought it was over.
Apparently not.
I flipped through the file, reading Ash’s notes on the local Mahoney groups. He believed there were at least three active factions of Mahoney’s original organization in California. I concentrated my attention on the one here in Santa Monica at the moment, reading the profiles of the seven men Ash had identified.
Xander Damico. Thirty-four. Educated at the University of Miami with a bachelor’s degree in Business. Never married—it was rumored he’d been engaged to the daughter of a Mahoney lieutenant, but it was never verified and the marriage didn’t take place. Xander worked on Wall Street as a finance broker until Mahoney was arrested. A month later, he took control of The Red Door Gentleman’s Club in Santa Monica.
Rahul Rush. Thirty-eight. He ran The Red Door until Xander arrived to take control. He continued on as the manager, working side by side with Xander and three other men. He was suspected by police to be responsible for several missing employees of The Red Door, but they could never prove anything.
Carter Bowman. Forty. Rahul Rush’s right-hand man. Accused by a former employee of abuse, but the accuser disappeared before making a formal statement to police.
Jorge Martinez. Thirty-one. Served time for assault. Arrested six months ago for possession of an illegal firearm, charges pending.
Case Michaels. Thirty-five. Son of John Michaels, one of ten lieutenants arrested with Jack Mahoney. Thought to be in competition with Rahul to take over as lieutenant of the Santa Monica faction of the Mahoney Cartel. Potential source of friction that could be manipulated.
Todd Michaels. Twenty-nine. Case’s younger brother. Served five years for assault. Suspected by police of involvement in beating death of Red Door dancer.
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