“Is that right?” The guy slouching against the back wall didn’t even bother to stand upright and acknowledge her.
The club’s front entrance was a block away in an old two-story brownstone. She’d already tried that, but Triptych was like Asylum—no one got in unless they were on the list. When she’d asked to talk to Malachi, the bouncer at the front door had sent her around back. Now this guy looked as if he thought she was one card short of a full deck.
A shot of anxiety made Suri almost light-headed. As much as she wished she could just turn and walk away, she could never allow Flaherty to betray Dante’s identity to his enemies. They’d come after Dante, and Jericho would step in to back up his friend and lover. It would mean the death of both her men. She couldn’t allow them to be hurt when she could stop it.
“I guess I’ll just tell Congressman Flaherty that you wouldn’t let his entertainment in the club.” Suri injected her words with forced cheer.
The door guy pushed away from the wall. Suri took a step back. His aura screamed subjugation. Jericho always held a hint of malice when dealing with customers, as if he was waiting for them to lose his good opinion. This guy’s attitude said you’d never had his good opinion to begin with.
He was at least six feet two and lean with a sleek, pantherlike build. He was wearing black leather pants, heavy boots, and a white long-sleeved thermal shirt open at the collar. The part of his chest visible in the V of his shirt was muscular. With his stoic expression, sunglasses, and shoulder-length dark hair, he looked as forbidding as the gatekeeper to hell.
Which was sort of how Suri viewed him.
“You’re the woman meeting Flaherty tonight?” He raked her body with his gaze. At least she thought he did. It was hard to tell with the dark glasses. “You dance at Asylum?”
She stiffened, drawing the lapels of her long black coat a little closer around her skimpy minidress. Just because she didn’t look like a sleazy over-the-hill stripper didn’t mean she was a choirgirl. “That’s me. Are you Malachi?”
He ignored her question. “Does your daddy know you’re doing this? Or did he leave you with an abandonment complex?”
“Does your probation officer know you’re doing this, or has he given up on any efforts at rehabilitation?”
He threw back his head and laughed. It changed everything about him. No longer dangerous looking, he could’ve been considered handsome had she not already been spoiled by Dante and Jericho. She fervently hoped they would still speak to her once they found out she’d agreed to meet Flaherty for a private party away from the safety of Asylum. Even her reasons wouldn’t buy a reprieve from their wrath.
“A smart-ass sense of humor won’t save you from yourself, but that’s your problem and not mine.” He pushed his sunglasses on top of his head, revealing startling slate-gray eyes.
“Are you Malachi or not?”
“At your service.”
“Flaherty said you can show me where I need to go.” Her train to hell was back on schedule. Better to get it over and done with.
“This way, then, if you’re determined to go looking for trouble.”
He turned to an ancient set of stairs that disappeared into a cellar entrance. A gunmetal-gray door at the bottom was held closed by a chain and padlocked to keep it that way. Suri’s stomach did an unpleasant flip-flop. Were they trying to keep people out or in? What was she thinking?
I’m protecting Dante’s anonymity and Jericho’s life. I’ll just keep repeating that over and over until I walk back out of this place.
If she ever walked back out.
Malachi produced a key, and the chain rattled as it slid away. He opened the door and gave a mocking bow. “Ladies first.”
“Fools, you mean.” Suri eyed the black hole he wanted her to step into. “Didn’t you guys pay your electric bill?”
“Just step in, will you? I have to lock it behind us.”
Having a threesome with her boss and his head of security seemed like a sane, safe decision compared to this. Suri swallowed the lump lodged in her throat and stepped into the pitch-black corridor.
Malachi moved in behind her, and she heard the door slam shut. The chain rattled again as he shoved it through the holes in the door and locked it tight. She was truly trapped.
Claustrophobia set in almost immediately. Suri fought to regulate her breathing, but her lungs couldn’t get enough air.
“So you do have sense.” She couldn’t see him, but Malachi’s arm brushed against hers in the darkness as he reached past her to the wall.
A lonely bulb came to life overhead. Though it was tiny, it seemed enormous in the close confines of the hallway. Suri managed to get control of her flight reflex. She’d decided to do this. Now wasn’t the time to change her mind.
“The power of money never ceases to amaze me.” Malachi gave a bitter shake of his head and took the lead down the narrow passage.
Suri scraped together what was left of her dignity and followed. “You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not drawn by the power of money.”
“Sure you aren’t.”
“I’d never do this to buy myself clothes or jewelry or even a new car.” Suri thought of waking up snuggled safely between Dante and Jericho. “Put the safety of the people I love on the table, and I change my mind instantly.”
In the dim light, she saw him jerk as though he was surprised by her candidness. “Self-sacrifice is rarely a worthwhile endeavor. In my experience, it ends in chains.”
It sounded like he spoke from experience, even though he didn’t seem the type to take a bullet for anyone. She had the time to ask what he meant, though she lacked the courage. Their walk seemed to take forever. They passed numerous locked doors and several adjoining passages. Everything looked the same—cold, unforgiving stone. As though Triptych was really a prison of some kind.
Malachi stopped walking so quickly that Suri nearly rammed into his back.
She was starting to become nervous. Was he even the right guy? Should she have asked for ID or something? “Where are we?”
“In the old days, this was a church.”
His gray eyes were unsettling, especially when he looked at her as if she were a particularly interesting specimen he’d like to dissect.
“They put a club in an old church?”
“Is it really that surprising? At least the manacles in this place are intended for punishment and pleasure.”
Manacles? If Flaherty had lured her to some kind of bondage club, she was in bigger trouble than she’d thought. Surely he was kidding. She would’ve asked, but he wasn’t done philosophizing.
“One might even argue that churches have been dens of iniquity for centuries.”
Suri didn’t know what was more surrealistic—being in the basement of an old church to do a striptease for a political incumbent who was threatening to sell out Prince Charming, or hearing the words “den of iniquity” come out of Malachi’s mouth. He was obviously not what he seemed. She wondered if he knew Jericho. They shared the same penchant for throwing people off.
An ache gnawed a hole inside her heart. This would probably be the end of her relationship with Dante and Jericho. From the beginning, they had tried to insulate her from Flaherty. Now she was flinging their caution in their faces and going behind their backs, even knowing she was playing with fire—while standing in gasoline.
“How did Flaherty find someone like you?” Malachi leaned against the stone wall, much as he had the outdoor one, as if he was in no hurry.
Suri wished he’d just let her get it over with. “He saw me dance at Asylum.”
“And it doesn’t worry you at all that he didn’t choose Asylum for this little entertainment deal?” The sarcasm in Malachi’s voice could have cut glass.
“Don’t treat me like a moron. I know why he chose this place.” Suri looked around at the nondescript, almost prisonlike interior. “Obviously, you guys have less in the way of rules, and Dante and Jericho don’t have control over wha
t happens.”
“How is Jericho these days?” Malachi smirked. “He’s one of the coldest bastards in this business. Some of the shit I’ve seen him do…gives me the chills.”
“He’s not cold.” Although Malachi’s words sent something chilling down her spine. Jericho did have a reputation. So did Dante. But the gentle lovers she knew didn’t mesh with the men who wore those scars.
“You say that as if you know him better than the average dancer at Asylum.”
“Maybe I do. It has nothing to do with why we’re wasting time instead of getting this stupid thing over with.” She felt defensive, off-kilter somehow.
“Sweetheart, you better think long and hard before you betray a man like that. The only one who holds a grudge longer and harder is Torres.” Malachi tilted his head, as if he was listening to something behind the closed door to his left. “But if you’re sure you’re ready to do this. The congressman is waiting.”
She was dancing. Just like she did at Asylum. So why did it feel as if she was preparing to turn her first trick? “Don’t I have to sign something?”
“What would you need to sign?” Malachi’s demeanor went from casual to deadly serious in the blink of an eye.
She wasn’t about to fill him in on the details, but she wanted some kind of reassurance that Flaherty would keep his end of the deal. “Flaherty promised me something if I did this party. Don’t we need some kind of binding agreement, contract, handshake, something, to make him keep his word?”
“This isn’t Asylum, baby.”
“I know that. But surely you guys have some kind of leverage with your clients.”
Malachi gave away nothing.
“So I get nothing? No reassurances whatsoever?”
“If you feel like you’ve gotten the raw end of the deal, walk away now. No harm, no foul. I won’t even tell him you were here.”
She wanted to. How she wanted to! How tempting to turn tail and run back to Asylum. She’d crawl into the giant bed in their suite and pretend none of this had ever happened.
Until some terrorist thugs burst into the club and kill the men I love more than life. I dance or they die. Nothing else matters.
Suri lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “Then I’ll have to get my reassurances from Flaherty himself. Let’s get this over with.”
* * * *
“Jericho? Could I talk to you for a minute?”
Jericho glanced away from the drama playing out in the Level Three lounge. An overconfident trust-fund baby was trying to woo his way into the bed of a woman ten years his senior. She was a regular fixture around Asylum and a favorite with many of their high rollers because of her highly charged sensual nature. At the moment, she’d made it perfectly clear he didn’t interest her in the least, but he wasn’t willing to take no for an answer. Jericho had been called in to watch the scenario play out. As long as the guy was willing to buy his way into her bed with drinks, gifts, and smooth words, they were well within the club’s parameters. Any escalation and Jericho would intervene.
“I’m really sorry to bother you, but this is about Suri.”
The dancer—he’d heard Suri call her Lizzie—now had his full attention. “What about Suri?”
“Look, she’ll kill me if she finds out I said something.” She put her hands on her ample hips and blew a stream of air upward to move a section of dark hair that kept swinging forward to brush her nose.
It was a feint. She was buying time to decide just how to tell him something he wouldn’t like, and Jericho knew it. “She’s not working tonight. I figured she was at home or playing a gig with the trio.” He didn’t add that he and Dante expected her back in their bed before the night was over. That was none of Lizzie’s business.
“That’s the thing. She did have a job tonight.”
“Where?”
“Club Triptych.” Lizzie exhaled sharply. “That asshole politician hired her to dance for a private party.”
For the first time in years, real fear washed over Jericho. It snaked down his spine and lodged in his throat like a cry he couldn’t voice.
“Please don’t be angry with her. I tried to talk her out of it. She was set on going. I don’t know why she didn’t just bring him here if she wanted a private party, but she said he’d set the rules. Her ma is real sick. I figure she must need the money really bad.”
Jericho felt blindsided. He’d known Suri’s mother was in the nursing home. He just hadn’t put all the pieces together. Suri worked hard. She worked a lot. Obviously, she was responsible for her mother’s care. It was so basic. And yet it still made no sense.
Dante had already come up with a way for her to make better money. Even if she needed more, how could she throw everything away without even talking to them first? He and Dante should have dug a little deeper, but nothing could make him believe that what the three of them had shared was nothing but lies.
We have to be there to catch her when she falls.
Lizzie wasn’t through. “I’m really worried about her. She called earlier to ask me where the place was, and I told her. I didn’t know why she wanted to know at first. Now, I haven’t heard from her in a while.” Lizzie wrung her hands together. “So, since the two of you are—sleeping together—I thought you could help. I haven’t seen Dante all night, or I would have told you both.”
Sleeping together. Yes. So Suri had told her only real friend at the club that the three of them were together. Given that, it seemed unlikely she would fling it all away for one paycheck. That wasn’t the issue right now anyway. Suri’s safety was. “When did you hear from her last?”
“About three and a half hours ago, before my shift started.” Lizzie nibbled her lower lip. “I hope this doesn’t screw anything up between the three of you. I didn’t mean to make trouble.”
Jericho didn’t have time to waste on reassurances. “You didn’t.”
Without another word, he turned and strode off. He made a gesture to one of the other bouncers to pick up observing the reluctant couple and headed toward the parking garage.
Apprehension coiled inside his gut. He began taking the stairs two at a time, leaping the last four or five in each flight to save time. He needed to call Dante. He’d had meetings throughout the day at different locations throughout the city. There was no telling where he was.
Jericho burst into the underground tunnel. It connected Asylum to a building they’d renovated into a parking garage. As always, he’d left his truck backed into a space facing the exit. He fumbled in his pocket for his keys and unlocked the door.
The huge beast was a tight squeeze in the garage. Jericho jumped into the driver’s seat and started the engine. It roared to life, and he threw the truck into gear while calling Dante on the Bluetooth.
His partner picked up on the first ring. “Felix just called and said you’d gone. You can’t leave the club when I’m not even there.”
Dante hadn’t bothered with pleasantries. Neither would Jericho. “Suri agreed to a private party with Flaherty at Triptych.”
“Fuck.”
The sound of Dante’s fist slamming against the steering wheel of his BMW made Jericho wince. “Where are you?”
“In the city, near Faneuil Hall. I can be there in less than ten minutes, barring bridge traffic.” Dante’s wheels squealed, and the engine hummed as he accelerated.
“You’ll make it there before I do.” Jericho cursed as a driver opted to parallel park in the middle of the street. “Wait for me. Malachi runs that door. He and I go way back. If he doesn’t tell me something I like, I’ll rip his lungs out, and he knows it.”
“Then hurry. The longer she’s in there with that bastard…” Dante let the statement hang. Neither one of them needed him to finish it.
Jericho hung up without bothering to say good-bye. He was steering in and out of traffic, using the size of his vehicle to intimidate his way through Dorchester toward the highway. It wouldn’t matter. He was too far away. It was his worst night
mare come to life.
* * * *
Suri wondered if all the rooms at Triptych were like this one, or if Congressman Flaherty just really had a thing for medieval role-playing. Considering Malachi’s cryptic statement, she was just glad there were no cages or stocks lurking in the corners. She was wearing a low-cut “wench” costume complete with a lace-up bodice. The thing was horribly uncomfortable. She could barely breathe.
She was trying to figure out the best way to do a striptease. There was no good way to get out of her clothes. A bizarre rendition of “Greensleeves” played in the background. Letting her hips sway with the beat, she hoped watching her run her hands across her bare cleavage would satisfy her audience.
The politician and three of his friends were seated at a low-slung trestle table on benches that looked as if they’d been rescued from the church’s original days in the old colonial times. The floor was scattered with woven mats, and candles flickered on every available surface.
The room itself was stone. Stone floors, stone walls, and only one yellowed window covered in iron bars that didn’t show a smidge of outside light. There was air moving through from somewhere, because they hadn’t suffocated yet. Not that Suri would have minded if the men suffocated. In fact, the world might have been a better place had they all died in one way or another.
“Where did you find this one, Eagan? She’s got a great ass and pretty tits.” The shortest one with the bald spot and a flat nose groped her backside for the millionth time that night.
Suri told herself she didn’t care. She was trying desperately to think of a way to make sure Flaherty kept his word. She was playing his game because she wanted the prize. Her lovers’ lives were on the line. Surely that was worth a few ass grabs?
“Enough dancing for now. Get us more ale, whore!” Flaherty lifted his mug.
She poured Flaherty’s drink, which smelled awful, and maneuvered out of Shorty’s groping range. Trying to dodge one set of hands, she opened herself to another. The third man, a decent-looking guy who spent way too much time discussing cruel methods of having sex, pulled her into his lap.
Boston Avant-Garde 4: Encore Page 19
