Twisted Love: A Bad Boy Romance

by Lily Knight

  I smiled, took out a fifty-dollar bill and slipped it into Sanchez's front pocket.

  “There you go Sanchez, buy the kid something nice – but only if he keeps working hard at his pitching. We don't want him to get lazy or nothin' now.”

  “Oh, gracias, gracias, thank you Mr. Sciotti!”

  Just then, before I could head up the stairs, we heard a commotion coming from the area of the club where the private rooms were.

  “Oh no, sounds like a customer is behaving badly,” muttered Sanchez. “I'll go get Tino.”

  “No, don't worry about that,” I said to him. “I'll handle this myself.”

  I walked through the passage that lead to the private rooms area, and when I walked into the area, I could hear shouting coming from one of the rooms. I burst in, and saw a guy grappling with one of my girls, who was topless and dressed only in a flimsy G-string.

  “What the hell is going on in here?!” I roared.

  I charged over and ripped the guy off her and slammed him against the wall. He was a skinny guy who looked to be in his thirties, with lots of tattoos, and looked like he had been drinking a lot; his eyes were glassy and bloodshot.

  The dancer, a twenty-one-year-old redhead named Bella, who had a lithe body and very large, round breasts, looked both enraged and frightened.

  “That guy tried to pull my G-string off!” she yelled. “He tried to slip his fingers into my . . . into my . . . he tried to put his fingers inside me!”

  “I was j- just, trying t- to . . .” the guy stammered, slurring his words.

  “These rooms are for viewing private dances, you fuck,” I snarled, my hand clamped over the guy's throat, squeezing it progressively harder. “And viewing is something you do with your eyes, and your eyes only, asshole, not with your hands! What part of our 'no touching' rule is so hard to understand, huh?”

  “I just, I, I, I, I was just-”

  I punched him hard in the stomach and he doubled over with pain.

  “Hit him again Ben, hit him again!” shrieked Bella. “Hit that jerk hard, so that he knows never to do that to another woman!”

  “Do you understand the word 'no', jerk-off?” I growled. “Do you? Do you understand what a woman means when she says 'no'?”

  I punched him again in the stomach, and this time he crumpled up and dropped to the floor, groaning with pain.

  “Go get dressed, Bella,” I said to her. “I'll make sure you get paid triple for this dance, since you've had to put up with this jerk.”

  “Thanks Ben,” she said, staring with naked contempt and loathing at the man on the ground, and then she quickly put her bikini top on and put a short satin robe on over that. Then she walked over to the groaning guy on the floor and planted a solid kick in his ribs with the point of her high heels.

  “I'll do a lot worse to you if I ever see you again, you scumbag!” she spat. “My boyfriend is an MMA fighter, and he'll kick your ass from here to the moon and back, so you better pray you never cross our paths!”

  “Alright Bella, go have yourself a drink and calm down,” I said. “And don't worry, this guy won't be coming back here ever again.”

  Bella stormed out, and I grabbed the guy by his grimy T-shirt and hauled him up off the ground. Then I got my phone out, and made sure he was looking at me.

  “Say 'cheese', asshole,” I said as I took a picture of his face. “Your ugly mugshot is about to be added to the list of people banned from this club.”

  I then grabbed him and hauled him roughly out of the room, and dragged him all the way to the back door, where I punched him once more in the stomach, and then, when be bent over in pain, I booted his ass, sending him stumbling out of the door, where he crashed into a stack of garbage cans and fell over.

  “You heard what I said, jerk-off!” I snarled. “You're banned from this place from now on, and if you ever come back, I'll do a hell of a lot worse to you than what I just did. Now get the hell out of here!”

  After that I slammed the door and dusted off my suit jacket. Yeah, that was one of the things I hadn't mentioned about owning a strip club – you had to deal with all sorts of scummy customers. Usually my bouncers took care of them, and incidents were prevented before they could even happen, but sometimes I had to get my hands dirty too. But if it meant getting a punk like this out of my club, and preventing him from harassing or assaulting my dancers, I was glad to do it.

  I sent the pic I'd just taken of the guy to the guy working the door, and asked him to print it out and put it up in the door office with the (already long) list of guys who were banned from the club.

  After that I headed upstairs. In the office up there, Fat Eddie, Giovanni and Tony were sitting around a table, smoking cigars and playing cards.

  “Afternoon boys,” I said as I walked in.

  They all said their greetings, and then I sat down at the table.

  “Alright, hand me one of those Cubans,” I said to fat Eddie, who passed me one of the cigars.

  I lit it up and drew in a big puff, which I held in my mouth for quite a while before exhaling, savoring the rich flavor.

  “Mm, these are good Cubans,” I remarked. “Make sure you get more of these next time, Eddie. Much better than the last batch we had.”

  “Sure thing, Ben,” he said. “And yeah, these are premium, top quality.”

  “Alright, so Giovanni, before we start, what's the latest on that Rising Sun sushi place? You taken any further action there? Or did the old guy chasing you around with a samurai sword scare you off permanently?”

  Everyone chuckled at this, except for Giovanni, who sat in his chair and scowled.

  “It was a big freakin' sword, alright? Sheesh, I bet you guys would have run too. Who knows, maybe this guy fought in World War Two or something, maybe mine wouldn't have been the first head the guy cut off!”

  “The Japs didn't use swords in World War Two,” said Fat Eddie. “Come on, that was in, like, medieval times or some shit.”

  “Actually, they did,” I said, backing Giovanni up. “Many officers carried swords into battle as backup weapons, even as late as World War Two. And they were famous – well, notorious might be a better word to use – for beheading prisoners of war with those swords. But old what was it, Mr. Kawasaki? I doubt he's old enough to be a World War Two veteran. So, it was probably just a family heirloom, or hell, who knows, just because he's Japanese don't mean he has a genuine samurai sword, let's not jump to conclusions, boys. Maybe it was one of those fifty dollar made in China pieces of crap that you can buy on eBay, and they were just gonna hang it on the wall for decoration. If he tried to cut your head off with one of those the blade would snap in half before the blade got anywhere near even breaking your skin!”

  Everyone chuckled.

  “Alright, alright, just forget about it,” said Giovanni, his pride still wounded. “And no, we haven't sorted out the situation there at the sushi place yet.”

  “Well you'd better get on it, I said sternly. “They need to know that they can't get away with messing the Sciotti family around. We can be reasonable, to a point – but if you push us past that point, we can become very unreasonable, very quickly – and they need to know that.”

  “I'll get on it Ben, don't worry.”

  I had another puff of my cigar and then looked around the room.

  “Where's Tino?” I asked. “He's supposed to be here now.”

  “He was here five minutes ago,” said Fat Eddie. “Went downstairs to talk to one of the door guys, said the guy had been asking for workout tips or something like that.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Ah well then that damn meathead is gonna be down there for the next hour! When you get him started on all that pumping iron crap he just goes on and on and won't stop unless you shove a damn sock in his freakin' mouth. Damn it, will one of you go down there and tell him to get his ass up here right now?”

  “I'm on it,” said Giovanni, and he extinguished his cigar and stood up.

>   Before he could walk out of the room, however, the door opened, and there stood Tino in all his musclebound glory. He was so jacked that it looked as if his muscles would rip through the seams of his suit if he flexed them in the wrong way. His face looked unusually orange, though, and I stared at him for a while.

  “Tino, have you put that ridiculous spray-on tan crap on your face?” I asked.

  The other guys chuckled.

  “I, uh, no, no, I just got some sun yesterday.”

  “It was gray and rainy the entire day yesterday,” I remarked dryly.

  “Oh, uh, then the day before,” he said sheepishly.

  “Man, we can all see that you've got that crap on your face. Come on Tino, this ain't no stage for a bodybuilding contest here, alright? Don't wear that stuff again. It's cheesy, and it makes the rest of us look like clowns by association, and that's not something we want in this organization, you understand?”

  He nodded sheepishly.

  “Now what were you doing downstairs?” I asked.

  “Well actually, that's why I came up here,” he said. “Well, yeah, and because we have a meeting, I know – but there's someone down there at the bar who's waiting for you.”

  “There's someone waiting for me at the bar? Who? I don't remember making any appointments with anyone.”

  “A real pretty broad. Looks like she's in her twenties, I guess. Blonde, tall, very curvy, gorgeous green eyes, she's a real stunner alright, a real stunner.”

  I smiled as I realized who it was that was waiting for me.

  “Did she say what it was about?”

  Tino nodded.

  “Yeah, something to do with a diner, I forgot the name.”

  So, Bethany had come to me. I don't know how she had found out about the fact that I owned this strip club, as I had only told her about the fitness club. I guess she had some sleuthing skills of her own. But here she was, ready to talk . . . playing right into my hands. I knew she would come around eventually. And now I just had to play my cards right – which, considering the circumstances she found herself in may not be too difficult – and she would be mine.

  “I'll go talk to her,” I said. “Go downstairs and clear out one of the private rooms so she and I can talk without distractions.”

  “Sure thing boss, I'll do that.”

  He walked out and as he did, I smiled. I couldn't wait to talk to her . . .

  CHAPTER 6

  Bethany

  “Well come on Manny,” I said, “there are customers coming in, and now we're way behind schedule because of all of this. There's nothing we can do about it right at this moment, so let's at least show the customers that we do have that we're here and ready to serve them.”

  “That's right Miss Verde, that's right. We gots ta' keep them customers happy. It ain't too late ta turn all a' this around, despite everything that damn Sal has done. Keep yo' head up, an' yo spirits up, an' we can turn things around. I know we can.”

  I still didn't think I could tell him about the Ben Sciotti thing. He was so worried about the Coup Militant guys that I didn't want to pile anything else onto his plate, not right now. We headed inside the diner and then I closed the back door, and made sure it was locked securely from the inside. I didn't want any more surprise visits today.

  As the first customers started filing through the door, I noticed the ripped up “contract” Ben Sciotti had showed me lying on the floor, along with his business card, which I had also torn up. I certainly didn't want any of the customers picking it up and piecing it together and reading it, so I hurried past them, smiling and being polite, and quickly picked up all the paper fragments and stuffed them into my back pocket. I would dispose of them later.

  After that I hurried back behind the counter and took the first couple of orders, which were, thankfully simple enough for me and Manny to whip up in a hurry. At least something was going right today. If anyone had asked for a three-course breakfast, though, I think I would have broken down in tears.

  After I had finished helping Manny out with the orders in the back, I got everything together on a tray and went around to the tables to serve the customers myself. I was also thankful that not too many people had come in, because now as a result of what the CM guys had done – smashing up a couple of glass tables – we were short on tables too. And I didn't know what I would do if there was a rush around lunch time, which there sometimes was, because I certainly didn't have the money to buy new tables right now.

  I served the last of the orders, and then went back to take a seat behind the counter, as it didn't look like anyone else was coming in. Finally, I had a little time to reflect on the situation. Now, here I was, being forced to come up with a thousand dollars in less than twenty-four hours on the one hand, and then on the other having just been told that Sal was so indebted to the mob that he had sold me to them.

  Ben Sciotti had seemed, weirdly enough, like a fair and reasonable man, outside of the fact that he now thought that he “owned” me, whatever exactly that entailed. That alone seemed like enough to write him off, but I did have a good innate sense of character judgment, and my sixth sense was telling me, in quite a strong manner, that despite the sort of person Ben seemed to be on the outside, that inside, somehow, he actually had a decent heart.

  It sounded crazy, it really did, especially in light of the insane “contract” he had made with Sal, but I almost felt as if he might be able to help me – without owning me. Maybe there was some sort of a way that he and I could work something out. I mean, at the bottom of this was a question about money, money Sal owed. And obviously, it had to be a huge amount, but perhaps I could arrange to pay it off over time. Maybe there was something – besides myself and my body – that I could offer Ben.

  I don't know. It didn't sound like a good idea to get involved with the mafia. But at this point, I was at my wit's end and I felt as if I was totally out of options. The CM guys – now my sixth sense about them had been unequivocal in its reading of them as evil people. They had made their demands clear, and they had made their threats very clear as well. There would be no reasoning with those guys, and if they didn't get their thousand dollars tomorrow, I didn't know what they would do to me.

  Ben would be able to help me out with that. I knew he would. But . . . But if I asked him to help me, what would he want in return? I already knew exactly what he wanted – he had laid that out pretty clearly in that “contract” - but myself and my body, these were not things I was prepared to simply hand over to him. No, there had to be another way.

  What I needed was to find out more about Ben Sciotti, without actually talking to him, and my answer to this little conundrum walked into the door just as I was thinking about all of this.

  “Hey there Bethany,” said Scott with a smile.

  Scott Peek was a private investigator, and had been one of my mother's friends and just a general family friend ever since I could remember. I think he and my mother had gone to high school together or something, and I was sure that he had had a thing for her at one stage. Man, if only she had chosen him instead of Sal . . . but now was not the time to think of things that could have been.

  “Hi Scott, how are you doing?” I asked.

  He brushed a wisp of gray hair away from his craggy face and sauntered over to the counter.

  “Oh, things are alright,” he said. “Real busy with work. Got hired by this rich business executive, who's my age, to trail his young trophy wife around town. She's running up debts all over town, and he thinks that she's cheating on him. She's your age, or maybe even a couple years younger, actually. Oh, and she's got a shady past, that one, wow. Turns out she starred in a couple of porn flicks, was in rehab a few times, serious coke addiction, meth . . . You name it, she's done it. She's keeping me real busy with all the dirt I'm gathering on her, wow! That dumb rich old fool is really getting taken for a ride.”

  “And is she cheating on him?”

  He threw back his head and roared with laugh
ter.

  “Oh, only with about eight different guys – and those are just the ones I've confirmed! There are another five suspected suitors. Poor old guy is gonna have a heart attack when I show him everything – but he asked for the truth, and as ugly as it is, I'm gonna give it to him, no holds barred.”

  I nodded.

  “She sounds like a real piece of work.”

  “Oh, she is, believe me. There are women in county lockup who seem like angels when you put 'em next to this one.”

  I chuckled.

  “So, what will you be having today, Scott?”

  He peered at the donuts, and only then noticed that the glass in front of the display cabinet had been smashed out.

  “Whoa, what happened to the display cabinet?”

  I didn't want to tell him the truth – being a P.I., he would certainly start asking all sorts of questions and would quickly find out the truth about what had happened here, which I didn't want to disclose to anyone, not right now at least.

  “Oh, I was mopping the floor, and Manny slipped in a puddle of water and fell right onto it.”

  “Oh boy! Did he get hurt? I know someone who ran into a glass door and shattered it, they ended up severing a tendon in their arm and having to get stitches in three different places!”

  “That sounds bad, wow. But no, uh, Manny is fine.”

  “Good, good. Well I hope your insurance covers accidents like that. You guys gotta get some new glass in here.”

  “Yeah we do. So, what will you be having?”

  “Um, I'll take one of those frosted donuts, and my usual coffee.”

  “Alright, one frosted donut and a cup of coffee black with two sugars coming up.”

  “Thanks Bethany.”

  I called out the order to Manny in the back, and then decided to try steer the topic onto Ben Sciotti.

  “Say Scott, you're a P.I., have you ever heard of Ben Sciotti?”

  He nodded.