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Thank the lord she does as I’m begging her to.
“Yes, sir, of course.” I raise an eyebrow at “sir,” and fuck me if that siren smile doesn’t come out, making all sorts of thoughts and ideas run through my head. I look to Marco, who nods as Delilah stands then presses a soft but respectful hand to the center of her back, guiding her out the door the furthest route from Paulie.
Marco deserves a raise.
“What the fuck, Dante?” Paulie shouts as soon as the door clicks behind him.
I stay seated, not even giving him the courtesy of standing.
Respect is earned.
“Paulie, you had a job. You failed that job.”
“She was a good dancer. On stage, no one could touch her. Why not put her back up there?”
“She was a shit dancer, Paulie, even she knows it. I cannot have a mayor’s daughter riding a fucking pole and showing the entire city of Hudson her tits.”
“Why the fuck not?! She’ll bring in the cash. It was already starting to happen!”
“We are not that kind of establishment, Paulie. Period.”
“The fuck, Dante. You tell the world we’ve got Shane Turner’s daughter shaking her ass for cash, the customers will come crawling in. The good ones, the ones who can endure an increase in a cover charge. Ones who would pay good money for a lap dance. They’ll tip the girls great.”
“Is that what you want? The tips? I hear you're collecting them. That shit ends now, Paulie.”
His face goes white from knowing he’s caught, but he keeps that facade.
“Turner’s daughter could make us good money, Dante.”
The greed in his eyes, just past the panic, tells me something I don’t want to see.
“No, Paulie. It’s not what we do here.”
“She could have been a test, working off her father’s debt.”
A rock sinks in my stomach because now I recognize the gleam of greed in his eye.
I’ve seen it before.
His father once had it.
It got his father locked up for life.
“A test?” I ask.
I’ve had my suspicions, heard him murmuring to the capos who are loyal to him over the last year. Of ways to build the family, to make more money, have an endless stream of bitches and power and cash.
That once he leads the family, everything will be theirs. No more of this playing-it-safe shit.
The route is dirty and seedy.
For years after my brother was put away, I assumed I would be next in line. I watched the making of the family, watched it grow, watched it take turns I didn’t so much like. It veered from earning favors to get around permits, from gaining those favors by having politicians and idiotic men in power play right into our hand, to preying on the innocent. Using our power no longer to get ourselves rich and help the community but to do whatever it takes to be at the top of the food chain.
The Carluccio family was once known as a Robin Hood crew in Hudson City. Take from the rich, from the overly powered, and give to the poor. If a woman became a widow, she’d find a stack of cash in a brown paper bag on her front step in a week. When a team needed funding to go to state or the community center needed a roof, there was an anonymous donation.
Was that money earned above the table?
No.
