Page 7 of Before

Was it all that much of a shock there was illegal bets going on?

Not really.

She also noticed the fact that the people closest to the ring were served first, and were also the patrons who the servers returned to far more often than they did anyone else in the bar.

The guy Cassie’s boyfriend pointed to, however, didn’t sit at a table like the rest did. Instead, he was one of the only people, other than the guest beside him, who sat in leather, high-back chairs with a small table in the middle for drinks that were regularly refilled before the glasses even had a chance to be emptied. He wore a suit, his cold expression didn’t change, and he rarely took his dark gaze away from the ring even when the man beside him became more and more animated the longer they spoke.

Cassie nodded, sipping on the gin and tonic the server in a skin-tight dress had brought over earlier when they’d finally managed to gain the woman’s attention on her fifth stroll by their table. “Yeah, what about him?”

“Mafia.”

Her friend’s eyes went wide. “Really?”

Matty nodded, grinning. “Yeah, friend of a friend knows the guy. Comes from the Marcellos. Trying to get on their radar is crazy hard. We’re a fucking blip but not for long, baby.”

Gigi did her best not to roll her eyes at the way her friend seemed to soak up every single word that came out of her boyfriend’s mouth. He was a big talker who liked to flex and name drop, but she didn’t think that he understood very much of what he spoke about at the end of the day.

Still, her friend liked it.

The bad boy.

Late-night calls; vague details about where he had been and what he’d been doing while he was there; the money. When he had it, that was.

More than once, Cassie had attempted to get Gigi hooked up with one of Matty’s friends. A guy from the crew, she liked to say. Hell fucking no. Her life was already a spectacularly busy mess without adding something like a guy with shady business into it, too.

She wasn’t that hard up for dick, either.

“What’s his name?” Cassie asked.

“Andino—”

“I’m gonna head to the bar and just order another drink,” Gigi said, pushing up from the uncomfortable wooden chair at their corner table. “Because I’ve waved at that girl five times, and the last time she even looked at me.”

But still didn’t make her way over. It wasn’t like the server could pretend she hadn’t seen Gigi that time. No doubt, the black romper and leather jacket she had on that matched the three-inch pumps on her feet didn’t scream the same kind of wealth as the suits and dresses of the patrons closer to the ring. And that was exactly why the girls working the floor selectively chose who they wanted to serve at any given time.

Bitches.

“Oh, bring me back another of these,” Cassie said, waving her half-full glass of gin and tonic.

“They won’t bother IDing you.”

She passed Matty a look, but he was more concerned with ogling the guy in the black suit across the room that, for whatever reason, he seemed to have a fucking hard-on about. If the guy really was mafia, as he’d said, then she didn’t understand why he would even want to mess with that kind of trouble.

Matty was bad news, sure.

Not that kind of bad news.

Whatever.

It wasn’t Gigi’s business.

“Sure, thanks for the info,” she muttered, stepping away from the table. If they cared or noticed that she left, well she couldn’t say because she didn’t bother to glance back over her shoulder.

The phone in her clutch burned a hole in her mind as she made her way through an overcrowded floor to get to the far end of the bar. She managed to find one stool that wasn’t full. All it took was one good look at the three girls and one guy working the crowd gathering at the bar for drinks to know it was going to be a while before she would get her drinks. Not to mention, the constant stream of servers that returned with trays full of empties and ready for refills.

Instead, her mind drifted back to the phone as she waited to be noticed and served. She wasn’t going to throw up her hands and shout at the bartenders who were already moving as fast as they possibly could like everyone else was doing. Besides, wasn’t there enough noise in the place without her adding to it?

She thought so.