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ChapterTwo
MASON
The girl in the shop couldn’t have been more than eighteen, but I couldn’t get her off my mind as I took the turn to park in the underground parking garage. My penthouse was sixteen stories up but there was a private elevator waiting just for me. I took the cup of gas station coffee out of the cup holder, surprised that the cup was still hot.
I wouldn’t normally drink cheap coffee but when you needed a shot of caffeine as badly as I did, you took what you could get. My flight back from Russia was far too long, even with the private jets at my disposal. For a moment, a memory flashed in my mind. A cold dock, a body floating face down in the water, men with grim faces staring at me, waiting on orders as I put away the pistol I always carried when I was back in my homeland.
I pushed the thought away, knuckled the button to start the elevator, and sipped at the coffee. It was as bad as I expected it to be, but it was exactly what I needed. I forced my mind to go blank as the elevator rose, concentrating on…nothing.
My name is Mason Andrews, not a very Russian sounding name, but my father is American. His parents changed Andropov to Andrews when they came to the land of the free, to fit in, assimilate. My mother was Russian, born and bred, through and through, but she bowed down to my father’s wishes and named me Mason instead of Sergei or Alexi.
It was through her that I ended up in what some might call the Russian Mafia. Her family was rich, unbelievably rich, but so was my fathers. Both had connections back in the old country and I was drawn in from an early age. What can I say? I’m built for the job.
The elevator doors opened up to reveal a white living room decorated with black leather furniture, as much of the Chicago skyline as I could see from this floor, and dim lighting. I waited, testing the feel of the house before I relaxed and stepped off the elevator.
It was obvious my cleaner had kept the place dusted in my two-week absence, but nothing else was out of place. A brief flash of dazed but dazzling blue eyes halted my footsteps until I shook my head to get the memory out of my head. Too young. Way too young for me.
But she was so sweetly, perfectly innocent.
Normally, I like my women dirty, naughty, and aware of how to make a man come. Innocence had never appealed to me. Especially not from a girl so young.
But Lacy…
I’d read her name from her nametag, and I’d liked the way it felt on my tongue when I’d said it. I’d been flattered by obvious fascination she’d had for me, but she was just a kid. Better to forget her and never stop at that gas station again.
A buzz from my pocket stopped me on the way to my bedroom. I dug the sleek phone out and answered it when I saw it was a friend of mine, a well-known stripper and now owner of one of the hottest clubs in Chicago. Hottest but also extremely exclusive, otherwise, I wouldn’t be a patron.
“What’s up, Ginger?” I asked, the smile on my face obvious in my voice.
“You dropping by tonight, Mace?” she asked, using the nickname only a few people got away with. I’d known her since she was eighteen. Back then, she was too wise for her years but savvy enough to figure out how to make a bad situation work to her benefit. She was one of the privileged few that got to call me that.
“Maybe. I just got back in. Let me shower, and then I’ll decide.” I answered and walked back to my room, then into the bathroom to turn the shower on. “What’s going down tonight?”
“The usual, babe. Just the usual.” Which meant a lot more than it sounded like.
The Red Rose Club was a decadent place where illusions were sold, and people paid sky-high prices for discretion. Ginger made sure that her staff-and her clients-maintained the highest of health standards as well as secrecy. That was one of the reasons the club did so well and kept law enforcement at bay. Ginger was smart like that, but then, I always knew that about her.
The usual at the Red Rose Club meant mind-blowing entertainment by the highest caliber of men and women Ginger could find and the kind of sex that most people could only fantasize about. In fact, Ginger specialized in fantasies.
She’d been trying to figure mine out for five years now, but I wasn’t your typical guy. I didn’t have one set fantasy and sex? Well, sex was sex. I needed it like any other living, breathing human being, but I hadn’t found that one thing that would turn my head yet.
Blue eyes. Innocent captivated blue eyes. Had any other woman ever looked at me like she had?
Fuck, that girl was in my head again.
An almost angry flick of my wrist turned on the waterfall of hot water that cascaded down the black-tiled shower stall in a wave. I had to get that girl out of my head so maybe a trip to Ginger’s was in order for tonight, after all.
By the time I got out of the shower I was certain that was exactly what I needed. The shower combined with rotgut coffee to wake me back up. I brushed my teeth, quickly dressed in black Armani trousers, a gray Armani shirt decorated with a small blue square print and ran my fingers through wet black hair. It would dry on the way.
That would do.
I didn’t bother to shave the three-day growth of beard from my face. I liked the rough and ready look it gave me, so I left it. I remembered to throw the coffee cup away before I picked up my keys and headed down to the car. It would take twenty minutes to get to Ginger’s if traffic wasn’t too bad. I thought about stopping to get something to eat on the way but decided to eat there. Her menu was limited but always filled with delicacies.
When I stopped the car, a birthday present from my mother on my thirtieth birthday, the electric engine went silent, and I looked around the sublevel parking garage. I should have probably called one of my bodyguards to come with me, but it was Ginger’s. I’d be safe here. She made sure the place had top-notch security for people just like me, that lived on the fringe of good and evil.
I flicked through a limited set of plastic cards on my keyring until I found the one that would open the elevator to take me up to Ginger’s club. When the doors opened a few minutes later I was on the sixth floor of the building with a woman dressed in a Roman toga eagerly holding out a red rose for me.
“May you find a partner worthy of this delicate rose, sir,” the pretty young redhead said with a mischievous wink.
