AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Frank looks at the ground, avoiding eye contact. “Headed North to Logan.”
That’s a lie. After being so adamant against giving information, he wouldn’t suddenly give away the answers. Refusing to look Levi in the eye indicates lying too. Wherever she is, it’s not Logan.
Levi tosses the folded fifty at Frank. It bounces off his chest and falls to the ground. Frank makes no move to pick up the money, still too proud to sell out Olina. If Levi had a bit more time, he’d fix that pride in a heartbeat.
Back in his unmarked car, Levi follows the directions on his phone to the gentlemen’s club where Olina worked. His blood boils as he imagines her taking her clothes off for other men. How dare his sweet girl show her body to anyone else! She was his—no one else had a right to gaze at her. He prayed that stripping was the only thing she did while working in that sleazy business.
Fifteen minutes later, Levi pulls up to the nondescript building with the flashing neon sign of the strip club’s name. The place is half-dead inside, with a few patrons scattered throughout, watching a single dancer swinging around a pole.
Levi scans the room. It’s usually easy to spot the owner in these types of establishments—they are typically the sleaziest dude in the place, acting like they’re a high-roller.
Sure enough, Levi finds the man he’s looking for. A man of more diminutive stature, with slicked-back hair, wearing a half-open silk shirt, greets patrons while monitoring the stripper. His fingers are littered with gaudy rings, and a gold crucifix hangs around his neck, but Levi doubts the man is religious in any sense of the word.
As Levi nears the man in question, he notices a split lip and bruised cheekbone. He recently had his ass handed to him.
When the man notices Levi, he smiles and flashes his badge.
“Ah, fuck,” he grumbles. “Can this week stop shitting on me already?”
“Let go talk somewhere quieter,” Levi suggests.
The sleazy boss takes Levi toward the back of the club into an office filled with monitors showing security footage. Transfixed, Levi stares at the screens as the owner rambles a mile a minute.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble—I’ve had enough of it this week. Tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you what I know,” the man says with a tired huff as he sits at his desk.
“Are you the owner of this place or the manager?”
“Owner. Name is Benny Gambino.”
Levi pauses. The Gambino name has long been affiliated with the Bianchi mob. Levi hoped the mafia hadn’t taken his girl into the fold of the family—extracting her would be damn near impossible if that was the case. Those fuckers move women all over the country in their flesh trade enterprise.
“I’m looking for a girl who worked here.” Levi shows Olina’s photo to Benny.
Benny’s eyes go wide as he looks at the picture. He raises his hands in alarm. “Look, if she was underage, I didn’t know. She wanted a job, and I gave her one. A fat lot of good it did me too. After taking her in out of the goodness of my heart, she fucking left with themandmy money.”
“Them?” Levi cocks his head at the owner. “Who’s them?”
“Some biker gang. I knew I should have paid more attention to them when they came in, but it was a packed house. I had to make the rounds.”
Benny tells Levi about the night’s events leading up to Olina’s disappearance. Levi nearly shakes with rage at hearing the scuzzbucket talking about his girl and how sexy she was as she danced for the first time.
“Then the dumb bitch got cold feet—stopped dancing in the middle of the fucking song. I had to get a little handsy with her to show her who was boss, you know what I mean? Then this fucking gnarly looking thug pulled a gun on me. His crew emptied my safe—three-hundred-fucking-K—they scared off all my dancers, roughed up my bouncers, and took Opal.”
“Opal?”
Benny points at the picture of Olina. “Yeah, the chick. She was going to be my next big money maker. Her giant fun bags had every man emptying his wallet.”
Levi internally reminds himself not to beat the dirtbag senseless. There was time for that after he got his answers. “What MC took her?”
“Not a clue,” Benny says, frowning. “I’d show you footage, but the gang had some techy cyber hacker—he erased everything from that night and all the footage of your girl I had on file. All I can tell you is that their cuts had a group of birds on it.”
“Colors?”
“Red and black.”
“Are they affiliated with the one percent?”
Benny shrugs. “It wouldn’t surprise me if they were. They were meansonofabitches.”
