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I get back to the club and go straight for Mav’s office, telling Rosey to follow me. “I have us a double date,” I announce.
Mav frowns. “I’m married.”
“Me and Rosey,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“What’s that got to do with me? And Arthur’s gonna lose his mind.”
“Arthur knows, it’s to help him. I met Danny and Curtis tonight. Danny took a shine to me, asked me on a date. I think we can get something on her from them, but Arthur told me to run it by you.”
“We could kill them. Once she’s lost those two, then what?” asks Rosey.
“No,” snaps Mav, glaring at her. “Absolutely not. Meli isn’t going on your little killing spree, Harley Quinn, so forget that idea.”
I laugh. “I don’t think we’ll need to. We can get all the information we need by using our charm.”
“Okay. Good work. I’ll have to put someone on you,” says Mav.
“Mav, you can’t do that. It’ll blow everything. They’re not going to open up if—”
“Fine,” says Rosey, taking me by the arm and pulling me from the office. “Whatever.”
I scowl at her. “What are you doing? These guys can’t be jumpy, or they won’t slip-up.”
“First of all, how long have we been doing this? You know as well as I do, he’ll never let us out without his eyes and ears following. Secondly, since when have we ever followed club protocol? Set the date up and we’ll tell Mav the wrong day and time.”
I grin, pulling out my mobile. “On it.”
ARTHUR
I stare at the steak and salad Jolene prepared and cooked. “It looks good,” I tell her, because it really does, “thanks.”
“Has a woman ever cooked for you before?” she asks, pouring herself a glass of wine.
I shake my head. “But I’m not going to talk about my private life with you, Jolene.”
She shrugs. “Fair enough, I don’t blame you.”
“Why were your thugs in my home tonight?” I was prepared to throw them out after I left Meli, but they’d already gone.
She pauses, mid-chew. “Thugs?”
“The Palmer brothers.”
“They’re not thugs, Arthur, and if I heard right, you and your brothers started out just like them and look at you now. Do people refer to you as thugs?”
“The difference is, when my brothers and I were climbing our way to the top, we did it with dignity and grace. We didn’t take down men who could become alliances.”
“Is that what you would have been, Arthur? Even without my brothers beside me?”
“Your brothers were never beside you, they were in front. Not because they were men, but because they worked to get there. You were younger, it’s the luck of the draw, but you didn’t work your way up to become like them. You cut them out and took what was theirs. So, no, I wouldn’t have worked with you having found out how you got there. I would have if you’d worked for it.”
“You have no idea what I went through to get here,” she says.
“Then tell me.”
“They never listened. They never gave me a chance.”
“Boo-fucking-hoo. There are other ways to become good at what you do, even setting up on your own. You could have still signed your goons and gone out alone.”
