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“In any neighborhood,” she said in agreement. “I have my reasons.”
“Tell me.”
Her next exhale was almost a laugh. “You’re kidding me, right? What do you care?”
“What do you have to hide?”
“I’m not hiding anything,” she said. “But I don’t owe you a damn thing.” Wow, okay, defensive wasn’t a good stance. She eased off the gas. “Look, if you don’t want me coming back, I won’t come back. This is an easy fix.”
And boy had she misinterpreted the invitation upstairs. Now she almost wished sex was his motive. Drawing the attention of the McDades, the suspicious of nefarious motives attention, was dangerous. No one would care who her daddy was before she was butchered and strung up. After, maybe, but what would she care? She’d be dead. Dead was never a good outcome.
“What’s your name?”
So cool… The aloof attitude didn’t bother her. Except it sort of did. Her lower back prickled in a really weird way. One she didn’t like. Her hips wanted to move in response to it, to sort of squirm against the vibration of his brogue in the air as it carried to her. It made her itchy and tense. Keep calm. Chill. Deep breath.
Nausea tumbled low in her belly.
Answering his question could either free or kill her. Fifty-fifty odds weren’t the kind to play with in a room like this.
“Do you want me to leave?” she asked.
“I want you to tell me why you visit here every night.”
“The music is good,” she said. “I enjoy being around people.”
As one corner of his mouth twitched, he licked his lips and turned his chair just a fraction to look at the guy by the curtain.
“Lies easy.”
“They always do, Ire,” Curtain Guy said.
Whoa, boy, Curtain Guy was Irish too. Not Americanized Irish like his boss, his accent was the full deal. How did people go about their business around that accent?
McDade rolled himself in at the desk. “Take her to the basement.”
“Wait…” she said when the other three men started toward her. “The basement? I know about the basement…” She held up both hands, but the duo of goons grabbed her anyway. Curtain Guy walked around to nudge her toward the exit from behind. “About the people taken down there who are never seen again…” Fighting the grip on her arms, she tried to dig her heels in and resist Curtain Guy’s insistence. “About the things you do to people, the disfigurement… how you torture women for your sexual pleasure…” Dropping her weight, she yanked left to right, determined to get away from her assailants. On the threshold of the stairs, desperation freed the truth. “Vex! I’m here because of Evander Manzani!”
“Hold.”
The brogue again. The guy at her back stepped aside and, although the grip of the two thugs stayed strong, they gave her enough leeway to twist and look at the boss behind the desk.
She blew her hair from her face. “Evander Manzani…” Known as Vex on the street. Even saying his name tightened her chest. “I come here because he can’t get in. Him and his people. They can’t… get to me here.”
His head bobbed in a simple backward nod. The thugs let her go and McDade’s lazy hand moved in a single finger point toward the rug. She touched her cleavage and there was another subtle nod. Straightening her dress, she tried to be graceful about sweeping her purse from the floor in her return to her previous spot on the stag head.
“You want McDade protection,” he stated like it was fact.
“No,” she said, adamant in gesture and gaze. “I am absolutely not asking for McDade protection.” Because, for one thing, it came with a price. “This is not a serious… It’s stupid. It’s childish…” The slight descent of his brow sparked a frantic shot of fiery panic inside her. “No, not… Not you. You’re not…” Babbling? Was she babbling? What the hell was wrong with her? Inhaling, she held the breath and then let it go. “Look, Evander Manzani is a child. A thirty-four-year-old child. We have history. Ridiculous history. I’m the toy he never got to play with. That’s all this is. It is not a part of your war, a part of your… whatever. I got sick of them showing up at my place, sick of his stupid games. I came here because I was left alone.”
“You get hit on every night.”
Several times and it unnerved that someone on his crew noticed. “That I can deal with,” she said. “Evander Manzani is two bullets short of a full clip, okay? Something, someday, eventually, will make him snap. I may not be involved in his world, your world, but I know enough about it not to want any part of it. Right now, he thinks it’s a game. One day, he’ll get tired of that game.”
“And take what he wants?”
“Even he wouldn’t be that stupid,” she muttered, though sometimes wondered if arrogance outweighed good sense with him.
Did Evander actually have any of the latter in the first place? Unlikely.
