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“You were going to figure it out sooner or later,” he continues casually. “And I’m sure Akim was going to tell you. He’s just a bit busy right now. Everyone who works here knows the drill. That’s why they’re paid so much.”
Well, that certainly explains the fifty dollars per hour.
I think back to the guns in the back room, and my stomach drops. I don’t know how to act normally around Akim now that I know this. The fact that I pissed him off so much on the opening night of the club is also at the forefront of my mind.
What if I wasn’t a pretty girl?
What if I had been anyone else?
Would he have killed me?
“Why haven’t the police raided this place then? I mean, if he’s that out in the open with it, you’d think he would have been imprisoned for it by now,” I ask.
Rurik laughs, shaking his head. “You think the police give a shit? They work for us. We pay them very well to stay the fuck out of our business. Sometimes they even help us.” He finishes his vodka, laying the glass down hard on the bar.
I reach for it to pour him another one, but he stops me. “If I have another, I won’t be able to stop, and I might just end up telling Luka to go kick rocks,” he says with a straight face.
Even though I’m uncertain whether or not he’s being serious, I take the glass and rinse it out, placing it back with all of the others.
9
Akim
As the club is set to close, I approach the bar to speak with Delilah, who has been working hard all night serving customers and keeping the whole bar area meticulously clean. I’m not sure how sustainable her attention to detail is, but for now, I appreciate how much she values her work.
When I sit down near her at the bar, she doesn’t look directly at me. She only gives me a cautious side-eye, and immediately I know that something isn’t right. Every time she sees me walk past her, she smiles or at least blushes.
Right now, she’s looking at me as though she believes I’ll eat her.
I get up and sit on a barstool closer to her. She doesn’t look up at me, though I can sense that she’s dying to say something to me.
“How do you feel about getting a drink after you’re done cleaning? We can even leave early if you want to,” I say, watching for a change in her expression.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you were part of themafia?”she hisses through her teeth. She glares up at me from behind the bar as she finishes the dishes in the tiny bar sink.
“Who told you that I was?” I ask, trying to gauge whether or not I should give her more details. If it was someone I trust who told her, I can confirm the whole story as long as she doesn’t seem like the type to run to the feds.
“Rurik. He told me all about your business, about the drugs and guns. So what is this club? Is it like... a cover for money laundering? Some kind of slush fund for the mafia to use when shit goes south?” she asks, this time with just a bit more volume in her voice than before.
“Hey, we’ve still got a few people in here. Try to keep your voice down. I know a place we can go and talk about this in more detail. I feel like you deserve that,” I say. Choosing to appeal to her sense of righteous indignation seems appropriate.
She pauses and rolls her eyes toward the ceiling so far that she looks like she’s being possessed by a demon. “Fine, but I’m only staying for one drink. If you need more time to explain than one drink allows, I’m leaving. I didn’t sign up for this,” she replies, putting away the cleaning supplies.
I shrug my shoulders. “That’s not a problem. I only want to leave so that we can speak as friends and not strictly as a boss and his employee,” I reply.
She sighs. “Okay, I’ll put all this away, and we can go. But it’s almost three in the morning, where are we going to go? What’s open?” she asks.
“I know a place. They’ll stay open for me. I always make sure to pay them very well when I need to meet somebody there after hours. They don’t mind,” I say.
She gathers her coat and bag, and we leave together in my car. She’s not nearly as warm toward me as she usually is, even making an effort to sit as far from me as possible in the passenger’s seat.
Even still, she must care enough to want to know.
We arrive at a wine lounge that I frequent on these late nights when I need a place to get away to. The owner and I have had a great working relationship for at least seven years, and he always allows me to stay after hours.
“Where are we?” Delilah asks me as we step out of the car. “I’ve never been to this side of town. I don’t really know it very well,” she confesses, crossing her arms over her chest as a cold wind blows over us.
“We’re in a super-secret location that only the mafia knows about,” I reply, only partially joking. The bar is no secret at all and is actually quite popular with rich socialites during normal business hours.
