CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Two months earlier…
Chandler was already at Club Stiletto when I walked in. He sat at our usual table, a circular booth in the back corner. The bar was empty, but most of the tables around the main stage were occupied.
The hostess pulled the curtain around our booth closed, then licked her lips. “Violet will be your entertainment tonight.”
Soft neon lights glowed against the walls around us. The heavy, black curtain separated us from the rest of the club. A Rhianna song played on the sound system. I wasn’t interested in the tall brunette who wrapped her legs around the silver pole in the middle of our table. Neither was Chandler. We came here for the privacy.
I slid onto the leather seat and rolled my head from side to side, cracking my neck.
“The fuck happened to you?” he asked, eyeing the blood on my hand from where Tatum bit me.
“You don’t even want to know.” I grabbed the tabletop tablet and tapped the screen to order myself a drink. Privacy was priority here. Waitresses only came to the table when summoned by this nifty electronic device with a seven-inch screen and a menu. You could play games on it too, like trivia or some shit, but who wanted to play a computer game when someone was waving their pussy in your face? Not that I gave a shit about anyone’s cunt but Tatum’s.
“No wonder it only lasted four minutes.” He laughed, then took a pull of his beer.
I’d just left Tatum’s dance studio after seeing her for the first time since the night I stole all her firsts. I wanted to steal more. Her breath. Her fight. Her screams. I wanted it all to belong to me. I wanted to make sure every time she clenched her thighs together because her sweet little cunt ached, she thought of me. She would need me, whether she wanted to or not.
The brunette dropped her head, letting her long hair swing across the tabletop.
I focused on Chandler. “I need your resources.”
He leaned back in the booth, splaying his arms out on both sides. His bright eyes danced with mischief against his olive skin. Chandler was adopted by the Carmichael family as an infant. His birth mother was a beautiful blonde cheerleader, and his dad was a dark-skinned quarterback. As a result, Chandler looked like someone had taken a day at the beach, blended it with smooth silk and poured it over chiseled stone. Also, as a result, he would never fully inherit the Carmichael fortune, even though Pierce had given Chandler his last name. Which was why he started making his own way in the world. Chandler did business with people who wouldn’t even do business with my father.
“If you need pussy until Tatum gives it up, there’s one right here.” He pointed his beer bottle toward the girl on the table.
The server showed up with my drink, and I wished I had ordered two.
“Fuck you.” I took a sip and let the whiskey coat my throat. “A month from now, I’m going to be worth a lot of money.”
“And you need my help spending it?”
I shook my head and chuckled. “I need your help staying alive. I’m pretty sure my dad is willing to kill me for it.”
“Jesus. How much money are we talking?”
“Three billion dollars.”
He choked on his beer.
The girl on the table stumbled on her four-inch heels.
I took another drink of my whiskey.
The song changed to something faster, and thankfully, louder.
“So, what do you think he’s going to do? Stage a car accident?”
I shrugged. “Possibly.” That was how he’d handled Huntington’s last lobbyist.
“All right. Then we’ll get you a car. It’ll need to look exactly like yours though. If you start driving something different, it will tip him off that you know. You’ll leave your car parked and use the clone to go wherever you need to go. I’ll keep it at my office, so he won’t have access to it. Text me when you need it, and I’ll send someone to pick you up.” He finished his beer, then set the bottle on the table. “This is good. We can do this. What next?” He grabbed the tablet and ordered another beer.
“I can’t sleep at home. I’ll have to get my own place.”
Fake drug overdoses were a very real thing in my father’s world. Wanna kill someone? Fake an overdose. Maybe that was fucked up, but the fact that we were even sitting here having this conversation was fucked up. Money was power, and power was everything. There was no way I was falling asleep under the same roof with Kipton Donahue once I turned twenty-five.
“You can stay with me until then. What about fires or robberies?”