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Just in case, I heave myself up off the floor, stumbling to a strategic spot in the middle of the room, gasping in pain while puffing myself up, straightening my back and spreading my legs wide, an easy human target to take a bullet meant for my daughter.
Not happening.
Not today.
“You’re going to regret that.”
I press a hand to my throbbing cheek and glare, my eyes welling with hot, angry tears.
The only thing I regret, asshole, is that I missed.
C A M
5:51 p.m.
Maxim Petrakis’s office is housed on the back end of a strip club, one of the seven he owns in the city, and smack in the middle of a seedy thoroughfare known for its massage parlors and streetwalkers. The parking lot is packed with the predinner crowd, shift workers and folks sneaking in a pit stop on their way home from the office.
Last stop on the desperation highway—for them and for me.
I find a spot at the edge and slide out of the truck into air heavy with noise—the steady bass beating through the club walls, the traffic like crashing ocean waves on the overpass ahead.
I jog across the pavement for a door most patrons wouldn’t even notice. Plain, unmarked, unremarkable. A smooth slice of solid steel set flush into the brick, and painted the same bright white. No handle, nothing at all to grab on to—which is probably a good thing, since whoever tries to bust through uninvited is likely to get shot.
A male voice booms from a tiny speaker built into the wall. “Sir, the entrance is on the opposite side of the building.”
I tilt my face to the camera hanging from the roofline just above the door. “Cameron Lasky. Mr. Petrakis is expecting—”
There’s a buzzing, followed by a sharp click. I lean on the door with a shoulder, and it swings open to reveal a wall of bouncers. Two giant men, both Black, both heavily armed. One of them tells me to spread it, then pats me down with hands the size of my feet.
“I guess it’s a good thing I left my gun in the truck, huh?”
Neither bouncer cracks a smile.
They separate, opening the view down a clean, modern hallway. Glass-lined rooms, polished concrete floors, LED lighting. The music is louder here, but not deafening because these rooms are soundproofed, fireproofed, bulletproofed, every other proofed you can think of. Every dollar that gets shoved across the bar or tucked into a stripper’s G-string gets counted and double counted here, millions and millions of them per year. Unlike in the restaurant business, Maxim’s safes are bursting with cash.
“Third door on the left,” one of the bouncers says.
I thank him despite knowing the way—and even if I didn’t, the cloud of smoke pouring out of the open door would be a big, fat clue. Maxim Petrakis doesn’t give a shit about the state’s Smokefree Air Act. He’s spent his entire career skirting laws and ignoring regulations, and there’s not a politician or policeman in Georgia who can make him stop now. If you don’t like your boss puffing on a cigarette all day long, then don’t work here. It’s as simple as that.
He’s wrapping up a call on speakerphone, the only piece of technology on his glass-topped desk. I give him a bit of space and wait in the doorway.
“That’s not what we agreed to, Tony. It’s not even close.”
As usual, Maxim is impeccably dressed. Custom suit, three-piece and pin-striped. Double-knotted silk tie. Pocket scarf, arranged just so. His hair is still thick and white, combed straight back off his forehead. Say what you will of Maxim’s businesses, but he’s got the mobster look down pat.
On the other end of the line, Tony launches into what promises to be a longwinded rebuttal, which Maxim cuts off ten seconds in.
“Tomorrow. You have until the end of the day.” He punches a button and gives the phone a noisy shove. “Well, well, well. If it ain’t the Steak King, as I live and breathe.”
Barely. Maxim’s lungs sound like a rock tumbler filled with gravel, a noisy in and out that makes my own chest seize in sympathy. Maxim smokes like a chimney. He doesn’t exercise or sleep. He eats fried potatoes and red meat drowning in butter sauce, which he washes down with booze. But he’s trim and energetic and when he’s zipping around town in his convertible Maserati, he looks like a million bucks. Maxim is like one of those deep-water sharks—he’ll live to be four hundred.
I lift a hand in greeting. “Maxim. You’re looking good. Have you been working out again?”
He laughs, a harsh, phlegmy sound. “Flattery will get you nowhere, kid. Now sit down and tell me some good news. You look like shit, by the way.”
I glance behind me for one of the matching white leather chairs stationed across from his desk, and that’s when I see him—a guy I didn’t notice before, leaning against the far glass wall like a silent sentry. I take in his oily hair, his black leather jacket, and he lifts a pocked chin in greeting.
I turn back, sinking onto the chair. I don’t love the idea of an audience, especially considering what I came here to do—beg Maxim for another loan, a whopper, and before I’ve paid back what I owe him on the last one—but I also don’t have a choice. The clock is ticking, each second pounding with urgency in my chest.