Page 18 of The Good Girl Effect

I continue scanning the room for Jack, but it’s so crowded, and I just can’t imagine that he’s standing amid the horde of people here.

When the bartender returns with my glass, I decide to be a little nosy. Resting my arms on the bar, I lean toward her. “This is a long shot, but does anyone named Jack happen to work here?”

“Jack St. Claire?”

My heart hammers in my chest. “Yes.”

“Well, he owns the place,” she replies, and my eyebrows shoot upward.

He owns this club?It’s certainly not what I expected for his job, but it all makes sense. His strange work hours, his constantly being gone at night.

“Do you have a meeting with him?” she asks.

I clear my throat, feeling uncomfortable. “I actually sort of work for him.”

“Oh,” she says with a wide-eyed, knowing expression on her face. “Well, he’s probably downstairs.”

“What’s downstairs?” I ask.

“The club,” she replies with a chuckle.

I glance around me. “Isn’t this the club?”

She laughs again. “You must be new here.”

Isn’t it obvious?

She points across the club, and I follow her finger to see an elevator guarded by another man in a black suit. “Tell him you need to meet Jack. He’ll let you down, and you should probably be able to find him in the back somewhere.”

“Thanks,” I stammer awkwardly. After drinking the water, I follow the bartender’s instructions.

What on earth is down this elevator that needs a security guard, and why is Jack down there? Why is that considered the club and not this?

I’ve never been more confused in my life. Warning bells are going off in my mind, and I suddenly remember Phoenix giving me stringent instructions not to ask about his job or go poking around where I’m not supposed to. And yet here I am, standing in a club, or above a club, that Jack apparently owns.

You’re causing trouble again, Camille.

Perhaps if I were better at following instructions or listening to warnings when I’m given them, I would turn away now and go home. I would put all this to rest and let my curiosity subside.

But I am none of those things.

Instead, I’m reckless and nosy, and I wouldn’t recognize a boundary if it slapped me in the face. If this is how I lose my job, then this is how I lose my job, but I can’t turn away now.

“I’m here for Jack St. Claire,” I say to the man by the elevator. Then I point back at the bartender. “She told me to tell you that.”

He lets out a grunt as he nods at the bartender. Then he jabs his finger against the button, and the doors slide open, allowing me into the elevator. I’m practically shaking as it takes me down alone. Once it opens, it takes everything in me to step out.

It’s immediately a little quieter and even darker as I exit the elevator and walk down a narrow black hallway. A red neon sign above the inky black curtain ahead simply saysLegacy.

Something about this has my insides screaming,I don’t belong here.

What if Jack is in the Mafia, and I’m about to walk into some secret meeting where everybody in the room will turn to me with guns drawn? What if it’s some seedy underground dealingof drugs or other black-market goods? What if it’s a kinky sex dungeon and I walk in on something I really shouldn’t see?

As all these thoughts swirl anxiously around in my mind, it is a sudden reminder that I don’t know who I’m working for. I could be employed by a very dangerous man, and I would have no idea.

Not that it matters. I love Bea already, and I would take care of her even if her father were some drug-dealing Mafia killer.

As I slip through the dark curtain at the end of the hall beneath the sign, what I find is nothing like I expected. It’s not nearly as crowded as it is upstairs. There’s still music playing, but it’s slower, more sultry, and not as loud. The lights are dim, but they’re also a pinkish shade of red, and the entire room has a sense of sexy energy about it.