Dark Secrets(2)

That being said, he was the head of a mob family.

He wasn't a good guy.

She had seen with her own eyes what he was capable of. One of her best friends, Xander Rhodes, had stood by and watched as the man had taken a tire iron to his client's kneecaps.

He did bad things.

And she was wondering if that was what she was picking up on, if he was about to stir some shit.

"Hey Vin," she said, taking the bucket out from under the counter and loading it up with hot water, sanitizer, soap, and bleach- a personal combination she used to clean the bar. "How were things?" she asked, meaning the past two nights, Monday and Tuesday, her nights off.

"This place falls apart without you, you know that," he said, patting her hand, being one of the very few men she would allow to do such a thing.

"Oh yeah, it looks like a wreck," she said dryly, gesturing toward the immaculate bar. Immaculate because that was how she demanded it look when she came in.

"Tony had to be here until five AM to get it this way," he said and she knew that that meant he had to be there until five AM as well, something he could not have been pleased about.

"So he's fired," she guessed, exhaling hard. Just what she needed.

"Of course he's fired," Vin said with a hand wave as if it would be absurd if he gave the guy the benefit of the doubt.

"I can't keep training all these guys, Vin," she said, never being one to sugarcoat anything, not even to her boss. "And, not to mention, having to work seven nights a week until they can handle the bar themselves. You've got to fucking stop being so trigger happy with the 'f' word around here. I'm sick of it."

"Faith..."

"No. Don't Faith me. For once, I'm not being unreasonable. I've trained five guys over the past six months. This is insane. Hire someone who knows how to keep a bar clean and doesn't drink on the job and doesn't try to slip shit into the drinks because some fuckwad pays him a hundred bucks to do it."



       
         
       
        

"That was one guy and you caught him before anything could happen."

"Yeah, but not before I had to find a girl trying to make her way to the bathroom and falling three times like she was drunk off her ass when I knew she had only been served a goddamn martini. This shit is unacceptable."

"Look, you don't like my hires, fine. I will give you a final say on the guy I chose. You don't like him, I'll bring in some more candidates."

"You know, it wouldn't actually hurt you to hire a woman," she said, waving a hand out. Every single one of the people he had hired since she started working there too many years before had been male. "You do realize men come to bars to see women. They like women behind the bar. They tip better and they order more."

"Most women aren't like you, Faith."

"Don't be condescending," she snapped. "Just because the women you have known in your life are all shrinking violets doesn't mean we all are. Most female bartenders can handle themselves."

"It's another element of danger this bar doesn't need. Don't want to have to call the cops in because some guy got handsy."

"But me taking a baseball bat to the grab-assers, that's totally an element of danger that is acceptable," she said, smirking.

She didn't fuck around. Vin knew that and had a begrudging respect for it. Hardly a week went by when she wasn't half-pulling a guy across the top of the bar to scream at them or coming out from behind the bar with a bat to chase them out of the building.

"By now, Faith, most of the men know to steer clear of you. Look," he said, waving both of his hands in a peace gesture, "I don't want to have to babysit a new bartender and I don't want the door guys to have to look away from the door to make sure she isn't getting hurt in some way. It has to be a man and you will just have to accept that."

Faith shook her shoulders, trying to release some of the tension she felt and hoping that maybe the tension was because of yet another employee shake up and not something worse.

"Fine, but if I say he can't do it, Vin, he can't fucking do it. It's going to take a month at least to train him. That's thirty days of me not having a night off which is going to make me pissy."

"Are you ever not pissy?" he asked, but tempered it with a smile. "Your word is law on this, Faith. You don't like him, he's out the door, no questions."

"Okay. Good. When can I see him?"

"Well..." Vin said, looking sheepish.

"Well what?" she asked, nodding her head at Rodrigo from the kitchen who just brought a flat of rocks glasses in from the wash so she could stack them under the bar.