Dark Secrets(7)

"Let me help you out," Danny said, shrugging. "I will be out in that back alley around... three-thirty after we close up here. You want to have this out, we can do it then. If not, that's fine too. But let me tell you, I catch you putting a hand on Faith or any other woman in front of me again, you'll be eating through a tube for the rest of your life."

Faith was pretty sure she heard Anthony say something about him being a 'dead man' on the way toward the back of the building where he punched the door to the kitchen open, no doubt to go spread his misery to the back of the house staff. The poor guys. Luckily, at least half didn't speak English. And Anthony didn't speak Spanish so he didn't know how they were making fun of him right to his face. 

"He put his hands on you a lot?" Danny asked as he nodded at a customer who ordered a Manhattan.

"Not unless he wants to risk broken bones. Which, on occasion, he does."

"Faith teaches Ju Jitsu," Eleanor offered, drawing Danny's attention.

"Krav Maga," Faith corrected. "I teach Krav Maga, Eleanor."

"Right. Sure. Whatever. They're all the same."

They weren't. Not in the least. There was a huge difference between Brazilian Ju Jitsu and Israeli special forces training, something she knew Danny knew all about because that move he pulled with Anthony, yeah, that was straight out of the Krav Maga playbook. She couldn't help but wonder how and where he learned that.

"That would be like saying ballroom dancing and club dancing are the same thing," he surprised her by saying.

"Do you do martial arts, Danny?" Eleanor asked, leaning half over the bar so that her boobs spilled out of the top of her dress.

"I've taken some classes," he shrugged it off.

Faith's eyes got small as she looked at his profile. He moved way too quickly, way too confidently for someone who just took 'some classes'. Why he would play that down was beyond her.

The man was an anomaly.

And she hated not having someone's number.

That was her thing- she was good at reading people.

If he was going to be working there, then it was her new mission to make sure she figured him out.

"I'm sorry, man, but you can't be driving," Danny's voice said, drawing her attention a few hours later. It wasn't what he said that made her stop stacking dirty glasses. It was the apologetic way he said it.

"Who the fuck do you think you are, new guy?" Burt, a regular, a drunk, and a nasty one at that, demanded, slamming his beer glass down on the counter so loud she was going to toss it just in case it splintered somewhere.

"This would be Danny and Danny gets to take your keys if you are shitfaced," she explained, reaching for the glass and tossing it.

"Faith, I don't know how many..."

"You've had eight beers, Burt. And don't think I don't know about the two shots either. You're not driving and if you give him any problems, you know what I am going to do with the keys..." she trailed off, making Burt stiffen.

"You're a real bitch, you know that, Faith?"

"Oh, I know it," she called to his retreating form.

When she turned back to Danny, he was smirking, waving the keys in front of her face. "What'd you do to his keys to make him call you a bitch?"

Faith smiled, taking the keys from him and tossing them into a bowl on the back bar where they always kept them. "I threw them down the storm drain out front."

"You're serious?" he asked, sounding completely floored by the idea.

"Yep. I don't like having assholes threaten me. That week, I was under strict orders to not put my hands on another customer. So you gotta do what you gotta do."

"How many customers did you put your hands on to get that kind of warning?"

"That week?" she asked, capping the bottles on the back bar. "There was a bachelor party. Eighteen drunk and disrespectful men. They were lucky only four ended up with something broken or bloody."

"How the fuck do you keep this job?" he asked as he shouldered her out of the way so he could do the heavy lifting, bringing the three trays of dirty glasses into the kitchen.

"Vin and I... we have an agreement," she said cryptically as she took off toward the office in the back to do the bar tally and order more booze.

It wasn't exactly an agreement.

Agreements are generally gotten to amicably.



       
         
       
        

There wasn't much amicable about how she got and kept a job at Lam and held a small bit of control over a man as feared as Vin D'Onofrio.

But that was none of his damn business.