Dark Secrets(8)

THREE





Danny





What kind of woman had an arrangement with a big time mob leader that gave her free reign to do whatever the hell she wanted in his bar?

Vin was a lot of things, not the least of which being a smart business owner. Hell, even naming the place Lam, meaning 'on the lam', a clearcut middle finger in the face of the law enforcement that could never pin a damn thing on him, was smart. People liked it. It was different, it suggested a hint of danger without anyone actually having to involve themselves in any scary situations.

And since the day he opened the place, it had done nothing but exceed everyone's expectations.

Why then would he put a woman behind the bar, the face of his bar, who cursed at, hit, threatened, and had a general disdain for most of his customers?

Granted, what a fucking face she had.

She was the kind of gorgeous that didn't hit you all at once. You noticed her right off- given that she didn't exactly cover her body and she had a great one- all hips and ass and tits. Then maybe the next thing you'd take in was the hair. There was a fuckuva lot of it, almost to her ass, shiny, dark dark brown, soft-looking, swinging around as an 'eff you' to health codes.

But that was all the window dressing, catching your attention, and drawing it away from what was actually the sexiest part about her- her face.

She was striking. That was the best way he could think to phrase it. If you actually focused on her features, it felt like a gut punch. She had a feminine face with high cheekbones, a sweet mouth, a strong forehead, a straight nose, and almond-shaped brown eyes. Somehow, the longer you looked, the more breathtaking she became.

That being said, she might have had the face of a goddamn goddess, but she had the personality of the leader of an invading force. She was strong, confident, outspoken, no-holds-barred, and almost scarily observant.

She didn't flirt with the men though that was a surefire way to increase your tips tenfold in the service industry. She didn't shy away from their compliments, but she didn't play into them either. Over the course of a grueling ten-hour shift, he had heard at least a dozen men who were obviously regulars call her every pet name in the book, compliment everything from her boots to the small heart-shaped birth mark on her neck. At least two of those men demanded to know when she would accept their marriage proposals.

She informed one of the aforementioned men that she was waiting for his new invention to go big, then she would marry him, kill him on the honeymoon, and take every last penny. 

The scary thing was, she seemed entirely capable of that.

Not that she seemed like a gold digger. Far from. But the murder part, he didn't doubt that for a minute.

She was just too cool and collected, too unflappable to threats, even threats with a gun.

Whatever arrangement she had with Vin obviously didn't hold true with Vin's youngest son, Anthony. Though even if it did, chances were Anthony was too much of a dickhead to abide by it. All accounts of him were that he was arrogant, uncontrollable, rude, violent, and a heavy drinker. He had at least a dozen drunk and disorderly and harassment complaint filed against him and he had spent more time in police stations getting questioned than the rest of the organization put together.

But she didn't seem bothered by him.

She obviously had some kind of instruction to keep him out from behind the bar, a task she didn't take lightly, even in the face of a gun.

If she and the woman at the bar, Eleanor, were being honest and she taught Krav Maga, then it at least explained why she didn't freak about the gun, knowing she could disarm him the exact same way he had. But it didn't explain why she didn't flinch.

Even hardened criminals flinched at guns.

But she was either just truly fearless or, more likely, used to having guns pulled on her.

That was a hard reality to reconcile with her hardass personality.

Why would someone as strong, as sure of herself as she was, allow people to pull guns on her all the time? Why would she even work in a place that made that a possibility?

Faith was an anomaly.

Danny hated those.

They made him uncomfortable.

They made him second-guess not only them, but himself.

He sighed as he walked down the hallway toward his apartment. It wasn't a great place, but it wasn't a shithole either. The yellow paint on the walls was faded, but the floors were clean and the windows weren't broken and there wasn't dust or garbage anywhere. His apartment was the last in the hall and directly across from the staircase that no-one used since there was a working elevator.

He unlocked the lock that came with the door and the three he added before going inside and flicking on the light and re-locking them all.

The apartment was sparsely decorated, as all of his apartments for almost ten years had been. He actually didn't know what it meant to have a place that felt like 'home'. That wasn't how he was programmed, not anymore.