The Wedding Pact (The O'Malleys #2)(17)
Chapter Five
James’s phone rang when he hit Southie. He glanced at the clock on the screen. Two a.m. Nothing good came from calls at this hour. With a curse, he answered, “What?”
“Trouble.”
No shit. Michael wouldn’t be calling him for anything else. “Tell me.”
“Tit for Tat. Ricky’s there.”
Well, shit again. There wasn’t a need for more goddamn information. Their brother, Brendan, had been killed in that strip joint four months ago. James had never liked the place, and that went double since it used to be the front for human trafficking of the young and pretty variety. He’d put a stop to that shit the second he took over the Hallorans. Now the only women who worked there were there of their own choice. If they turned tricks on the side, that was up to them, but they traded a percentage for his protection. It was as fair a deal as he could offer them, and most were more than happy with the arrangement.
There was no goddamn reason for Ricky to be there that wouldn’t send James’s blood pressure straight through the fucking roof. “When?”
“They left fifteen minutes ago.”
At least this time he could nip this shit right in the bud instead of dealing with it hours later. He turned right at the next light. “Meet me there.”
“Will do, boss.”
He hung up and floored it. There was no rational reason to think that his brother was up to something…other than every other fucking time he turned around, Ricky was finding ways to undermine him. Whatever familial bond they’d had as kids, it was gone now.
My brother would happily see me dead and out of the way now.
James blew out a breath. It was a truth he hadn’t wanted to deal with before, but it was the truth. He let it settle inside him as he pulled up in front of Tit for Tat. The building looked damn near indistinguishable from the ones around it, aside from the neon sign out front advertising full nudes. Only its patrons knew exactly what was offered on the inside—them and the few cops he had on the payroll to keep his ass out of the fire.
He hated dirty cops. There was something fundamentally wrong with a man who put a price on his honor, no matter how useful they were when it came to keeping his people out of jail. But then, honor wasn’t something James had the luxury of holding close. He didn’t have an inch of high ground to stand on. Not anymore.
Inside it was hot and dark—aside from the brightly lit stages—and stank of lust and greed. James headed for the bar, ignoring the scattering of men watching Echo swing herself around a pole, her dark hair flying behind her. He nodded at Tawna, noting at how shaken she looked. Her wide blue eyes made her look younger than her twenty-something years, and she actually seemed grateful to catch sight of him. If he had any doubt that Ricky was here, it vanished then. The sins of their father seemed to be something both his brothers had inherited.
Some days he thought it hadn’t really skipped him, no matter how much he wanted it to. “Where’s my brother?”
She pointed a shaking finger to the stairs, and he mentally cursed in every single fucking way he knew. He hadn’t been up there since Brendan’s death, and he could have spent the rest of his life without doing it again. Goddamn it. It took simultaneously too much time and not nearly enough to get up those rickety-ass stairs. They needed to be torn out and replaced, but no one would ever do it. That wasn’t the kind of place Tit for Tat was. At the top, the hallway of doors stretched out, all of them closed. This was where the girls brought men for lap dances or the other side of their business. The thin doors let out more sounds than they concealed, but his destination wasn’t in any of them. No, it was the final door—the one containing what passed for an office.
He found Ricky sitting behind the massive desk, deep in conversation with two men James didn’t recognize. If that wasn’t a giant-ass red flag, the fact his brother had managed to clean up his shaggy blond hair and find a button-up shirt somewhere was. He was crashing a business meeting—one he wasn’t supposed to know about from the flash of worry that appeared on his brother’s face. Ricky shot to his feet. “James.”
There wasn’t a damn thing he could do until he knew what the hell was going on, but he didn’t need to let his little brother know that. He jerked his chin at the door. “Out.” Ricky hesitated, but James had too much practice using his cold stare to manipulate people. His brother didn’t stand a chance. He slunk through the door like a beaten dog with his tail between his legs. James waited several long seconds to make sure he didn’t change his mind, and then took the seat behind the desk. “Gentlemen.”