Page 24 of Royally Bad

Walking past the bar, I brushed off the onslaught of each and every dancer. They all knew me, so you’d think by now they’d realize I didn’t buy dances. Maybe they just wanted to stroke my ego in the hope I’d reward them with the kind of favor only powerful people are capable of.

The man sitting sprawled out on a wide couch by the stage wasn’t easy to miss. There were three strippers sitting beside him. They swooned and giggled and tried to rub against him, but I knew my brother. Hawthorne was much like me.

Maybe we’d sleep with a girl if she was our type ...

But we’d never waste our time with a lap dance.

He’d left various stacks of bills beside him and scattered on the floor; the girls were stuffing them all over their bodies as I approached. “Hey, man,” I said, leaning against the edge of the couch.

His black eyes jumped to me. “What the fuck took you so long?”

“Chill. I just had some stuff to take care of.”

Hawthorne sat up, eyeing me in the subtle way he was good at. “Shit. Were you with that girl?”

Rubbing the side of my head, I didn’t deny it. “Just gave her a ride to her car.”

“We have too much going on to mix in unknowns.”

“She’s not dangerous.”

“No?” Hawthorne cut a hand out in front of him so sharply and suddenly it made the dancers lean away nervously. “We don’t know who the hell the mole was. Someone at that wedding told the cops where to look for our goods, and it’s a fucking miracle that Dad was in the middle of shipping things out so we didn’t get caught.”

It did feel like we lucked out, but ... “Someone stirred stuff up, but come on. Sammy makes dresses.”

Shaking his head, my brother straightened out the tight, dark red shirt he had on. It showed off his muscles the same way mine did, though his tattoos were less obvious. He was a fan of the yakuza, and his tats remained just beyond of the edges of his cuffs and collar. Beneath, he was a sprawling mass of ink.

I wanted to explain myself further—who was he to judge me—but the DJ’s voice boomed over the music. “All right, gentlemen! Top of the hour, time for our new set! Here’s Gina, Rosey, and Melina!”

The new girls took their spots on the stage. I looked on as the glimmering bodies gyrated, asses bouncing and tits swinging. If I’d had any doubt, I knew it now. Sammy Sage was more interesting to me than any other woman. Nothing was better than a strip club to prove it, though I was sure no one else would think that was romantic.

But Sammy wanted nothing to do with me. She’d decided I was bad news, and honestly, she wasn’t wrong.

I didn’t blame her ... I was just determined to change her mind.

A waitress swung our way. She was a cute thing, her blonde hair long and smooth down her back. The corner of her nose had one of those tiny piercings. “Drinks?” she asked, peering between me and my brother. “Anything for you, Thorne?”

“Nah,” he said, smiling so his teeth showed. “I’m good, Scotch.”

I had to look twice to make sure I’d heard right. But there, stitched into the right side of her figure-hugging top, was the name Scotch. It had to be a fake name, which, among the array of strippers called Swanky and Sensual, wasn’t so strange. She gave me a quick smile before she strolled off to manage the crowd.

“Listen,” Hawthorne said, motioning for everyone else to go. Once we were alone, I sat beside him on the couch. “Felt and Robert are digging around to find out who ratted on us. They knew where our guns were stored, that means they spent time at our home. Dad thinks it was one of the Deep Shots.”

“Deep Shots.” I snorted. “More like the Deep Shits. How could they even slip inside?” The Deep Shots were an old gang, but they hadn’t been on our radar until they’d changed leadership about a year ago. After that, they’d been starting trouble all over our city. It had always been small stuff before; having the guts to call a cop raid on us was new.

Thorne lifted one of his eyebrows. It was as dark as the rest of his thick hair. When I was younger, I used to think Hawthorne was full of shadows, that they peeked out of him wherever they could. “Frannie invited so many people. We were too cocky, Brother. Anyone could have gotten inside and dug around, told the cops where to look.”

“Butwhy?” That was bothering me the most. We didn’t have a great history with the Deep Shots, but why try and fuck us over, was it just for kicks?

Hawthorne sank deeper into the couch, his knees spreading. He looked for all the world like a king on a throne. It was a heavy reminder of who we were ... what ran in our blood. “Dad has some ideas.”

“He told you but not me?” I bristled, fingers digging into the couch.

“If you had been here an hour ago,” he said bluntly, “he would have told you himself. Talk to him tonight. I’m not going to cross him by spilling his thoughts.”

My mood was already sour, this just tipped me over. Pushing myself to my feet, I hooked my thumbs into my belt loops. “Anything else,Brother?”

Those inky eyes fixed on me. He had a deadly stare, and even after years of seeing it, I still felt a twinge of unease. “Watch that girl.”

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