CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Katrina
I had never been inside Gino’s Gentlemen’s Club; or any strip joint for that matter. I knew nothing about the place other than what Bethany had told me. She had worked there a few months and was fucking the son of the owner, a guy named Tony. She had never told me his last name and I had never been interested enough to ask.
I took a cab to Gino’s and walked through the front door holding the briefcase tightly in my right hand. Bethany was working the floor, serving drinks to tables filled with rowdy men. When she looked up and saw me standing near the entrance, she did a double-take, as if she thought that her imagination was playing tricks on her.
She came to me with her bare tits bouncing on her chest and a round drink tray between her hands. She was wearing a sheer thong and high heels, and nothing else. I glanced at her when she waved, but then let my eyes continue around the room searching for the man I had come to meet. The place was dark, but not so dark that I couldn’t see who was there.
“Jesus, Kat, what are you doing here?” Bethany asked, clutching the tray to her breasts as if she were trying to hide them from me. “Is something wrong? Did something happen?”
“Your friend Tony,” I said calmly, still scanning the room. “What is his last name?”
She frowned and blinked at me. “D’Angelo,” she said warily. “Why?”
“Is he here?”
“Yeah, he’s in the VIP area like always.” She stepped in front of me, forcing me to look into her eyes. “Kat, what the fuck is going on?”
“Take me to him,” I said. “I have something for him.”
“Kat, seriously, what the hell…”
“Take me to him now, Bethany,” I said forcefully enough to make her blink. She stared at me for a moment with a confused look on her face, then turned and started making her way through the club with me following close behind.
I had never met Tony D’Angelo before. I wasn’t aware that I had ever even seen him. But when I saw him sitting in the booth with his arms around the shoulders of two naked dancers, his hands squeezing their tits as he nuzzled his nose into their necks, I recognized him immediately from the auction. He was the man who was standing next to Nicky, the guy who looked like a character from The Sopranos. He was the cousin Nicky mentioned. And the man who had beaten my father senseless and threatened our lives.
There was another man sitting at the table. The muscle head I’d seen him with at the auction. He was sitting at the end of the booth with his elbows on his knees, nonchalantly picking at the scrapes across his knuckles, the result of hitting my father over and over in the face with his fists.
“Uh, Tony, this is my friend, Katrina,” Bethany said, stepping aside when we reached the table. Poor Bethany had no idea what was happening, but there was no time to explain. The muscle head took one look at me and got to his feet as if he thought he had to put himself between me and his boss. Tony D’Angelo grinned at me for a moment, then pulled his arms away from the girls.
“Ladies, take a hike,” he said, pushing them out of the booth. He stared at me while he spoke. “Bethany, another round for the table. And bring your friend, Kat, something. She looks like she could use a drink.”
“You want something?” Bethany asked quietly. She turned her back to the table and lowered her voice. “I don’t know what’s going on, but be careful. You do not want to mess with him.”
“I will,” I said. “And no, I don’t want a drink.”
“What are you doing here?” My heart sank when I heard Nicky’s voice coming from behind me. I turned to find him standing less than a foot away with a confused smile on his face. He held out his arms, but I didn’t move. I realized I had the briefcase clutched protectively to my chest.
“I’m here to give your cousin this money so he won’t kill me and my father,” I said, forcing the tears back from my eyes. Nicky frowned as he looked at me, then glanced at Tony. He came to stand next to me and put his hand on my arm. I jerked my arm away.
“Don’t touch me,” I said.
Nicky held up his hands and turned to Tony. He had a wary smile on his face, like someone who had missed the punchline of a joke. He said, “I’m a little confused. What exactly is going on here?”
Tony sighed like he was bored with the entire scene. He waved a hand at me and rolled his eyes. “Sweet cheek’s dad owes me money for a gambling debt. I guess she’s here to pay it off.”
Nicky turned to me. “Is that right, Katrina? Does your dad owe Tony money?”
I didn’t look at Nicky because I thought I might cry. Instead, I stared into Tony’s eyes and spoke through gritted teeth.
“My father owed him seventy-five thousand dollars,” I said. “I gave my father the money to settle the debt, but now he wants it all. He said that if I don’t give him the entire two-hundred-thousand dollars he will kill my father and kill me.”
Tony rolled his eyes. His bodyguard moved to stand behind me. Tony nodded at the briefcase and said, “So, is that my money?”
“Hold on a second,” Nicky said, holding out a hand. “That’s not your money. It’s hers. It’s her cut of the auction.”
“Actually, cuz, it’s mine,” Tony said. He folded his arms over his chest and glared at me. I could feel the hot breath of his bodyguard on my neck. I glanced out of the corner of my eye to see if Nicky was going to step in. He was still standing a few feet from me, not moving as if his feet were cemented to the ground.
Tony shook a finger at me and said, “Your old man obviously forgot that there was interest on the balance. The original amount was seventy-five-grand, but that was two months ago. Now, it’s two-hundred. Next week it’ll be two-fifty. Now, you can give me the money or I can have Jimmy pound it out of your old man. Or, you can work off his debt dancing here. You gotta nice ass and a good rack. And Nicky tells me you fuck like a machine, so you’ll probably work it off in no time.”
“Did you say that?” I asked, gazing into Nicky’s eyes, no longer able to hold back the tears.
“Of course he did,” Tony said with a laugh. “He said for a virgin you were one hell of a piece of ass and you sucked a cock like a pro. In fact, he said you were right up there in his top one hundred best fucks ever.”
“Shut up, Tony,” Nicky snapped. He looked at me with guilty eyes. “Katrina, I didn’t mean that. It was just talk, like locker room bullshit. You know how I feel about you.”
“Do I?” I asked, tears streaming down my cheeks. “Oh my god, you were just using me. You’re in on this, aren’t you?”
“What? No, that’s insane.”
“God, I was such a fool.” I stared into Nicky’s eyes and suddenly realized that the connection I thought we had was nothing more than a silly, vulnerable girl falling for the first white knight that rode past her door. Only this white knight had a black heart. God, what a fool I had been. A blanket of shame fell over me. It was all I could do not to drop to my knees and wail.
“That money does not belong to you,” Nicky said, facing Tony with his hands on his hips. I took it to mean that he thought the money rightfully belonged to him.
“You paid for her cherry, cuz, and got more than what you bargained for,” Tony said, wagging a finger at Nicky. He directed the finger toward me. “Her old man owes me money and she wants to cover his debt, so that’s my money. End of discussion.”
“That’s not your money,” Nicky said again, taking a step toward me and reaching for the case.
Tony snapped his fingers. “Jimmy. Get the goddamn briefcase.”
I suddenly found myself being torn between Nicky and the guy called Jimmy. I did my best to hold onto the briefcase long enough to open the latches, then shook it in the air. Twenty dollar bills went everywhere and all hell broke loose. Tony was scrambling to gather up the money. I fell backward just as Nicky and the muscle head went at it with fists flying and bottles breaking.
I stumbled back away from the table. Nicky and Jimmy were locked together like two awkward dancers. They fell sideways onto the table and Tony screamed bloody murder. The air was filled with twenty-dollar bills, over six thousand of them. In a screaming mass, everyone who was nearby lunged for the table, grasping for handfuls of cash.
“What the fuck, Kat?”
I turned to Bethany, who was standing beside me with her tits hidden behind the tray and a dumbfounded look on her face.
“Ten thousand of that belongs to you,” I said, tossing the empty briefcase to the floor. “Your commission for referring me to The Virgin Auction. You’d better get in there before it’s gone.”
I walked away without another word.
I hoped I’d seen the last of anyone with the last name D’Angelo.