CLUB ASYLUM HAS always been my sanctuary. I’ve always loved the blaring music and dancing women, the lowered inhibitions and flowing money, and the feeling of being a god amongst men as I sit in the Box with Nix or whatever crew I was working with recently.
Now, the feeling is heightened as I sit on the white couch, wearing white pants and a black tank top, exposing every muscle and tattoo, as Reina sits next to me in a long white sweater that hangs to the middle of her thighs with tan leggings. As the baggy sweater hangs off of her shoulders, Reina is the epitome of sexy. She sits with one leg over the other and her hand on my thigh, watching as the waitress sets our drinks down on the small, red end table next to me.
I hand Reina her short glass as I take mine, and I’m shocked to see her take a sip of the expensive Remy Martin Louis XIII as if it’s not a big deal. Part of me expected her to order something fruity or some stereotypically weak drink, but she sips the cognac just like me, and doesn’t seem at all fazed by the burn that accompanies a straight drink. I’m nearly as impressed by that as I am by how her hair flows over her shoulder in perfect waves, and her eyes shine blue as she looks through the glass walls of the Box. She’s clearly miles above any woman here, and the confidence in her demeanor makes her even more of a standout. She’s so perfect—everything I want in a woman. Nix sits at the glass conference table with a drink of his own, sporting a black-on-black suit, but he’s an afterthought to me at this point. My mind is solely focused on Reina.
Outside the Box, it’s the usual club scene, but with one exception. Music from the DJ on the first level is blaring loudly, as usual, and there are tons of men and women roaming both levels, sipping drinks, ordering new ones, dancing, exchanging numbers, basically what you’d expect from a nightclub like this. Tonight though, the women who dance around and on top of the Box are fixated on the blonde woman sitting next to me.
Usually, when I have a woman in the Box, I switch the Smart Glass to privacy-mode so people can’t see inside, and that usually happens after the business portion of the night has come to an end. Tonight is different, because Reina is here now, and there will be no need to use the Smart Glass. Reina is here for both business and pleasure, and women I’ve hooked up with over the years seem to be able to tell the difference as they watch how Reina and I interact, laughing and touching each other as if the past seven years hasn’t gotten in the way of anything. Every now and then, Nix and Reina share a laugh as the two of them work to get reacquainted as well, and the whole vibe seems to be irking certain people who’ve made the mistake of growing attached to me for whatever reason. In particular, a certain redhead I recently had a one-night stand with.
Even after being kicked out of the loft the morning after we had sex, Cynthia is peering into the Box with envy written all over her face. She’s wearing a black dress that’s so tight it looks like it’ll have to be peeled off of her, and dancing with a few of her girlfriends right next to the Box. And just like before, she’s doing her best to get noticed, hoping to win favor with the madman. But tonight, her staring is gaining the attention of someone else, and as soon as Reina’s eyes lock onto Cynthia’s, her attitude shifts a bit, and I swear I feel a cold breeze sweep into the hot club.
“You’re a celebrity,” Reina says to me, breaking eye contact with the redhead standing directly in front of us on the other side of the glass.
“Why do you say that?” I ask.
“Because the women in here are basically throwing themselves at you without saying a word. They all want you, Solomon, I can see it in their eyes.”
“Maybe I’ve made a bit of a name for myself over the years,” I say behind a small chuckle. “How does that make you feel?”
Reina peels her eyes off of Cynthia and looks at me with a devious grin.
“It’s fine,” she says, but something much more sinister is behind her eyes. “I didn’t expect you to become celibate while I was away. I wasn’t. However, I’m back now. We’re back.”
I smile at the words.
“Yes, we are.”
Reina smiles wide as she cuts her eyes towards Cynthia, who’s still staring too hard. Seeing the redhead watching us, Reina turns to me and passionately presses her mouth to mine. Warmth shoots through my body in all directions as our tongues graze against each other, heating both of us up right here in front of everyone. Once the kiss is done, I open my eyes to find Reina already looking back at Cynthia, who now looks as if someone killed her puppy before turning away, leaving her drunken girlfriends behind. My woman and I share a laugh, just as we see our guests ascend the steps to our level and walk up to the entrance of the Box, where Lenny stands with his giant arms crossed. After a brief discussion with Rock, Lenny turns to look at me, and I nod my approval.
Rock, Marcell, and Ricky walk into the Box with their usual grim faces. Rock is dressed to the nines, wearing a white suit with black features and a black tie. Marcell is the nerd of the group, with skinny jeans, a long-sleeved black shirt and his signature glasses, while Ricky is wearing an orange and red flannel shirt and the emotion of a man who lost his only brother just a few days ago. The three of them walk in and take a seat at the conference room table with Nix, who greets them all simply by nodding his head. As they make themselves comfortable, all of their eyes fixate on the person none of them has ever seen before, and I’m sure they’re wondering what a stranger is doing in the room if we’re here to talk business.
“Shall we?” Nix says to the two of us.
Reina and I stand up to move to the table with the crew. I grab for my red leather chair at the head of the table just as I see Cynthia come back into view out of the corner of my eye. When I spot her, so does Reina, and before I can make an introduction to the crew, Reina shifts her position and starts speed-walking towards the door.
“Excuse me,” she says to the five of us, before walking out of the Box.
Reina quickly pushes the door open and snatches a bottle of Moet off of a waitress’s tray. The waitress starts to protest, but it’s too late. Reina swings her arm and shatters the bottom half of the glass bottle on a table, sending people around her in VIP reeling and scurrying to get away from whatever is to come. Cynthia can only watch in horror as Reina races over to her with the jagged, top-half of the bottle still in her hand. As Reina approaches, Cynthia backs up in fear until her back is against the glass of the Box, directly in front of me. Reina has her trapped, and she raises the sharpest point of the bottle, pointing it at Cynthia’s bare throat. I hear Cynthia gasp, followed by the gasps of the people in VIP watching it all unfold.
“Hi! My name’s Reina, and if I were you,” Reina says without regard to who may be listening, “I’d get my shit together and stop staring at Solomon. Whatever you had with him before is over, because I’m back now, and he’s mine. Do you understand? He’s mine! If you look at him one more time, I’m gonna come out here and gouge your eyeballs out with this broken bottle. Got it?” When Cynthia doesn’t respond quickly or loudly enough, Reina keeps going, completely relentless. “What? Speak up so everyone can hear you! Do you understand?”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” Cynthia replies as tears stream down her face, and she turns her head to the side as if she can get any further away from the bottle now being pressed against her cheek.
Nix looks over at me with wide eyes, and I’m not even sure what to say. I knew Reina was different before she left, but I never thought she would come back like this. Everything she went through in France and with her parents has apparently pushed her over whatever limits she may have had before. She wasn’t kidding when she said she’d been through a lot, and I’m convinced that this isn’t the same Reina that left seven years ago. This is a new and improved Reina. The teenage Reina was down for robbery, this one is down to commit murder in the middle of a packed nightclub! Watching it all happen in front of me makes me want her now more than ever, and I can feel the oncoming arousal in my pants as I look at her holding the bottle to Cynthia’s weeping face.
“Solomon,” Nix says to me, wondering what we should do, because everyone in VIP is watching.
“Go get her,” I tell Nix, who moves quickly. I watch from inside the Box as Nix approaches Reina, grabs her by the shoulders, and pulls her away from Cynthia. As Nix drags Reina away and Cynthia’s friends move in to console her, Reina bursts into loud, maniacal laughter. She laughs like she was just kidding the entire time and she’s entertained by Cynthia’s tears. The people in VIP frown, wondering what the hell is wrong with her.
I can see the looks on their faces, and I recognize it. My heart pounds with excitement as I see what Reina has done in one act of violence. With a single show of force, she showed them why she’s different, why she’s with me. She just became the madwoman who’s in love with the madman. The perfect queen of chaos. As Nix pulls her back into the Box, the smile on my face is too large to wipe away, and I pull Reina into a rough, passionate kiss in front of all the people watching. They want a show, and we’ll give them one. After we kiss, the two of us laugh together as we look out at Cynthia being helped down the stairs by her friends who are too scared to look back. Once they’re gone, I walk over to the silver button on the floor and step on it, activating the Privacy Smart Glass.
“Now that’s how you start a night off right!” I exclaim as I take my seat at the head of the table. Nix sits to my right, in his usual spot, and Reina takes her place on my left, the new designated spot for my queen.
“Well,” Rock says, staring at Reina as if he’s not sure if he can trust her not to attack him. “I was gonna ask who you were, but you already made quite the introduction.”
“You can relax, Rock. Allow me,” I say with a smile. “Gentlemen, as you heard her say a second ago, this is Reina Wilde. I met her well before I knew any of you—back before I had a cent to my name. She knew me before all of this, and she recently came back into my life with a grand entrance, similar to the one she made here tonight. To go along with all of this beauty, Reina has brains. More than you can imagine. And she has information you’ll never believe. So, I need you all to give her your undivided attention.”
“Hold up,” Ricky chimes in with a raised hand. “That’s great that you know her, Solomon, but I don’t. How do I know she can be trusted?”
“Oh, that’s not a good question to ask,” Reina replies behind a giggle.
“Because I said so!” I snip.
“See?” Reina whispers, still giggling.
“Let’s make sure this is clear from the beginning,” I continue. “Reina is mine, and I’m hers. Our bond is thicker and tighter than any of you could ever truly understand, so I won’t bother trying to explain the depths of it, but know this; she’s the queen of my growing empire, so if she says something, it’s as good as me saying it. You’ll afford her the same respect you show me, because there isn’t a man in the universe who could protect you if I ever hear otherwise.”
Ricky’s face is still hard, but he relents and doesn’t ask another question. As for the rest of them, Rock and Marcell just sit there, waiting for a full explanation.
“Reina has been pulling off the world’s greatest con job,” I continue, addressing them all. “For the past three months, she’s been on the inside with Dante Rossi.”
“On the inside?” Rock asks.
“That’s right,” I reply. “The same way Dante sent that little weasel Tim Sandusky to us as a mole on the inside, Reina has been on the inside for me—I just didn’t know it until recently.”
“What does that mean?” Ricky asks
“Don’t worry about it,” I snip, annoyed by his questioning. “Just know that she’s been conning him for the past three months, getting valuable information for us to use against him, and yesterday, she got the final piece.”
“Is that why you’re calling us in a day earlier than we’d expected?” Marcell asks now.
“Yes. We have a change of plans, so listen up, because it’s gonna take skill and accuracy to pull this off. Reina.” I look to her, giving her permission to step up and fill in the crew on who she is and what she knows. If we want them to trust her, it’ll start with this.
“Okay,” Reina says without hesitation before turning to the men at the table. “I know you don’t know me and don’t trust me, and that’s fine. I don’t know or trust you either, so welcome to the party. But, Solomon trusts you, and I trust him, so it looks like we’re in this together. I know you all want to take Dante Rossi out of the picture for good. He has a monopoly on criminal activity in this city because he’s next in line to the Scarfo family throne. Angelo Scarfo is dying, and Dante is destined to take over. Right now, his game plan is to grab power wherever he can find it, and he won’t allow anyone else to have any, that’s why he tried to kill Solomon and Nix a few days ago.”
“And you know all of this from all the time you two spend together?” Ricky interrupts, his voice coated with sarcasm.
“I couldn’t con him if I didn’t spend time with him, genius!” Reina snips, glaring at Ricky. “Geez, what’s with this guy?” she asks me, frustration creeping into her voice.
“Ricky’s brother was killed recently. Dante is essentially to blame since he was the one who sent Detective Mason to us in the first place,” I tell her.
“Aww,” Reina replies with a sad face directed at Ricky, and I can barely tell if she’s kidding or serious. “Okay, I’ll forgive your grumpiness, Ricky. So anyway, over my time with Dante, I’ve learned his habits, his routines, and quite a bit of other information that wasn’t really of any use until yesterday. He’s good about keeping things to himself and being hard to track. He knows being a mob boss is a tough job and can be short-lived, so he keeps a low profile and avoids public issues. But, I managed to pry some information from him a while back. He told me about these three hotels he deals with. He called them his piggy banks because the owners pay him money to keep them protected and in business. They’re the Rittenhouse, Kimpton Palomar, and Franklin Hotel. Each of these three businesses has owners that let Dante skim off the top to keep them safe from crime that of course would be carried out by Dante’s minions of they didn’t pay. But, since they’re big time hotels, they pay a huge chunk of change to the underboss.”
“How much?” Marcell asks, intrigued by the thought of money.
“I don’t know how much,” Reina answers. “The guy’s an underboss for the mafia, he doesn’t divulge all the information. It was hard enough trying to pull this out of him. So, you need to take this information, and put it to good use. That’s where my Solomon comes in.”
“Okay, so when is he supposed to deal with these three hotel owners, and what are we supposed to do about it?”
At the sound of the question, I smile from ear to ear, feeling motivated by the challenge of ruining Dante before taking him out completely.
“That’s the beauty of it, gentlemen, Dante goes to pick up the money from these three hotels tomorrow evening,” I tell them, and they react with the worry and confusion I expected they’d have.
“Tomorrow?” Rock says. “Damn Solomon, that’s fast. We were just staking out Mason’s house earlier today, now you wanna drop that and go with your girl’s idea?”
“Yes I do, and that’s exactly what we’re gonna do,” I answer. “We have a narrow window of opportunity to severely hit Dante’s wallet with this. If we kill those payoffs, he’ll be perceived as vulnerable and weak, because the mob doesn’t like guys who get their things stolen from them.”
“So you wanna steal the payoffs?” Marcell asks.
“No, I want to do much more than that,” I tell him. “I want to ruin him all in one day, and I want it to be big and public so that everyone in his little family knows it was me who did it to him—it was me who embarrassed him and took everything away from him. That’s what I want to do.”
“Okay, and what about Mason?” Ricky asks with a furrowed brow.
“It’s not Mason’s day to die,” I answer quickly, although I know it’s not what he wants to hear. “Tomorrow is the day we take Dante out. I promise you, Ricky, Detective Anthony Mason will have his day, and you’ll be the one to end him.”
Ricky doesn’t answer, he just nods his head in silent approval.
“Alright then,” Rock says, speaking for the entire group. “So we know what he wants to do, and we know when. Now, how do we go about bringing it all down?”
I take a big sip from my cup of cognac and smile at the entire group.
“Settle in, boys,” I tell them. “We’ve got a long night of planning ahead of us. Tomorrow, we’re gonna bring chaos to Dante Rossi’s doorstep.”