He blows out a breath. “We should be doin’ something amazing together. We should be planning to get dressed to the nines, me gettin’ to watch you dance the night away. But this shit with the club…”
“Yeah,” I mumble. “I know.”
“If it were a normal night, I’d have you there, spend my night watchin’ you cut up the dance floor. You know how I love to watch you dance.”
I smile. “In a couple months it might not be so sexy.”
He puts a hand to my belly. “Or it’ll be extra-sexy.”
I giggle. “Yeah, right.”
“But even with all the security shit, all the cops on hand, I’m not taking a chance. Not at all. Don’t want you anywhere near Numbers.”
“It’s okay.”
“I need to be there, though.”
“I know you do.”
He pulls me close. “Hate that I won’t get to ring in the new year with you. Next year we’ll do it up big.”
“Next year, we’ll have a little baby and we’re not leaving him or her alone, so we’ll do it up big here, maybe. Or small with my family. It’s not that important. One night of the year. No biggie. We’ve got all the New Years’ Eves for the rest of our days.”
“True. I don’t want you home alone for it, Violet.”
“I won’t be. My parents have a card night with their friends, my aunts and uncles, Grampa. I’ll go there and hang with them. You pick me up on your way home from the club when all the … you know… hubbub is over.”
“Hopefully there won’t be any hubbub. Hopefully the money, time, new technology and manpower I’ve got lined up will mean there’s no hubbub at all and the cops catch the fuckers who are plannin’ to rob me and who dosed me and Jag.”
“Yeah.”
“And then the day after New Year’s Day, we go to Tahiti, all this shit behind us hopefully and come back to no bullshit. Just moving forward. Growin’ our baby, rockin’ that job if you decide to take it, and spending weekends fixing up the house and waiting for nicer weather so I can use my new grill.”
“I like the sound of that,” I say.
“Me too,” he whispers. “Let’s go to bed.”
55
Killian
New Year’s Eve
Carlson MacDonald comes in to set up with me and Jag in my office just before noon at Numbers. I’m not happy he’s planning to shadow me all day, but nothing can be done about that. On the plus side, he comes with the video footage from the bar of Iadanza, Hoffman, and Stephanie Whitley. I don’t recognize the other people in the video, but he’s also brought footage from a few days before as well and my mind is blown when I see it.
Because the date is a few days before I went back with Iadanza to clap eyes on Violet for a second time. And even more so, because sitting at that table with Iadanza in a pair of jeans and a baseball cap, wearing sneakers is Guy Tremblay. My employee.
It takes me a minute before I figure it out because the footage is black and white and it’s grainy as fuck. The bar’s CCTV equipment is far from top-of-the-line and if I didn’t look closely I wouldn’t have realized it’s Guy. Guy doesn’t dress like that. Not even when he started with me working in the kitchen did he present himself with a hoodie and baggy jeans, a thick gold chain, earrings in both ears, a baseball cap, and rings on all his fingers. From day one he dressed more for the job he wanted.
And I’m seething at the notion that I got played by this guy. Because it hits that he’s also the reason I got drugged. He brought me an expensive bottle of alcohol the day of Violet’s shower and talked me into opening it to have a drink with him. And the fact that it was opened was how it got dosed.
He’d already booked New Year’s Eve off, had been off all week and booked it months ago. We do our holiday schedules up early to make sure we’ve got holiday coverage and I didn’t bat an eye about it because scheduling for that shit is something Alana handles and since I promoted Guy to Wagering Concierge Manager for all four locations a while back, nobody micromanages his schedule. He reports to me directly instead of Alana now. He goes back and forth to all locations with unlimited access to all areas of the clubs other than my offices, which is why he gifted me with that bottle of booze the other day and insisted we have a drink together in my office. I’m sure he knew, fucking knew I’d go back to that expensive bottle of booze on New Year’s Eve. Me being out of it on New Year’s Eve or even dead would clear the way for his plans.