SAPPHIRE
As Chicago’s city lights zoom by, my cousin Belle sends her usual late afternoon text to make sure I haven’t chickened out of our deal.
“Are you ready for Club Sin tonight?”
I physically feel my heart squeeze reading those words. I love her beyond measure. She’s my best friend. But the more time I spend with her the more I realize my life is a crap show.
My immediate answer is hell yes. I need a stiff drink, a dark place to think, and a hellacious orgasm. I’ll get two out of three with the third as only wishful thinking. And that is the problem.
Club Sin is a place where fantasies live. Seeing the three men I can’t have night after night rips my heart out. Fantasies never come true for me. But this isn’t something new.
Especially in this instance.
Despite my inner warring I hit quickly reply and thumb out: yes, have the tequila ready.
She sends back a peach and eggplant emoji making me laugh. Something I haven’t felt like doing in a long time. Not because I’m doom and gloom, but my life hasn’t been peachy as of late. I hate admitting this, but I’m having a really hard time looking at my life as a glass-half-full kind of scenario. And that is just not me. I’m not a kitten and rainbows chick, but damn I just can’t seem to shake the black clouds hanging over my head.
Let me see if I can put this into perspective for you.
Royal mafia blood. Check.
Yay, me, right? Wrong.
Wealthy. Check.
Hmm. I guess on paper. As escrow holder for Club Genesis, the money isn’t mine, but I have access to millions at any given time of day. Does that still count? That is a big fat nope. Ask my dad. He used to hold the job title I now have. After a large bounty was deposited into his care he dropped me like dead weight, grabbed his ditzy hooker girlfriend, and skipped town. The man hasn’t been heard from for over ten years. The second he shows his face he’ll catch a bullet between the eyes.
I’m thinking he won’t be coming around any time soon for birthday cake.
This leads me to…
Protection. Check.
I have that in spades as long as I am the undertaker for the Northern Alliance. Personal driver, bodyguards everywhere I go and a cousin and his two partners—the men of Genesis— who hardly let me out of their sight.
It’s damn annoying. But I get it. Harlon is not only protecting a valuable business asset, he’s making sure I don’t repeat family history. He won’t admit that last part, but I’m not a fool either.
So yeah, to anyone looking at my life from the outside in I can see how things might appear like a dream come true. Stable job, money, and sexy men in black suits surrounding me twenty-four seven.
It looks good in the movies, but in reality, it’s a royal bitch being mafia royalty.
The truth is my life resembles more of a reverse fairy tale. Instead of waking up each morning and spinning around my royal chambers all dreamy-eyed about the perfect life with no trouble in sight, my feet hit the floor at the same time my brain clicks over with thoughts of wondering whose death and I’ll be ordering that day. Abandoned by my father, shunned by my family, and without a place or people to call my own.
That’s my truth and it’s not pretty.
And today is gonna be one an ass-dragger kind of days. I can just feel it.
“Ma’am, we are here.”
My blurred vision refocuses and I realize I’m staring at my phone’s blackened screen unaware we’ve arrived in the sub-basement where I work, Club Genesis.
“Oh, um, thanks, Raphe.” My mind scrambles to catch up.
Warm, green eyes find me in the rearview mirror. “Will you be joining your friend again, this evening, ma’am? Usual pick-up time?”
His kind eyes don’t hold an ounce of judgment for what I’ve been up to with my evenings this week.
My heart gives a small quiver at the plans I have with Belle. “Yes. Thank you, Raphe. Our usual time. I’ll meet you here at seven sharp.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Impatient as always, Belle’s face pops up in a message bubble with the text: Harlon doesn't suspect, does he? Frown emoji
I get her insecurities, I do. I just wish she would take strength in owning her desires. She has no idea how strong she is.
I tap her bubble head and thumb out a reply: Unless you talked, no.
This week is her first time performing at Club Sin and I’ve promised to be there for her the entire time. In the back, with my back turned and my earbuds in.
Four days down, one day to go. She’s not doing this for money, but because she wants to find her deeper self. I guess using sex is as good as any other enlightening method. I prefer the tarot.
My knee-jerk reaction was…umm, no. Watching my cousin on stage having sex is not my idea of fun. But saying no didn’t feel right either. Not after years of her being there for me when my father ditched me, the entire Constantine family shunning me and my college years.
So I agreed in exchange for free margaritas.
And then I saw them.
The Southern Alliance.
My family’s enemy.
The three men I’ve lusted after for two years. I hadn’t seen them this close in months and seeing them just feet from me is a temptation I don’t need. They’ve made me realize I might actually understand the allure of why my father did what he did. His dreams were right there in front of him day after day until one morning he woke up and said no more.
When I first walked through the doors of Chicago's most elite adult club I had no idea Elyah, Lev, and Gregor would be there. I nearly chickened out and ran home when their collective auras of power hit me head-on.
Only the fear in Belle’s eyes of being left alone kept me rooted to my seat that first night.
Because they are men I can ever touch, I went home that night and came three times before passing out. But between you and me, my body doesn’t care about mafia politics, territories, and old grudges. Nor what my battery-operated boyfriend can do. It wants them.
Seeing all three of them in their three expensive suits and their tattooed hands wrapped around vodka glasses brings out a side of me I am struggling to recognize.
I palm my phone and a small computer case carrying my laptop.
Please don’t judge when I say this. Every night I sit in that audience with the smell of sex permeating the air around me and it makes me wish they would walk over to my table, steal me away to a room in Club Sin, and screw me until I no longer know my name.
I signed on to be Belle’s moral support, but I keep hoping a miracle will happen.
“Until this evening, Ms. Constantine.”