Longing: Club Inferno (17 page)

A week later, Clint was counting his money as he got off work at Tricky Ricky’s. It was a pretty good bankroll for a Thursday night. When he left the building, he did a double take. Clint was used to having women waiting for him after he got off work at the strip club. Men, not so much. But he recognized the guy leaning against his car as the Italian douche bag that Rita was banging. Anya’s ex.

“You’re very talented,” Cesare said.

“Sorry, man. I’m straight. Although, Billy might give you the time of day. He likes fancy boys.”

Cesare stammered, “I-I think we have a misunderstanding.”

“Get off my car. I’m tired. I want to go home.”
And fuck your ex-girlfriend
.

“You got turned down for a bank loan last year,” Cesare said.

“What business is it of yours?” Clint got into his face.

Unruffled, Cesare brushed an imaginary speck of lint off his jacket. “I can give you the thirty-five thousand dollars that you need for a down payment. With your meager savings, that should be enough to open your bar so you can stop dancing for horny women.”

Like your mistress,
Clint wanted to say.

“So you’re offering me a loan?” he asked.

“I’m buying you off. Anya for your bar. It’s that simple. I want her back and she won’t leave you.”

“I don’t have a lot of money, but I never had to buy a woman before. Don’t they have women in Italy?”

“Not like Anya.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Clint said. “No deal.”

“Fifty,” Cesare said.

Clint shook his head. “That’s a lot of money. You always buy yourself whatever you want, no matter what the cost?”

“Of course.”

“Then this is going to be a big disappointment.”

“Not just for me, but for Anya too,” Cesare said.

“Keep telling yourself that.” Clint opened the door to his car and sank into the driver’s seat.

“I will make sure she never models again. Forget the play. I’ll ruin her career.”

“Why would you do that?” Clint leaned an elbow out the window.

“Because you made me,” Cesare said, stepping back from the car. “Take the fifty K. Let her down easy and open your bar. I’ll take her back to Milan and she will be a European star. Drive away and she’ll be lucky to be modeling for hand cream before the year is out. And when her career is dried up and she’s had enough of your charms, I’m going to call her and offer her the world. She’ll be the one dropping your penniless ass and coming with me. So you might as well make some money out of it.”

Rage flared through Clint. No one threatened Anya. It was all he could do not to get out of the car and throw this Eurotrash into the garbage. But that would play right into his hands. “I’ll think about it,” Clint said through gritted teeth. It would buy him some time to warn Anya and come up with a plan.

“Don’t think too long.” Cesare tossed his business card onto the passenger seat.

Clint watched him get into a rented Lexus and drive away. He put the car into gear and had to calm down before he called Anya.

“Hey, handsome, how did you do tonight?”

“It was an all right night for the middle of the week. I got offered fifty thousand dollars, though.”

“Who do you have to kill?”

“I have to dump you.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“Don’t worry,” he said to fill it. “I told Cesare to shove it up his ass. But then he said if I didn’t, he would ruin your modeling career.”

“I’m going to beat the shit out of him,” Anya said, seething.

“Isn’t that my line?” Clint had to smile.

“How dare he threaten me and try to bribe you?”

“I think he was serious about your career.”

“So I don’t model in Italy again. Big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” he said. “Are you sure you want to risk it for me?”

“Even if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t dump you for some sleazeball who thinks he can buy me. The stupid shit had me and he let me go. Oh, I almost feel sorry for Rita for having to put up with him.”

“All right, let’s not get that crazy, they deserve each other. I’m on my way home, can I see you?”

“Not tonight, I’m exhausted. I need to get some Zs.”

“Probably not a bad idea,” Clint said. He had been burning the midnight oil lately as well. But damn, he wanted to sink into her wet heat and have her come apart around him. But anticipation would make it all the better.

“I’ll see you for breakfast tomorrow by the pool?”

“It’s a date,” he said, his mood lightening.

Where are you?
Anya texted.

My hotel, why?

I’m coming over. Give me the hotel name and room number.

Cesare had no idea what he’d just started. If he thought she was coming over there for a booty call, he was going to be very unhappy. When he texted back that he was staying at the Elite Marquis, Anya wasn’t surprised. If anyone thought it was odd that she was going out at two in the morning, no one mentioned it.

Seething, Anya drove faster than she should have, but hardly anyone was out on the road. The doorman opened the door for her and the bellman keyed her into the elevator for the penthouse. Apparently, Cesare had prepared them for her arrival. He was waiting at the door for her wearing a silk robe and carrying two flute glasses.

“
Cara mia,
it has been too long.”

Anya shouldered him aside and walked into the suite. It was swanky, but she hadn’t expected anything less. “Where’s Rita?”

“She’s staying at Couture, enjoying the events of the evening. Or should I say, Club Inferno?”

“Why aren’t you with her?” Great, Anya would have to make sure they were on opposite sides of the dungeon, if it came to that. Although taking a flogger to Cesare’s ass had its merits—nothing sexual, just pure rage.

Cesare moved over to the bar. “I got the feeling that I wasn’t wanted. Limoncello?”

Anya took it. It was her favorite. “I’m pissed off at you.”

“I can tell.”

“Where do you get off trying to bribe my boyfriend to dump me?”

Cesare’s eyebrows rose. “Is that what he told you?”

“Don’t play games. He said you offered him fifty thousand dollars.”

“It’s not true,” Cesare said insistently, guiding her by the elbow so she sat on the couch with him. “It is he who approached me. He wants to get out of stripping and open a bar.”

“I know that.” Anya squelched the doubts down. It was ridiculous. Clint wouldn’t do that to her. In fact, he’d called her solely to tell her that Cesare was trying to buy him out, like she was a business he was trying to do a hostile takeover on.

“First, he tried to blackmail poor Rita.”

“What?” Anya said, and then laughed. “Sorry, Cesare, she went willingly to the sex toy photo shoot. I saw her in the dungeon.”

“Yes, I know about that video. He took another one of her.” Cesare went to his entertainment center and rifled through a few DVDs. “I hope I won’t disturb you with this.” He held one up.

“I don’t need to see Rita getting off, thanks.”

“She hired him for a private show at the strip club he works at.”

Anya took a sip of her limoncello to hide her expression. Clint hadn’t mentioned that.

Cesare put in the DVD and she saw a grainy picture of Clint in a baggy burgundy suit dancing to a swing song.

“That just looks like him dancing, how could he blackmail her about that?”

Cesare pressed fast-forward, and the next scene was Rita being taken from behind by a man wearing the same outfit. The watch on the man’s pants was swinging in time to his thrusts.

“I’m sorry you had to see this.”

Anya was pretty sure it wasn’t Clint. The camera was focused mostly on Rita, which made her want to rip her eyes out and bleach her brain. But what convinced her more than anything was the sheer amateurishness of the camera work.

“Clint told Rita that if she didn’t pay him fifty thousand dollars, he would show me this. Naturally, she came right to me and told me everything. We have an open relationship. When he found out he couldn’t get his money that way, he came to me to get it.”

“I’m not sure who’s lying more, you or Rita. But that’s not Clint. And if it had been, he’s a perfectionist behind the camera. He would have set the scene better than that.”

Cesare turned off the television.

“Thank you,” Anya said. “My eyes were starting to bleed.”

“Anya, dear. My mother is very ill. She has the cancer.”

Looking down into her drink, Anya frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. We didn’t get along, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Why aren’t you with her?”

“It could be days. It could be months. She’s in excellent hands. I couldn’t sit by her bedside and watch her die. But what that means is when she passes and I inherit, there is nothing standing in the way of you and I.”

“Except your wife,” Anya said, finishing the limoncello up in one swallow. She had stopped drinking it because it reminded her of Cesare. But she had forgotten how much she enjoyed it.

“Magdalena is no happier in this marriage than I am. I told Mama that arranged marriages never work. I will set Magdalena up with a generous allowance and divorce her.”

“Then there’s Rita.” Anya gestured to the screen.

“Rita doesn’t like Italy. She prefers your New York. And now that she’s made some friends at Couture, I think she’d be happier staying.”

Anya shuddered. Of all the arguments Cesare had put forth to get her to leave with him, that was the one that was the most convincing. The thought of seeing Rita every day was enough to make her reach for the limoncello bottle again.

“I’ve missed you so much. You have only gotten more beautiful with each passing day. What a countess you would make.”

What a difference two weeks made. Last month, Anya would have crawled over broken glass for this offer and never known what she was missing.

“That’s very sweet of you, Cesare, but I’m not interested. I have my life here. I’m happy.”

“He will betray you,” Cesare said. “I’ll prove it. He’s not serious about you. He’s just having his way with you.”

Anya stood up. “And it’s fantastic. Look, what we once had together, Cesare, is gone. Maybe it could have ended differently, but I’ll never forgive you for caving in to your mother’s demands.”

“I would have been disinherited.”

“I wouldn’t have cared.” She kissed him on both cheeks, with little affection.
“Arrivederci
.
”

“It was my birthright,” he said, following her to the door.

“It was my heart you broke. Stay out of my life. Leave Clint alone. You’re better than this. I don’t blame you for not wanting Rita in your life, but I’m not the solution.”

“
Cara,
just give me one more night. I’ll prove to you we are meant to be together.”

“Good-bye, Cesare,” she said, and walked out on him.

It felt great.

She was on the way to the pool the next morning when the text from Trey came in.

I’m no longer your agent.

WTF?
Anya texted back.

You lied to me about losing weight. I saw the video, pork chop.

What video? She called Trey, but it rang and rang and went to voice mail. She did it a few more times until the phone immediately went to voice mail.

The second text hit her harder.

You won’t be getting the part. They gave it to someone with a thigh gap.

“Asshole,” she said, and had to duck into one of the classrooms before she started to cry in the hallway.
I didn’t even get a chance to audition.
That son of a bitch. Anya tried to get control even as her head stuffed up and the sobs racked her. This was an angry cry, damn it. By the time she got it together, there was no way she was going to face Clint looking like she had just been put through the wringer. She made a beeline for the spa and booked a facial. They took one look at her and hurried her in.

About an hour and a half later, Anya felt cool as a cucumber and refreshed as a rose, because that was what the goo they’d smeared all over her was made of. Her headache was gone, but she was still feeling low. So of course, the first person she ran into was Rita.

Be the better person,
she told herself. “Congratulations,” Anya forced out, prying her lips up in a smile.

Rita looked at her with an odd expression, calculating. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I’m very excited. I’m heading out to New York tomorrow morning. Cesare got me an apartment near the theater.”

Well, that’s one bright spot,
Anya thought. She’d be out of here and hopefully never come back.

“You know, I’m glad I ran into you.” Rita tapped a fingernail on her tooth.

I bet you are.

“I had to pass up a modeling gig in Hartford. I could give the producer your agent’s number.”

“I’m between agents right now,” Anya said.

“Well”—Rita dug around in her purse—“here’s his information if you’d like to follow up on the opportunity. You probably should get back to work before people forget all about you.” With a jaunty salute, she skipped down the hall.

“Break a leg,” Anya called after her, not meaning good luck.

Of course she called the number. She hadn’t been active for a few months, and now that there wasn’t any off-Broadway show in her future, Rita was right. Anya was going to be forgotten if she didn’t have anything current on her résumé. Stopping in to Colleen’s office, she asked Nefertiti if she could get someone to replace her for her two classes today.

“Sure, what’s up?”

“I didn’t get the part in the play.”

“That’s bullshit, man,” Nefertiti said. “You know that’s all politics.”

“Doesn’t hurt any less. Anyway, a modeling job opened up in Hartford and as long as I can be at the shoot by noon, I should get the job. I can’t afford to pass this up.”

“Go, if worse comes to worse I’ll take over. I can get a room full of people to yell ‘fuck.’ ”

“You’re an artist,” Anya said, and waved. “Tell Colleen I’ll talk to her later.”

Clint wasn’t answering his phone and she couldn’t find him in the bar. She didn’t think he had a dungeon appointment but she went down to the studio to check. The sounds of lovemaking were loud, which wasn’t completely out of the ordinary, even at this hour. However, they were coming from the studio. Was Clint filming? The door was locked, but she recognized Clint’s voice. More accurately, she recognized his coming.

Could this day get any worse? She scooted back behind a curtain and made sure Dante wasn’t behind it. The last thing she needed today was his shit. There still could be a reasonable explanation for this. Anya wasn’t sure what it was, but she didn’t want to make an ass out of herself again by jumping to conclusions. About five long minutes later the studio door opened.

Anya wanted to be surprised that it was Rita coming out, but she wasn’t. Rita looked like she had been well and truly fucked. She adjusted her bra and strode out of the dungeon like she owned the place. It was hard to decide who to go after first, but in the end she chose to confront her lover.

Storming in, she was ready to start throwing chairs and anything else at him. But she didn’t see him. Was there a back door to this place? His phone went off and she tracked it into the dark room by his computer console. It was a text message confirming a wire transfer.

Fifty thousand dollars.

She scrolled back and read the text exchange. It was a good thing Anya hadn’t eaten today because she suddenly was dry-heaving into the wastepaper basket. No. This couldn’t be happening.

Face it, fifty Gs is a lot of money.

Anya’s inner voice sounded a lot like Rita. She staggered to her feet and left Club Inferno with the intention of never coming back.

“You better come up to the security office,” Istvahn said. “I think we have a problem.”

It was never good when Istvahn was waiting for you the moment you got out of your car. When Anya had blown Clint off at the pool, he figured she’d just overslept, so he had gone out to breakfast and then done some errands.

“What’s going on?” he said as he locked up the car and followed Istvahn into Couture.

“There’s something you need to see on my security tapes.”

They bypassed several hallways through secret doors that Clint was pretty sure he’d never find on his own. Nefertiti was sitting in his chair with her feet on Istvahn’s desk, eating a bowl of ice cream.

“It’s ten o’clock in the morn—oof.” Clint was cut off as Istvahn’s elbow cut into his solar plexus.

“Are you Big Ben? No? Then shut the fuck up,” she said.

“Fair enough,” Clint croaked out, rubbing his side.

“Your studio alarm went off around nine this morning, activating the cameras,” Istvahn said, calling up the studio on his monitors. Clint and Istvahn reviewed the security tapes, with Nefertiti peering over their shoulders.

“What kind of lock do you have on your door that some two-bit hustler like that can pick?” she asked as all three of them watched Rita tamper with the lock on Clint’s studio.

“I didn’t think I had to armor it up like Fort Knox,” Clint said.

“What do you think she’s doing in there?” Tee asked.

“Probably looking for me. Or maybe for stuff to blackmail people with. She’s that kind of nasty.”

The security tape showed Rita coming out of the studio a few minutes later, adjusting her bra. Istvahn froze the tape and zoomed in. She was clearly hiding square-shaped objects in there. In her hand was Clint’s camera.

“Shit,” he said, shaking his head.

“What’s our liability on that?” Istvahn asked.

“She’ll never crack my passwords, and on the third try, the contents get wiped. All she’s got is a three-thousand-
dollar camera.”

“Well, if she’s dumb enough to come back here, we’ll have her arrested.”

“Gotcha, bitch,” Tee said. “Wait, hold up. Look who’s coming in next.”

The three of them saw Anya stare at Rita’s back and then go storming in. She rushed out sobbing a few minutes later.

“What the fuck?” Clint patted his pockets for his phone. “Shit, I can’t find my phone. Can one of you call her?”

“It went right to voice mail,” Nefertiti said after trying. “She was upset that she didn’t get the part in the off-Broadway play. But she was heading out to scope out a modeling job in Hartford. She probably turned it off for the go-see.”

“Was she that upset?” Clint pointed to the camera.

“No,” Nefertiti said. “She was sad, but not like that.”

“Come on,” Istvahn said. “I was waiting for you before I went into the studio. Let’s see what else Rita did.”

Clint took the stairs because he couldn’t wait for the elevator. He turned all the lights on in the studio and looked around. Nothing appeared to be out of place. He found his phone on the console. Checking his messages and texts, he sat down hard.

“Oh fuck me.”

The last two texts were chilling. The first one had been sent from his phone to Cesare:

I’ll dump Anya as soon as you wire the money.

And Cesare’s response:

Done.

Sure enough, in his bank account was fifty thousand dollars.