With this information, Stellan made a decision.
“That’s understandable and commendable,” Stellan told him. “If it was my business and a friend knew something, I’d be angry he didn’t let me know. However, I’d ask that neither you, nor your friend, intervene with Sixx. I need to handle this with her.”
Dillinger nodded again, muttering, “I get that too. Not my place, but gotta say, careful with how you handle that.”
He wasn’t sure that “careful” was the right play.
He didn’t share that with Dillinger.
He said, “Again, I very much appreciate you sharing this.”
“Not a problem,” Dillinger replied and again looked right in Stellan’s eyes before he said in a cautious tone, “It’s tough to break the habit. It starts as a job. Earning a buck. For some people, it can become a high. That work for the firm, it might not do it for her, brother. It’s vanilla when it’s clear your woman in a lot of ways needs the spice. I’d say, because it’s true, we need someone skilled at the Honey, so we could throw her more work on background checks I deem need to go deeper. But my guess would be that wouldn’t be much better. Bottom line, she’s gotta break the habit, Lange. And she’ll never be able to lose that rush. She’s gotta keep it. It’s just gotta come from somewhere else.”
“Is this spoken from experience?” he asked.
Dillinger didn’t lose hold on Stellan’s eyes, and he delivered another shock by sharing openly, “It doesn’t suck, washing off the filth, finding your way to clean, or as clean as you can get since that shit seeps in down to the soul, and that’s something that you can never get out. But if that’s the only thing you had to make you feel alive, something has to replace it, and that something has to be real, Lange. Tangible. And solid. Or it’s never gonna take hold.”
Stellan was now seeing why Dillinger gave nothing (until recently, and very recently for Stellan) to anyone … but Evangeline.
“Then no worries, Branch. I have that part covered.”
Dillinger jerked up his chin. “If you need backup with this, or she does, however you’re gonna play that, I’m in town for a while and will do my best to carve out time to give it to you two. If you need anything else that might have to do with code, chords or surveillance, got a bud who’s moved to town with a variety of skills and an attention deficit disorder. He works better when he has fifty things on the go. And whatever that asshole partner of Barclay’s has got goin’, my man will have no problem helping fuck it up. In fact, he’s the wheels I right now have in motion.”
“So you’ll be offering these services to Barclay?” Stellan asked.
“Absolutely,” Dillinger answered.
“Can you ask Barclay to give Sixx a wide berth while I handle her?” Stellan went on.
“Absolutely,” Dillinger repeated.
“Again, appreciated.”
They shook hands again, and Stellan walked him to the door.
Dillinger stopped at it in a way that Stellan didn’t open it.
“By the way,” he began, “Angie wants you guys over for dinner. She’s offered up my chicken enchiladas. I’ll try to talk her into making her spaghetti. That shit is fucking amazing. Either way, she’ll have my ass if I don’t leave here with your promise we’ll be setting something up.”
Stellan’s lips quirked at his wording.
Dillinger shook his head and shocked Stellan yet again when his cold eyes lit with humor and more openness came out of his mouth “Brother, you were the talk of the control room last night, coming all over the floor for Sixx. Don’t think you can hand me shit for having a Mistress who owns my ass.”
Stellan lifted his brows. “Did I hand you shit?”
Another something moved through Dillinger’s eyes that was not chilly in the slightest.
Solidarity.
“Told you you’d enjoy the dark side,” he said low.
Stellan did not get into the differences of what they had and who they were in the scene.
He didn’t because he was not the kind of man who didn’t take advantage of every opportunity, especially the important ones.
Having a friend in Branch Dillinger was such a thing. Not only because of what Stellan sensed he was, and the skills that came with that, but because he was Evangeline’s, and Stellan cared a great deal for Dillinger’s woman.
And also because Stellan had learned in his life you could trust few, but those few you could trust were worth anything.
And last, because Stellan had sensed from the first time he met him, under all that cold, whatever his reasons, he hid the fact he was a good man.
So if Dillinger was moved to give his trust, Stellan knew he could return that unreservedly.
“Is Leenie partial to restraint?” Stellan asked.
“She seriously rocks that shit.”
Stellan smiled.
“I’ve seen your woman work,” Dillinger shared. “Hand her the ropes, brother, but after you hand her a whip. You’ll visit another world and won’t wanna leave.”
“We’ll see,” Stellan murmured amusedly.
“I bet,” Dillinger murmured back and then stunned Stellan again by lifting a hand and clapping him on the shoulder. “Later, brother.”
“Goodbye, Branch, and thank you again.”
Dillinger opened the door and Stellan followed him through, but he stopped two steps out and watched as Dillinger dipped his chin to Susan before he sauntered through the outer door.
When he turned his attention to his assistant, she was staring at that door.
She must have felt Stellan’s regard because she turned to him and declared, “If you tell Harry I drooled, you’ll lose your ability to make children.”
Stellan shook his head at her, went into his office, closed himself in, walked to his desk, sat down, and picked up his phone.
He scrolled to a number he used frequently, deciding not to go with Sylvie or Tucker Creed as both were friends and would sometimes partner with Simone.
He hit the green button and put the phone to his ear.
“Mr. Lange?” the man answered.
“I want everything you can get on the owners of the Bolt,” he ordered. “And I want it fast.”
“On it.”
Stellan disconnected, gazed out his windows for long moments.
Then he went back to work.
twenty-two
Pixies and Warlords
SIXX
At nine o’clock that night, Sixx, definitely kitted out as Mistress Sixx, sat at a small, round table on the elevated platform that spanned a set of high, stool-less tables that disappeared where they led to a dancefloor that was flanked in the back corners with two large bars.
The Bolt.
The music was loud and thumping. The lights were flashing. The bodies were heaving. There was a smell of booze, sweat and sex in the air.
And Sixx was taking it in wearing skintight, zip-at-the-back, low-riding, black leather pants and a close-fitting, low cut, cropped leather vest, which meant she showed some skin at her tits, hips, back and belly. On her feet were platform black pumps with a scary-high, pencil heel. From her ears dangled long, black tassel earrings.
And around her neck was her rose gold choker.
She was out of sorts.
She should feel in her element. Seemingly on the prowl at a sex club. Something she’d done innumerable times before.
It should have felt natural.
It didn’t.
It felt like something was missing.
Not the Sixx part of Simone “Sixx” Marchesa being fully out, taking over, her other half protected, but that not being the case anymore. The child in her had now grown up, and because of Stellan was safe anywhere.
Even there.
Because that world was a part of her, just like it was for Sixx.
It was that she wasn’t there with her Master, and it felt wrong.
“You’re not here to play,” she muttered to herself. “It’s just a fucking job.”
And it was a good one. Not doing something for the likes of Fred Carvelo, who she was going to need to scrape off.
That kind of thing didn’t enter the life she had with Stellan.
But still.
That something was missing.
And it was important.