His arm shot out, hitting the button to make the elevator move once again.

Only then did he lean in close by my ear, rattling off an address.

“What?” I asked as the car stopped at the lobby.

“My address,” he said, pressing his lips to mine—hard and deep, but over far too quickly. “You want more, darlin’, you know where to find me.”

With that, he turned and moved in front of the doors as they slid open.

He tucked something into his pocket.

And it wasn’t until he was walking away that I knew what it was.

My panties.

The doors started to close, making me throw out a hand to stop them. I didn’t feel ready to trust my legs to carry me out to the street. But I forced myself to move.

By the time I made it out onto the sidewalk, Soren was long gone.

I threw up a hand, flagging down a cab because there was no way I was going to walk and take the subway back to Brooklyn in a dress without panties.

All the ride, Soren’s address flashed endlessly across my mind.

I wasn’t going to go.

But as I stripped out of the godawful dress, I wanted nothing more than to show up at his doorstep.

Instead, I got changed, grabbed a knife and some brass knuckles, deciding to distract myself by going around town and hitting up everyone who was late on their payments to the family.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Soren

“Did you find anything other than the rats?” I asked the exterminator as he came back out of the club, saying a silent prayer that termites hadn’t been hiding anywhere. Sure, the building itself was brick, but there was plenty of wood inside to worry about. Especially since the place had been empty for so long.

“Nope. Don’t even see any damage from the rats, so I don’t think they’ve been around for long.”

That was good news.

This was the nerve-racking stage of opening a new club—finally getting inside the building and going over it with a fine-tooth comb to make sure you catch even the smallest of problems before they turned into a bigger ones in the future.

Early on, I’d hired a subpar contractor and private inspector who both somehow missed a slow leak in one of the bathrooms. Until, one day, during a busy night, the floor collapsed.

Thankfully, no one was hurt. But the whole place had to be shut down until it could be fixed.

With that experience under my belt—and a much more skilled and thorough crew working on my projects—I made sure nothing got past us. Even if it meant adding on a few weeks or thousands of dollars.

“You sure you want us to save this?” Gav, the contractor, asked as he gestured to one of the boards covering one of the windows.