Ivan told him, “It’s no big deal. I don’t sweat it. That was the first night I decided to get involved. And it’s been a lot of late nights and hard work since then.”

“Well, you’re making it all happen for yourself now, Ivan. So you just keep it up.”

“Oh, I plan to,” Ivan told him as he walked inside.

Daphne and Maya were inside the door with the cash boxes, email lists, and more security behind them.

“Looking good, Ivan,” Maya told him, admiring his total package that evening.

He smiled and asked them, “Are we near capacity yet?” It was close to midnight, and Ivan was thinking all business.

Daphne looked down at her hand counter. “Mmm, it’s about sixty, seventy percent full now.”

“What about the VIP?”

“Oh, that’s less than half.”

Ivan nodded and said, “All right, keep announcing the VIPs cut line for forty dollars. Busta and his crew should be here soon so we can pack it all in.”

Maya and Daphne both nodded to him. “Okay.”

They opened the door at twenty-five dollars that night, with a capacity of nearly two thousand in the club, two hundred of which included the VIP section. Ivan and Lucina had to pay a ten-thousand-dollar bar guarantee for taking over the club’s Saturday night, but they looked to cover that and break fifty thousand from the door.

As soon as Ivan walked into the party, Red Face Lion spun the popular Eve and Gwen Stefani song “Let Me Blow Ya Mind.”

The crowd grew frantic with Eve’s arrival and danced hard to her song, while singing along with the lyrics.

Ivan watched them and grinned, before walking into Julio.

“Hey, Ivan, man, I told you we could do it!” he yelled, with a beer in his right hand. He wore a yellow VIP wristband. He said, “You just tell me who you want me to get, and I’ll ask my cousin to try and get them down here for you.”

Before Ivan could respond, one of Lucina’s girls commented on her way past him, “Hey, Ivan, you look great tonight. That diamond stud is really shining.”

“Yeah, thanks to you guys,” Ivan stated.

Julio looked at him and held up an OK sign with his free hand.

He said, “Man, the women in here are gorgeous. You got my two lined up yet?”

Ivan looked at him and asked, “They haven’t been treating you well in VIP?”

“Oh, yeah, but I want my two to stay with me.”