Chapter Three

April

Gloria found herself sticking her tongue out again as she carefully sutured her first forehead of the evening. The man was being an incredible baby about it. He wouldn’t stay still and despite the fact that she’d dosed him twice with morphine, he was continuing to cry and flail his head from side to side. She stopped and blew some hair out of her face.

It was her second week working at the club owned by the Accardi family in New York. It was her first day working without a supervisor watching over her. Each night had twenty-five rounds at most. That meant twenty-five men she had to doctor. This sorry excuse for a male was her tenth of the night. It was looking like she had a long shift in store for her.

She’d figured out before the end of her first night that there were two types of men who fought at the club: rich playboys who are pushed into the ring by drunk friends or men who weren’t fucking around. The last man she’d tended to had a broken finger she needed to splint as well as swollen eyelids that he insisted she slice open with her scalpel. After she’d relieved the pressure on his eyes, he’d watched the opponent he’d lost to from across the room. He didn’t cry, he didn’t flinch, he calculated exactly what he’d done wrong and was already planning his next bout. As she often did for those who didn’t act like toddlers, she’d given him a bit of a leg up, whispering under her breath that the opponent he’d lost to had been treated for a pulled groin muscle the week before and was still sore on his right leg. This earned her a slow smile and a nod before the man sauntered back into the crowd like a shadow figure.

Gloria tried one last time to stick the needle and thread through the skin of the current loser at her station when he flung his hand out, knocked her wrist and caused the needle to fall to the floor… again.

“That’s it,” she hissed. “Down on the floor.”

“Wh-what?”

“You heard me, sit here,” she said, pointing at the floor in front of the chair as if she were directing him where to sit in time-out for thirty minutes. The man scrunched his shoulders as he looked around completely embarrassed. “You got knocked out in the first round. Trust me, this night can’t possibly get more embarrassing for you.”

“Look here, bitch,” the man said, pointing his finger at her.

“Bitch?” she repeated.

She grabbed hold of the sutures she’d already put into his forehead and twisted. The man’s knees buckled immediately and hit the floor. She quickly sat in the chair he’d just vacated, wrapped her thighs around his neck and squeezed. The man’s hands smacked against her thighs as she cut off his air supply. His legs twisted, trying to find purchase. She blocked out the people around her and bit her tongue as she quickly finished her work on his forehead. She snipped the edges and released him. The man fell forward and sucked in a huge breath of air.

Gloria pulled her gloves off and wiped the sweat from her forehead. “You’re welcome, Asshole,” she said, spitting on the floor beside him.

She heard clapping and realized she’d drawn the attention of everyone around the nurses station. She smiled shyly and brushed some hair away from her forehead. Then she felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. The same feeling slithered along her skin that she’d felt since the first night she started shadowing the head nurse, Valorie. She was being watched. She glanced over her shoulder and up. Gloria froze when her eyes locked with the ones she’d seen haunting her dreams over the last week.

Run. That’s what she’d thought the moment she’d seen him for the first time. It wasn’t because of the dozens of tattoos that covered his skin or the scar down his cheek. It wasn’t the way a crowd moved away from him as though he were a hungry shark swimming through a school of fish. It wasn’t even the way he smiled at someone as if he were imagining their death down to the order of the instruments he’d use to peel their skin from their bones.

It was his eyes: dark pools like the deepest parts of the Mariana trench that no person had discovered. Those fleeting moments when his eyes would connect with hers from across the club, they would linger as if he were calculating the amount of time it would take to drag her into their depths. It made her insides coil in a warm way she’d never experienced before.

The mysterious man watched her from the VIP level. One of his combat clad feet was propped up on a railing while he leaned over the top on his forearms. A half-drunk glass of whiskey swirled in his hand. She didn’t look away like everyone else. Instead she found herself falling into those dark eyes, tumbling down over and over until she started to realize she had to hit the bottom at some point… right? He smirked, a dangerous lifting of his lip on one side. He raised his glass, took a sip and pushed away from the railing. The crowd around him swallowed him whole and she was forced to blink. She glanced around her station and groaned when she noticed two new men waiting to be tended to.

Less than ten minutes later, Nora appeared to let her know she was good to go on break. She sighed and slung her used gloves into the nearest trash can. The two women waved their hands dismissively at the grown ass men crying in line waiting to be patched up. If she waited for the line to die down, she’d work an entire eight-hour shift on her feet. Nora led her through the bustling crowd as men and women shouted moves as if the fighters could hear or even cared.

The music died down as they entered the staff hallway leading away from the bar. Nora and Gloria entered the employee breakroom. The ‘triplets,’ three waitresses who were attached at the hips and always worked the same shifts, were bent over the table, scrolling through one of their social media accounts. Tina, the main bookmaker at the club, was at her usual table in the corner as she calculated the money they’d made this far into the night.

Nora plopped down in a chair beside Rita, the other girl under Nora’s care. Gloria gave Rita a nod as she sat down and pulled out her depressing peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She took a bite and for a moment her mind drifted back to the dinners she used to have while still living under her father’s thumb. The man was an abusive, alcoholic, narcissist, but he had great taste in chefs and Larry was the best of them all.

Gloria suddenly got the feeling people were talking about her. She glanced up to see the triplets staring at her and whispering.

“I’m going to ask her,” Teresa said, nodding decisively.

“Leave the poor new girl alone,” Betty said with a shake of her head as she finished off her soup.

“What?” Gloria asked, raising a brow in challenge.

Teresa leaned her elbows over the bar and settled in. “We were all wondering if there are any guys you got your eye on, Lilah?” She raised her brows a few times in question.

“Me? Oh, no, I’m just here to work,” she said, pulling on her nurse’s shirt for emphasis.

“Oh, please,” Ruby said with a roll of her eyes. “It’s one of the m&m’s.”

“One of the what?” Gloria asked.

“Mafia men,” Betty explained.

Everyone knew immediately who the mafia men were that she referred to. It was the dangerous group of men who surrounded Mr. Accardi wherever he walked. There was Accardi himself, his second-in-command, his guard, the manager of the club and his accountant.

“What, pfft, no,” Gloria said, looking down at her plate again.

“I’ve seen her gaping at the group all week,” Ruby confirmed.

“Don’t go for Accardi,” Nora warned as if she could ever have a shot with a man like him.

“Or Leo, he’s loyal to the bone for his wife,” Teresa informed her.

“Louis is pretty pussy-whipped,” Ruby said.

“I’m not…”

“Marco is a pig,” Ruby added. Every woman around them nodded and groaned in agreement.

“And the other one?” Gloria asked as they all went back to their dinners as if they’d listed them all.

“Other one?” Teresa asked.

“Yeah the one with all the tattoos,” Gloria said, grateful she wasn’t one to blush easily.

They all looked at each other. “Oh, Frankie,” Ruby said far too loudly.

Gloria’s eyes widened at her outburst and she resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. Remain calm. Don’t give anything away.

“Look at me,” Nora said, leaning over the table and opening her eyes as wide as possible. “Look, are you looking?” she asked, pointing two fingers at her own eyeballs.

“Uh, yes?” Gloria said.

“Stay. The. Fuck. Away. From. Frankie. Donati,” Nora instructed.