With Love

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The chatter of people muffled out the groans of pain coming from the man sitting in front of me. Battered and bruised, he sat tied to the folding metal chair, sobbing.

"You think that you have any right to steal from me?" I demanded, twirling the knife in one hand. Franco stood behind him, stone-faced. Jasper leaned against the door, the picture of perfect boredom on his face. Elijah stood to my left, a menacing grin on his face that promised a fate worse than death. His knuckles were covered in blood.

The man in the chair's chest heaved as he gasped, trying to find the words to defend himself. I bent down to look in his eyes, one of which was swelled shut, and widened my own, patiently waiting for his excuses.

He staggered on a breath. "I only took a little bit, I swear," he wailed, his lips trembling.

I straightened up and paced in front of him leisurely. "Look, Marty, you've been working for me for almost two years now and I'm supposed to believe that you've only taken a little bit of my money?" I asked rhetorically, shaking my head in disappointment. I stopped in front of him, my hands behind my back. "Unfortunately for you, I'm not stupid."

He whimpered. "Please, Miss Love. I had to, I needed the money," he begged, his head drooping low.

Franco grabbed his hair and yanked his head back so that he looked me in the eye. "I don't care why you needed the money, it's not yours to decide where it goes," I informed him in a deathly calm voice.

"My wife—we needed the money to pay for her surgery, I was only going to take what I needed, Anastasia—" his voice cut off when I lunged forward and grabbed his throat.

"You call me Miss Love and nothing else," I warned him in a low voice. "And you know that if you needed help, you could have asked." I threw an arm out to the other people sitting in the room in the corner, watching silently. "We help each other in this business, do we not?" I demanded, glancing at each of them.

One young woman dipped her head in agreement. "Yes, we do, Miss Love."

I smiled softly. "Thank you, Katrina. When Freddy needed help for his daughter's leukemia treatment, my family paid in full with no expectations from him," I explained, folding my arms over my chest. "No one gets left behind in this business, not even their family members."

Marty shivered in his seat, his nose running.

"But you," I said, using my knife to point at him, "You stole with no remorse and I don't accept that." My head twisted to the side to see Jasper from my peripheral and I jerked my head.

Jasper stalked towards us, handing over a folder. I opened it, scanning the contents before shutting it and dropping it on the small round table on the other side of the room.

"You will pay my family back in full within the next two months or you will suffer the consequences," I spoke loudly, so the others would listen carefully, "You are hereby fired from my business and will not breathe a word of your previous occupation to another soul or you will forfeit your life, is that clear?"

Marty sobbed, his gasps catching over each other but he nodded, understanding my terms.

"Very well," I said, sliding the knife into my boot, "You will sign the papers on the table and we will be checking up on you whenever we wish." I turned to the other dealers from my casino. "The rest of you have my permission to get back to work." They surged to their feet, bidding me goodbye as they bustled out the small room and back onto the casino floor outside this door.

Franco and Elijah got to work cutting Marty's ties and yanking him to his feet and towards the table to sign the documents.

Jasper stood at my side as we walked out of the room, the laughter and cheer of our guests breaking through the gloom from that small room. "How often do you want us to check up on him?" Jasper asked, dodging a waitress carrying a tray full of champagne for the Mayor's table.