1520 Main

3

Trey didn't know whether to be mad or glad about the afternoon's success, which put him in an uncertain mood for the evening. Freshly bathed, dressed, and shaved, he clipped down the stairs of the speakeasy he'd spent the last four years saving to buy, resenting every penny that went into making himself project the image of a prosperous, respectable businessman, which included custom-tailored suits and hats. He couldn't bring himself to pay for custom shoes, too, not after last year, when he'd met Boss Tom's asking price and been refused. He'd jacked the price up by another five figures. Trey had met that six months ago. Tom had gone higher still.

Then he'd dropped that bet in Trey's lap this afternoon and Trey wasn't going to waste the opportunity. He began his project right away. Sixteen was about the right age to begin courting, but Marina was a very young sixteen and that made him a little uncomfortable.

Except ... it wasn't a courtship and Trey didn't have two years to do it right even if he was courting her.

He shot his cuffs out and adjusted his collar when he reached the main floor. The joint was a little more quiet than it usually was at eight o'clock, but that was because there was a tent revival in town and all his regulars' wives had dragged them to it. This week's take would be slim and on top of all that, all his good-time girls were having their bleeding time at the same fucking time, which they did every month.

"Never trust anything that bleeds for a week and lives," he muttered as he shook out his keys and went to his office. "Mean as shit, to boot." He'd lock them up if he could, just to keep them from slapping every customer he had.

Just one of those things. He managed his cash flow well enough to make up for that one week every month, but he'd forgotten about the tent revival this week that was taking a big chunk out of it.

"Goddammit," he muttered. He unlocked and opened the door of his office and stopped cold, looking at the mess. The divan he slept on had been slashed to shreds, its stuffing poking out. The drawers of his filing cabinets had been yanked out and dumped all over the floor. The cash box, which had been pried open, lay on the floor empty. His desk had been upended and all the secret drawers ripped out. Nothing in his office had been left intact.

He raised an eyebrow.

"Stupid shits," he said dryly as he walked all over the files and papers on the floor to get to his desk. He pulled on the legs and let it thump on the bare floor. The rug had been tossed aside and the locks in the trap doors under it had been jimmied open. His office chair, which had begun its service to Trey as a dilapidated kitchen chair anyway, was in pieces. He supposed he could afford to use one of the nicer chairs out front since this place was now within his grasp—

—unless Boss Tom welshed on the bet, in which case, he'd be the one lying under Brush Creek because Trey was done being jacked around. What he needed to find out, he thought as he went to the front, grabbed a chair, and took it back to the destroyed office, was why Tom hated Reverend Scarritt so much.

Trey was annoyed with Scarritt at the moment, too.

Scarritt was a fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal preacher. Spoke in tongues, faith healed, the whole works, which was why Trey had been shocked that his daughter was wearing trousers. But in a competition between being able to toss up a girl's dress and only able to guess the shape of her ass in shapeless trousers, he supposed any father would prefer the latter. No cat was going to spend the time to take off a girl's pants if she also had to be persuaded to take them off.

And now ... that was exactly what Trey had to do if he wanted this bar.

He did.

He wanted this speakeasy so badly he could taste every drop of whiskey that had ever soaked into the floorboards. For the last four years, he'd poured his heart and soul into turning this place into the place to go in Kansas City, and only realized his mistake the first time he'd ponied up the cash that Tom refused.