Make Me Beg, Daddy

Chapter 27

I’m right and I’m broke, and being right and broke is the same as being wrong.

I put myself to work for a little while, but only so I can stave off what I know is coming. Truthfully, I’ve known it’s coming for a long time now.

But I want just a little bit longer before I concede defeat.

I take the trays out of the oven and do the closing count. Then I send everybody home. I wipe the front cases down, turn the lights off out there and leave the one over the work table on, and then I sit back down in the office with the door open so I can hear if somebody rattles the front.

Then, finally, I can delay no longer.

I pull the keyboard over and I type it in.

V HAVEN HOLDINGS, LLC

I don’t know what I expect. A website with stock photos of good-looking people in business attire shaking hands, maybe? A phone tree?

What comes up is… nothing. Well, basically nothing.

I get a hit for a New York State entity filing, registered in Delaware, a foreign LLC authorized to do business in New York. There’s a registered agent service in Albany with a P.O. box for an address. No officers listed. Neither is there a website, logo, slogan, social media presence. Nothing. A company of ghosts.

But I do find one thing of value.

On a business directory website that scrapes public filings for contact info, there’s a phone number with a 718 area code.

That’s local.

I squint at it for a long, long time.

I know what’s waiting for me on the other end of that. If I dial, a green-eyed silhouette will answer in that bone-chilling baritone with the raspy edge.

Hello, Lilah, he’ll say. I’ve been waiting for your call.

And what happens after that?

Only the devil knows—which is to say, only Kane himself knows. It wasn’t fate that brought us together; it was Kane, and he’s got plans on plans on plans. Where I fit into those plans remains to be seen.

It’s beyond obvious that those plans are neither nice, nor legal, nor peaceful. He’s a violent man who operates in a world of cash drops and shadowy threats.

How do I square that with the daunting stranger who wiped sugar from my cheek and seemed, for one wild second, like he wanted to kiss me?

He said he’d be back soon, but six days have gone by and there’s been no sign of him.

I’ve thought about him more in those six days than I care to admit. Not in a way I’m proud of. He walked into the worst night of my life, told me I was wrong about my own body, and then vanished into the snow like something I made up at four in the morning after too many hours awake.

He’s a phantom.

He’s a menace.

He’s a very bad idea.

But he’s also the last resort I don’t want to use.

In the end, we all knew this was coming.

I pick up.

I dial.

I wait.

Brrrr.

Brrrr.

Brr—

“Yeah.”

I blink, startled. I had many visions of how this conversation would go, but none of them began with the non-Kane stranger on the other end answering like I’ve already wasted his precious time.

“Uh… Er, sorry. Hi.”

“Yeah.”

Whoever this man is, customer service is not his strong suit.

I sit up straight as if he can see my slouched posture. “I’m, uh…” How do I phrase this? “I’m calling about a loan through V Haven Holdings.”

“Yeah,” he grunts for the third time.

“I’m— My name is Delilah. I’m the guarantor on a note. Account of Connor Boyd.” I look down at the calendar and the ocean of black X’s. “I’d like to speak to Kane Makov.”

He doesn’t say anything for long enough that I check the display to see if the call dropped.

Then he says, “Say that name again.” He’s paying attention now in a way he wasn’t ten seconds ago.

“Kane Makov,” I say. “Tell him it’s— Tell him it’s Lilah. He knows who I am.”

“Hold on.”

He drops the phone on something hard. I hear echoes from the room he’s in. A door, somebody talking, a barking dog, a chair scraping.

I sit there with the receiver against my ear and my heart going hard. I look around my office while I wait. The cot with the blanket folded on the end of it, the health department certificate in the frame with the crack in the corner, the tape dispenser.

The X’s. All those f*****g X’s.

Then:

“Ms. Dorsey.” It’s the same man who answered, but he’s become far more friendly since he walked away. Deferential, almost.

“Yes.”

“You at the bakery?”

I don’t remember telling him my last name. I definitely never told him I have a bakery.

“Yes,” I say.

“Alright. Stay there.” He clears his throat. “The boss is coming to see you in person.”

The boss is coming to see you in person.

The gruff stranger hangs up before I can ask when.

Okay. Fine.

I mean, like, good. Great. Grand. Wonderful.

That’s what I wanted, isn’t it? I called the number. This is what happens when you do such things. People answer.

I guess it’s just all happening a little too fast for me to process.

Feeling unsettled, I grab my things, get up, and go out into the front of the bakery. It’s five to five and it’s already full dark outside, that matte, blue-black winter dark that makes me feel like the concept of color is just something I once saw in a dream.

All the lights are out except for the single pendant bulb hanging over the register. It’s casting long, crooked shadows everywhere. Really dialing up the spooky atmosphere here.

A few minutes pass in silence. Pedestrians hustle by on the other side of the window, bustled against the cold. Car headlights sweep through and beyond. Wind groans.

Kane does not appear.

By quarter to seven, I’ve stopped believing anybody’s coming. I go to the bathroom for a nervous pee. It’s as I’m coming out, of course, that the bell over the door chimes.

Which is a neat trick, seeing as I locked it.

I race around the counter fast and there he is, filling up the whole doorway with his hand still on the door, snow melting in his hair, a long black coat, black gloves, and green eyes that pick up the light from the pendant over the register and hold onto it jealously.

Behind him, out on the sidewalk, two men in dark jackets take up positions on either side of my door with their backs to the glass, like a couple of concrete planters.

“The lock’s broken,” Kane says.

I frown. “It worked just fine a little while ago.”

He extends an open palm and shows me the metallic guts of my lock lying in his gloved hand. A few of the bits are melted into brass blobs and still smoking.

I gawk at him in disbelief. “Did you… blast open my lock?”

His eyes sparkle as he shrugs. “Can neither confirm nor deny. Regardless, it’s really shoddy security. Can’t have that. I’ll have someone come install a proper one.”

“Shoddy?” I cry out. “It’s supposed to keep people from wandering in when we’re closed, you lunatic! I’m not being raided by freaking SEAL Team Six!”

“Well, if that does occur, your new lock will ensure they’ll at least have to go around back.” He smirks, completely unapologetic.

I have to take a deep breath to settle myself down. Arguing with this nutcase about proper and improper ways to enter a place of business is not getting me any closer to my goals here. I certainly didn’t call him here to debate manners.

Woosah. In and out through the nose. You are calm, you are grace, you are beauty.

After a few rounds of affirmations and inhales, I do feel a bit more centered.

He takes his gloves off and pushes them into his coat pocket. He doesn’t take the coat off, and he doesn’t take his eyes off me, either. I glare back. I can’t let him think I’m rattled. This is a negotiation, or at least, that was my intention in calling him here. I need help and I’ll offer whatever it takes to get things done.

What remains to be seen is exactly how much that will cost me.

Kane walks over to the counter and stands on the customer side of it. I go around to my side, because that’s where I feel most comfortable, and also because I want three feet of scarred wood between us while I do this.

“So,” he says. “What did you call me for?”

Did I script out a speech, practice it several times in a variety of voices, and then throw it away because no version of me can deliver a stern message to a literal mob boss without sounding insane?

Uh… Maybe. The world may never know.

Regardless, I go with the short version. Straight to the point, Shark Tank style.

“I want to make you a deal.”

Kane rests his forearms on the counter. He’s so big that leaning on it makes my counter look like something out of a dollhouse. “Let me get this straight: You want to make me a deal?”

“That’s what I said.”

“With what?”

“… I’m still working on that part.”