#6 Chapter 3
CHAPTER TWO
Mimi
“You look fantastic…” Jenna beams as I walk into the reception. She was just by the corridor leading to the main floor of the club.
Tonight’s my night off so I dress accordingly, wearing black like Salvatore asked. I’m wearing a black negligee and a black mask with feathers and actual diamonds around the rim. It was a treat to myself. I work damn hard here so when I come out to play I do it well.
It’s exactly the thing The Dark Odyssey is about. Playing hard.
“Thank you,” I reply. She gives me that fake as hell smile and I give her one back.
“And which guy are you dolled up like that for tonight?” she asks, like she doesn’t know.
I can’t stand this girl and she’s a fake ass jealous bitch to me. She’s one of the receptionists here and one of the harem of women Gabe had. She’s a bitch that wants to collect the Giordano men one by one. Started with Nick and worked her way down the line. Except she’s never been with Salvatore.
I haven’t failed to notice the scathing looks she’s given me every time she sees me with him.
I widen my smile and pivot on my heels, facing her so she can see I’m giving her my undivided attention.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I throw back.
“Seeing Salvatore tonight?” she asks with a sassy smile. I can see she’s trying her best to look nonchalant but shit like that doesn’t work with me.
Girls who like to fish around and pretend to be my friend because I’m close with the guys. Maybe it’s my fault because I’m always super nice to everyone and sure, I probably mother hen them a lot too. I just loathe fake people.
I walk up to her and it throws her off balance. She’s never seen me switch before. I slide my mask up my forehead so she can see me properly and know I’m not hiding behind it.
“Why?” I ask and tilt my head to the side.
Her lips part and she brushes a lock of her dark bob over her shoulder. “Oh, I was just asking. I bet he’ll love the outfit on or off.” She giggles and flicks her wrist like she’s just trying to be one of the girls, but the blush creeping up her cheeks is a tell that I’ve made her nervous. “It’s just that you two look close. It’s nice…”
“Like fuck it is,” I grin. “Jenna do me a favor and mind your work, my business with my boy is my own.”
I slide my mask back down and saunter away, heels clicking, leaving her staring at me open mouthed.
I’m not testy. No I’m not that tonight even though it looked like I was. My answer to Jenna was completely out of character for me even when I can’t stand a bitch like her.
What I am is nervous.
I’ve been coming here for a little over ten years now and tonight is the most nervous I’ve ever felt.
Except for the occasional flutter, there’s an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach and a lightheaded sensation that makes me feel faint every time I start overthinking or my thoughts become erratic.
Put simply, while I may be all dolled up in my outfit, I’m a hot mess inside.
Pushing my thoughts aside I draw in a breath and take comfort in the vibrant atmosphere I can feel from out here as I walk down the corridor.
For me The Dark Odyssey is more than just a sex club. That would sound so strange if I said that to anyone, but that’s the truth. The club with its nightly Venetian Masquerade themed parties is like a show to me. Every night we put on a show and people come for the show and the lure of living out their wildest fantasies.
The echo of my heels clicking against the floor takes me back to the beginning. It was my idea to get the marble floors. The guys fit the whole club with marble two years after it opened. I suggested it and that was enough for Salvatore to make it happen. He’s like that with my ideas. Always showing me that he values me.
I was with the guys from the beginning, right from when the doors opened.
Salvatore, Gabe, Nick, and their cousins Christian and Georgiou. Those are the five owners. The five sex crazed members of the Giordano pack.
When they opened they didn’t even ask me to work with them they just included me like it was a given I’d say yes. I literally got a call one day from Salvatore, telling me this is what we’re doing and I’m supposed to look after the girls who’d be working for them. The waitresses and exotic dancers.
That was it. That and a salary I couldn’t say no to. I was nineteen at the time. Not even old enough to get in the club let alone work right there in the open with the guys and all the crazy sex.
I did it though and practically signed my life away to the crazy Giordano pack who claimed they wanted a woman’s touch to the place.
Vincent likes to think he’s above the obsession with a sex club and all loved up with Sorcha, his wife, but he’s only just become the cool collected under boss people know him to be in recent years. I guess though, to be fair, that with a wife like Sorcha, who is literally like an angel, it’s easy to understand why he’s so loved up. All the more understandable because they just had a baby.
The man was as sex crazy as the rest of the boys in his younger days though. I think he was a little worse. Nick, the youngest brother, always used to spy on him when Vincent got up to all the shit with the girls who went crazy for him. What Nick didn’t know, and doesn’t have an inkling to this day, was I was always watching and spying on him.
We have a similar personality –Addicted to trouble. Many times that trouble landed my ass in more trouble. Like the time when I tried to spy on him, fell out of a tree and into the river and would have drowned if Salvatore hadn’t saved me.
Or, like the time I followed Nick into a den of drug lords because I thought he was sneaking into the cinema to see an R rated film. That time was the last time I followed that boy because when bullets started flying and nearly hit me I knew my little pushbike couldn’t get me away fast enough.
Who came to save me on his motorcycle?
Salvatore.
It was like he just knew to look for me. For a long time they all thought I had the hots for Nick but it wasn’t that. He just fascinated me because he’s the wild child.
That night, like always the boys all knew what Nick was up to. But Salvatore knew that if Nick was in trouble little Mimi wouldn’t be too far behind. He wasn’t wrong.
All those times he did something like that, always watching for me, it never crossed my mind that we could be more than what we were.
He taught me to pick a lock, he taught me how to use a gun, he taught me to dance, but it was the day he started teaching me how to protect myself and Gabe thought he knew better that the tides changed.
It swayed another way. Right in the direction my little heart moved, because of the wild bunch, Gabe had been the cool one in my eyes.
He was different then and almost seemed the most mature and level-headed. Basically, not willing to jump headfirst into trouble like the others. Maybe that was it. I don’t know. I still don’t know because nothing I’ve done since has made sense to me.
I walk through the large oak doors leading out to the dance floor of the club and my legs start shaking. My soul quivering.
I’ll see Salvatore in about five minutes and I still feel the roil of emotion I’ve had all day. All day I’ve been thinking about my answer and I’m still in limbo.
I call him my boy.
I’m so crazy… Salvatore and the other guys haven’t been boys in years but to me they still are. And he’s mine whether we’re a couple or not.
My heart knows what it wants but that’s just my heart. That’s the problem.
My heart. I get in trouble when I follow it.
Thank God for the music blaring around me. The music and the people around tune out my inner turmoil. It’s distracting.
I walk past the cubicles designed for sex. My idea again. I thought something that looked more stylish would be sexy. The cubicles on the main floor are different to the ones above. In these ones the people can hook up on the night. The other cubicles on the floors above have to be booked just like the theme rooms and the sex dungeon.
The ones I pass by have long padded leather sofas and, Jesus Lord is it seriously crazy tonight. I think it’s the Chicago heat.
No cubicle I’ve passed so far has had less than four people inside. Tonight everyone seems to have the itch for group sex.
I have to stop by the cubicle nearest the end of the dancefloor because it looks like everyone’s possessed because of the way they’re moving.
On one end of the sofa there’s two men sharing a woman. She’s sitting in reverse cowgirl on one guy’s lap so he can pound into her ass and the guy in front can take her pussy. Another is standing on one of the raised platforms by the sofa so he can assault her mouth with his cock. I don’t know how she manages to concentrate enough to give the other guy on her side a hand job.
Everything’s so fast and wild, and in tandem with the threesome on the other end of the sofa where one guy is pounding into a woman’s ass while she bends over to give the guy in front a blow job. All are wearing masks.
I’ve been here for so long and this scene before me is nothing new. I’ve seen wilder in the sex dungeons, yet seeing all this here still makes my body blush with that crazy sexual heat you’re meant to feel from watching. It’s always fascinated me.
I always try to imagine how the scenarios play out, how it all happens. Most people come with a friend or a group of friends and hook up with others on the night. The tradition is that everyone gets the silver coin at reception to give to the person or people they want to spend the night with.
We create the environment for the fantasy and then they take it from there. They get lost in the fantasy. We, the ones watching, get lost in the distraction.
Distraction is what I need now.
I look away and gaze above to the floors on the upper level. Each of the Giordano boys has a private lounge and they have a suite in the penthouse.
I always manage to see Nick first and these days Nick is always here with Mia, his wife.
They’re standing on the fourth floor and she’s laughing at something he’s saying. He kisses her and I can’t help but smile. I’m so glad his wildness didn’t get him killed. These days he directs all his energy to his wife. It’s nice to see them look so in love with each other, like they just met. They’ve been married for two years and they have a child.
My gaze takes me higher to the man I’m here to see. He’s on the fifth floor looking down. He likes to do that because all the artistry and the show of the whole Venetian Masquerade setting is him. He’s the tech, the creative director for lack of a better description, for The Dark Odyssey.
All I see is the silhouette of him standing by the archway of his private lounge. That’s where I usually meet him.
I can tell now, even without seeing him properly, that he’ll be standing there with a cigar looking sexy as fuck in his mafioso way.
I pull in a breath and continue my pursuit to him.This belongs to NôvelDrama.Org.
I can do this…
The plan is to see what happens. That’s what I’m going to do.
I’m going to see what happens.
He wants an answer. He wants me to be his.
I’ll see if I can truly find the courage to give him the answer screaming in my heart.