Page 20 of Bourbon Deceit
Last thing I knew, I had a vagina in my pants, which made me a lady, despite the way I crossed my damn legs. It was going to be a long-ass day.
Chapter Eight
“All the Pretty Girls”
JETT
“There’s the sexiest man I know.” Diego’s voice rang out as I looked up from the contracts I was reading.
I stood and held out my hand to the man I’ve known for a while now. “Diego, it’s good to see you.”
With his free hand, Diego gripped my shoulder and said in a cheesedick voice, “That new girl seems to be doing something good, because you’re practically glowing.”
“Fuck off.” I smiled as I went to my bar and grabbed small glasses of bourbon for the both of us.
We both took seats in my office and we sipped the amber liquid.
“So, tell me how the club is coming along.”
Nodding his head, Diego said, “Good, good. Thank you for hooking me up with the lender. He’s awesome and I was able to get the money I needed for the renovations.”
“Good.”
Diego was someone I met working with the Boys and Girls club. He grew up in the bad part of New Orleans, where opportunity to succeed was non-existent. He lived on the streets for ten years, which you wouldn’t be able to tell now but when he was on the streets, he did anything to earn a dime, and that meant he robbed tourists most of the time. It wasn’t until he made the mistake of trying to rob me one night and he quickly found out he tried to rob the wrong person. Instead of reporting him, I helped him. I gave him an education, gave him a place to live, and got him out of the gutter. He was an unofficial Jett Girl, which I still joke about. He doesn’t take too kindly to it, but he’s making a name for himself and by the way he was dressed, I could tell he’d changed from the inside out.
“When do you start breaking ground on the new place?” I asked, genuinely interested.
“We already have. We have the main room completed and just started work on the themed rooms. The bar they put in is fucking stellar, man.”
“I can’t wait to see it. Have you decided on the themes yet, or a name for the club?”
Diego and I shared the same interests when it came to the bedroom. We both dabbled in kink and required our women to submit to us and only us. I didn’t know much about Diego’s lifestyle choices, but what I did know was that when he told me he wanted to put together a kink club, I was more than supportive and thrilled about the idea.
“Le Cirque du Diable,” he said with pride. “The Circus of the Devil is what the club will be called, and the rooms I’m still working on, but they will go with the feel of the club. I have some people I still have to hire and then we need to start practicing our shows, but I sure as hell know who’s going to be the ringmaster,” he said with a glint in his eye.
I laughed. “Man, I would love to see you take center stage.”
“I didn’t take you for a guy lover,” Diego teased.
“In your fucking dreams, man.”
He laughed and grew serious for a second. “I do need to find someone to paint some designs on my walls.”
“Designs on your walls?”
“You know, the club has a vintage circus theme, minus the animals, and I need to add some decorative crap . . . add a woman’s touch, you know? But I need someone I can trust, because I don’t want the club getting out to the public. It’s going to be invite only.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” I stroked my chin as I thought about Diego’s dilemma. There was an easy solution that anyone could see, and that would be to let Diego borrow Goldie, have her go over there and paint her little heart out, but the thought of her being alone in a kink club with Diego gnawed at my gut. It didn’t seem like the best idea. I liked Diego, but I didn’t fully trust the guy either.
“If I think of something, I’ll let you know,” I said instead, feeling slightly guilty that I already had a solution to his problem.
“Thanks, man.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “Now, on to the good stuff, I was able to do some . . . snooping, thanks to some friends I have, and I found out the kind of bid your dad put on Lot 17. It’s not a bad bid, man, and he’s offering a lot of concessions as well. It’s not a formal bid, more of an acknowledgement of what he could offer.”
Diego handed me the paper and I took a look at it. The price tag was exactly what I was looking at for myself, so that was easily matchable, but as I looked at the concessions, I realized my dad was trying everything in the book to get what he wanted. There were kickbacks from his building that would be given to the sellers for five years, under the table of course, and there was also lifetime VIP access to his “gentleman’s club,” which I knew, but couldn’t quite prove yet, was just an illegal strip joint. I was still working on doing some more snooping myself.
I looked up at Diego and said, “Thank you. I appreciate this.”
“Anything for you. You changed my life, Jett.”
