Page 1 of Cold Bastard
Prologue
What the fuck did I just do?
The question hit me like a fist to the solar plexus, and I doubled over, pressing my forehead against the edge of the desk. The wood was cool against my skin, grounding me. Real. Solid. Something I could feel and understand in a world that had suddenly become incomprehensible. This was real. The ache in my ribs where he had punched me was real, a deep throb that flared with every breath, a constant reminder of his rage and my vulnerability. The split in my lip was real, still tender when I touched my tongue to it. The handprint bruises forming on my upper arms were real, purple-blue shadows in the shape of his fingers, marks of ownership he’d tried to press into my flesh.
The seventy-five million dollars was real.
The money I had just stolen.
What would he do when he discovered this? When he realized I had taken not just his money, but his pride? His control?
Not just stolen. I’d gutted him. Cleaned him out. Eviscerated his entire operation. Taken every cent the Prancing Pussycat had squirreled away in its various accounts—the legitimate ones, the shady ones, the ones that were probably connected to people who made him look like a fucking Boy Scout. The ones with names like “Brothers Consulting LLC” and “Brotherhood Entertainment Holdings” that were obviously shells for something much darker. Money laundering operations, maybe.Drug distribution networks. Human trafficking rings. I didn’t want to think too hard about what kind of business actually flowed through those accounts, what kind of blood money I had just made off with.
People would kill for a fraction of what I had just taken.
People had probably killed for less.
People who made problems disappear.
People who knew how to make bodies vanish into the Missouri River or get ground up in industrial meat processing plants out in the stockyards.
People with connections to organized crime syndicates that stretched from Kansas City to Chicago and beyond.
My stomach lurched violently, and I barely made it to the trash can before I threw up. Nothing came out but bile and the vodka shot I downed before my last set, burning my throat on the way back up. The set where I smiled and spun around a pole and let men shove dollar bills into my G-string while pretending I was somewhere else. Someone else. Anywhere but the Prancing Pussycat on a Tuesday night, with his eyes following me from the bar, calculating, possessive, watching my every move like he owned me. Like I was just another asset in his portfolio, another piece of property he had acquired. The way he looked at me made my skin crawl, like he could see right through the sequins and body glitter to the fear underneath, to the desperation that kept me coming back night after night, even though every instinct screamed at me to run.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and sat back on my heels, breathing hard, tasting acid. My hands shook so badly I could barely hold them steady.
What the hell had I just done?
You can’t stay here.
The thought cut through the fog of shock and trauma with crystal clarity, sharp and urgent. I couldn’t stay here. When hecame back and found his accounts empty, found his computer dead, found the kingdom he’d built through intimidation and exploitation reduced to nothing, he would kill me.
Or worse.
There were things worse than dying.
I learned that tonight. I learned it in the twenty minutes between when he had locked his office door and when he finally passed out on his leather couch, satisfied with the destruction he’d wreaked.
I pushed myself up, legs shaking, muscles protesting, and looked at the screen one last time. The wipe was almost complete. Ninety-seven percent. Ninety-eight. The progress bar crawled forward with agonizing slowness.
Move, Alex. Fucking move.
My purse was on the floor where I dropped it when he had grabbed me by my hair and thrown me against the desk. I grabbed it, checked inside with trembling fingers that didn’t feel like they belonged to me. Wallet. Phone. Keys to the shitty apartment I rented on the bad side of Rapid City. The one with the leaky faucet and the neighbor who screamed at his girlfriend at three in the morning. A lipstick I would never wear again. The shade he liked, the one he told me made me look “fuckable.” Pepper spray that hadn’t done me a damn bit of good when he dragged me in here, because I never expected it to be him, never thought I needed protection from him.
And a flash drive.
I pulled it out and stared at it. It was small, innocuous, black, and rectangular. The kind of thing anyone could buy at any office supply store for ten dollars. But this one held copies of everything. Every file, every transaction, every dirty secret the Prancing Pussycat had buried in its books. Names, dates, account numbers. Shell corporations. Wire transfers to offshoreaccounts. Payments to local cops who looked the other way. Photos that would destroy marriages and careers.
Insurance.
I started copying files a few months ago, when I first realized how deep the operation ran. When I understood that the club wasn’t just a strip joint but a front for something bigger, something darker—money laundering, maybe, or human trafficking, or both. When I started noticing the girls who would show up for a week or two and then disappear without warning, and how he would just shrug and say they had “moved on” with that dead look in his eyes that suggested they had moved on to somewhere permanent. I told myself it was just in case. In case I needed leverage. In case things went badly. In case he ever turned on me the way he had turned on so many others.
I hadn’t imagined things this bad. I mean, I knew the risks when I took this job, knew the kind of men who frequented places like this, knew that working at a strip club meant dealing with grabby hands and crude comments and the occasional threat.
But this? This was something else entirely.
I never imagined robbery, and running for my life. I never imagined finding financial records that detailed money laundering, drug and human trafficking. I never imagined that he, the charming, smooth-talking bastard with his expensive suits and his generous tips, was running an operation that destroyed lives. I never imagined that downloading those files onto a flash drive would mean I could never come back here, could never see my apartment again, could never contact anyone I knew.
