“Desperate times.” I couldn’t really explain Titus’s motivation in agreeing to this new scheme, but as long as he was supporting it, I wasn’t going to tempt fate by digging too deep.

“What exactly do you want to do? Get up onstage?” His eyes rolled over me and white flashed as he gave me a lecherous grin. “I could work with that.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes at him. I refrained from elbowing Race in the ribs as he muttered, “Told ya,” out of the corner of his mouth.

“No, I don’t want to dance. I told Titus that wouldn’t be part of it. Can’t you put me behind the bar or something?” I didn’t ask about cocktail serving because even those girls had to work topless, and while I wasn’t shy, I wasn’t okay with having my lady bits within grabbing distance of drunken hands.

“There isn’t room behind the bar. And that job is murkier than getting naked onstage. The cop would have a fit if he knew you were messing around with dirty money.”

Both Race and Nassir looked so suave, so clean cut, that it was easy to forget they had their hands on piles and piles of illegal cash from running the city’s underground. All that dirty money needed to get clean somehow and running the bills through the bar at a strip club was obviously a no-brainer.

Race agreed and then grinned at me. “You know how you’re focused on building yourself a new club and always complaining about how you don’t want to be here? Put Reeve in charge. She thinks Spanky’s is butt ugly and was just telling me how someone needs to show it some love. Why not let a woman do it? The dancers would probably like having a softer touch around here. She thinks they need something to value as their own. She thinks that would’ve kept Honor around.”

“Keelyn.” Nassir and I barked the woman’s real name at the same time and eyes that were the color of spiced cider switched from annoyed to speculative.

“What do you mean, give them something to value?”

I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “You hire the prettiest girls you can find. You give them a degree of security they wouldn’t have out on the street, but they are still getting naked for strangers and that can be demeaning. Class the joint up. Get rid of the pink everywhere. It’s gaudy. Make this place feel expensive and worthwhile and the girls won’t just work here, they’ll own it. Plus you can charge more and bring in a better class of loser. This place feels like a throwback to harder times, and after that shootout . . .” I shrugged again because he wasn’t stupid and knew exactly what I was talking about. “You need to breathe new life into this place just like you’re trying to do with Novak’s other old businesses.”

Nassir muttered something in a language I didn’t understand but it sounded exotic and sexy. No wonder Key ran. Having all that smoldering intensity and sexy appeal focused solely on her had to be nearly impossible to resist.

“You think a new coat of paint and some new decor would have kept Key here?” He sounded skeptical.

“No. I think she had to go so when she comes back she can do it knowing she’ll probably never leave again. That’s a hard pill to swallow. I think if she knew she was more than just tits and ass and a pretty show you would’ve gotten a lot further with her.”

He grunted at me and sat down in the chair behind the ugly desk. He looked at something on the computer and then over my shoulder to where Chuck was still standing as a silent sentinel.

“What do you think? Is this a crazy idea?”

The giant African American man barked out a laugh that had me jumping a little. “No way. It’s fucking brilliant. The regulars are too comfortable and you have too much on your plate. Let her tear this place apart and fix it up. Let her make it as pretty as she is. No one will know what hit them.”

I shot Race a look out of the corner of my eye and then shifted my feet nervously. This wasn’t what I had expected at all. “Uh . . . I can’t play around with laundering money. The feds already have me on their radar and Titus will kill all of us after he locks us up if he thinks any of that is going on.”

Nassir flicked a look to Race then back to me and he folded his hands together and leaned back in the chair. He looked like a devil sitting on a tattered throne.

“That’s one of the reasons I need to finish rebuilding my club. We always tried to keep Spanky’s clean. Right now just the bar is handling anything we need filtered through legitimate means. We can find another avenue for that while you’re here, but only if you take up the reins. Unless you agree to do this, then the only other place I have for you is up on that stage, are we clear? And you have to see the job through to the end, not just until I put a slug in the Irishman.”

I fidgeted nervously. When people called Nassir ruthless they weren’t kidding. He had a way of maneuvering people and situations so that he got the exact outcome he was after. I felt like there was zero wiggle room for me if I agreed to do this. There was far more responsibility involved than I had been expecting when I planned on asking him to put me to work. I didn’t know anything about managing a strip club or how to work with fierce strippers forged in the fire of this brutal city. I didn’t know how Titus would react to me working for Nassir. He made it clear he wasn’t a fan of the guy’s business practices and ability to skate around those pesky little things like laws and regulations. But then again, it wasn’t like I had any other option on the horizon. I was just waiting for the showdown with Conner, so I might as well help some other ladies out until judgment day found me.

“If you can keep it legal, all of it aboveboard, so that Titus doesn’t have any reason to doubt me, then I’m in.”

Race chuckled and patted me so hard on the back I almost fell over while Nassir studied me hard.

“The cop’s opinion matters that much?”

I tilted my chin up and made sure all three of them could see how serious I was when I replied, “It’s the only thing that matters.”

Chuck laughed from behind me. “Welcome to the family, pretty girl. This should be interesting.”

Interesting was probably the simplest thing it was going to be. No matter what I did I just seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the grip of this city. At least I was smart enough to know struggling against it only made the hold tighter. Like Keelyn was soon going to figure out, once you came back here you did it knowing you were staying forever, and there was a weird kind of peace in that knowledge. I was going to die trying to protect my home or my home was eventually going to kill me. It was the same for all of us, which made us exactly what Chuck said—a family. The most dysfunctional one ever, but still we all had the same fate that tied us together.