He had a point. “Okay, fine. The loyalty cards might be a bit much, but nothing wrong with offering something other than stale peanuts to eat, right? We want to encourage people to stay here longer. They currently can’t do that because they have to go elsewhere to get a proper meal. War and the guys already have a bar at their compound. We have to offer more than what they can get there.”
George nodded his bald head. “I like it. I’ll go shopping if you can get the menus printed?”
I was so excited that he liked my ideas that I swept the poor, startled man into my arms and hugged him. “Yes! Nash will hate it, I’m sure. But if you’re on board, I’ll get the menus printed this week, and we can launch the new menu on Monday.”
George untangled himself from my embrace and got busy with a pen and paper, scribbling down meal ideas and the ingredients he’d need for them. He had a little smile on his lips, and I liked that. I had a feeling he was pleased about his role at Psychos expanding. I wanted that for all the staff. I wanted them to feel like this place was their home and be proud and excited to come to work. Which meant treating them well and paying more than I had to.
I wanted all those things, but they all took money.
With that taken care of, I turned my attention to the party I’d decided we were having on Friday night. My breath got quick whenever I thought about it. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the things I’d see once it got rolling or because I knew it would bring in the last of the money I needed. This party would mean I could pay Axel’s drug supplier as well as start putting some more of my new plans into place. They were plans I hadn’t confessed to Nash or to anyone really. But I was itching for the meeting with our drug supplier to take place at the end of the month, despite the terror I still felt when I remembered the man’s finger crawling over my skin.
I was going to ask him to double our quantity. We needed more. I wanted a party every weekend. If not twice a weekend. Once or twice a month with no consistency wasn’t enough. I’d already organized the performers, and they were all in, grateful for the regular work. But a huge side of the business was the drugs. People needed a little extra something to get them going, and a couple of tabs of E or a little bag of coke wouldn’t kill anyone. There would be nothing more than that done on my premises, but I wanted people to let loose and have a good time.
And spend big.
Nash wouldn’t like it, but he could lump it. He’d barely spoken to me since he’d snatched the phone from my hand and told Caleb where to go. Caleb hadn’t called since, so I was grateful, but Nash was making the entire thing awkward.
Or maybe we both were.
Sandra’s warning that murders were normally carried out by someone close to the victim kept ringing in my head.
Nash was the closest person to Axel.
I just couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t come up with a reason for something to come between them enough that Nash would do that.
I wandered back out to the bar area, instantly feeling Vincent’s gaze on me from where he stood in the doorway. I’d offered him a stool a hundred times since he’d started working here, but he’d refused every time, preferring to stand, his dark-eyed gaze constantly moving around the room but always returning to me.
I liked it. I liked having him here. He was infinitely better at his job than Solomon had been, though the party on Friday night would be a true test of Vincent’s newfound bodyguarding skills.
Dragging my gaze off the man who looked entirely too good in all black, I found Rebel restocking beer bottles into a refrigerator. “Is it just you out here? Where’s Nash?”
She shrugged. “Boss Man said he had to run out for a bit. It’s quiet so we don’t need him ’til later. If you’re searching for something to do, he put some boxes on his desk for the party on Friday night that he said you need to go through.”
“What are they?”
She shrugged, not really paying attention to me. “No idea. Something he found out back, I think.”
Curious, I left her to her restocking. In Nash’s office, I found the boxes she was talking about. The label on the front simply said, Quantity: 500. “Well, there’s a lot of something in here,” I mumbled.
The boxes were unsealed, but the flaps were tucked into each other, closing their contents off to dust. I opened the first one, pushing back the thick cardboard to reveal the contents.
Inside was a sea of black silk. I reached in, unsure of what I was looking at, and then pulled one out.