Before - Bethan-Kris Page 0,3
with a guy like Andino Marcello promising to show his face at the fights.
With an associate.
It was good for Nickie’s in the world of the underground. Bad for Lev when his chances of getting his name pulled to fight were about as good as the rest of the fucks lined up waiting outside Nickie’s office.
“But hey,” his boss called when Lev turned to leave.
He didn’t bother to turn around. “What?”
“Pay is triple tonight. You earned it, kid.”
Kid.
Maybe he was just a kid compared to Nickie’s middle-age crisis that he was trying to hide with the gold rings on his fingers and the new Porsche parked in the back. Lev held back from scoffing—he felt so far from a kid at twenty-four. That was a lifetime ago, and though life hadn’t been easy then ... it was different. Sometimes, that was the part he missed the most.
Nickie didn’t give him the chance to think on it for long before he added, “Says something when Marcello calls ahead and the first thing he asks about is you, doesn’t it?”
Did it?
Lev couldn’t really say.
Or he didn’t want to.
“I just mix his drinks when he’s here, boss.”
He could feel Nickie’s eyes burning into his broad back. To be honest, his boss wasn’t all that different than Andino Marcello in the grand scheme, really. A different breed of bad; with less money and influence, sure, but still dangerous.
Or rather, he could be.
When it counted.
“Keep it to serving drinks, huh?”
Nickie’s murmur felt loaded.
Lev only nodded. Only one of those two men were currently signing his paychecks, after all. That’s really what mattered to him at the end of the day.
What else needed said?
Apparently, Nickie thought more.
“Careful making friends with the likes of him,” his boss warned at his back before Lev could stroll back into the hallway, “because men like Andino Marcello only keep people around for as long as they benefit him. You won’t like what happens when you no longer do.”
He would remember it if only because he thought that was a pretty straightforward way of doing business regardless if he was just serving a man’s drinks or not. So long as he did his job well, he still had one to do.
Wasn’t that the whole point?
Two
“ANGE MODELING wants to sign me to work with the French designer, Pierre Missioux.”
“What?”
The screech came from two different, very distinct voices. One echoed from the phone she had sat on the small table next to her twin-size bed where she hadn’t even bothered to fix the sheets that morning before leaving. Her mother. Who was also now crying. The other came from her friend who suddenly slid into her bedroom doorway with eyes as wide as her own, she was sure.
“Oh, my God,” her mother cried.
“Are you serious?” her friend asked.
Gigi wasn’t sure who to answer first. Instead, she checked the screen of the laptop one more time—she’d only intended to order her and Cassie, her roommate, Chinese. Even though the salt would probably make her bloated enough that it would show on her measurements tomorrow. She figured, might as well check her emails since she hadn’t even had the chance to do that during her very busy day.
Not that it was anything unusual.
“Gi?” Cassie urged, daring to step forward in the doorway but not coming all the way into the room.
She didn’t answer her friend back. Or her mother, still crying, on the phone. It almost seemed like she had floated out of her own body for a second. The shock was overwhelming when the last thing she expected to see marked as a Top Priority email when she brought up the tab was the one from her agency about the Paris offer. Just a few seconds ago, the only thing on her mind had been greasy noodles and the ache in her legs and soles of her feet.
In the world of modeling, a day of go-sees in a city like New York could be absolute hell. It wasn’t so bad when it was only one or two appointments but that wasn’t usually how it worked. Typically, Gigi’s entire day ended up filled by her mother agency, MGNT Modeling, with go-sees from one side of the city to the other with barely any time in between for a break. Well, come the end of it, every single part of her five-foot-eleven, one hundred-twenty-eight-pound body felt it.
And all she wanted was her bed.
Maybe a glass of wine.
Not that she was legal to drink at twenty years old,