Sinners' Playground (The Harlequin Crew #1) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,193

The only problem was, stopping myself from thinking about Rogue was as easy as stopping the wind blowing.

A group of men entered the bar and my gaze narrowed as I spotted Kaiser Rosewood amongst them. Kaiser was a big guy who liked wearing pin-striped suits like he was some sort of nineteen twenties gangster. His hair was thick and silver and I guessed he was some sort of businessman, but God only knew what kind of business he dealt in. The asshole had inherited the Rosewood Manor after his old momma Mabel had died. She’d been good to me and my friends when we were kids, and that piece of shit hadn’t visited her for years so far as I could tell back then. I hadn’t even known she had a son until he came out of the woodwork when she died, sniffing around her corpse for scraps. But there hadn’t just been scraps, there’d been a whole fucking feast waiting for him.

Miss Mabel hadn’t had a will so her entire estate had deferred to him. The fucker hadn’t even been at her funeral. Only me, Chase and Fox had been there to say goodbye. And it had been one of the most miserable days of my life. It had happened a few years after Rogue had left and Kaiser had promptly moved into the property and started renovating the place. There was no chance of sneaking onto the grounds after that. And with Rogue and Maverick’s keys long gone, we had no way of getting into the crypt again to get the stuff we’d stashed there either. It had been a shitty little cherry on top of an already shitty sundae.

Kaiser didn’t just have a new fence put in and cameras all around it, he’d had a bunch of armed guards stationed there too. The guy was shady as shit and whatever he had going on in that manor couldn’t be good. He didn’t mix with the crew so we never had any reason to go up against him, but there were a few rumours circling that he was banished from town by the Harlequins a long time ago. He’d been allowed to come back by Luther apparently. Fuck if I knew why though.

I still floated the idea of breaking in there and blasting our way into the crypt from time to time with Fox. If Kaiser ever decided to force his way into it, it wouldn’t be long before we heard about it. But I didn’t imagine a guy like him had any interest in dusty old tombs. And so long as he had no reason to go looking in there, we were safe. I just hoped the notion never took him to knock it down and develop on the land. Because so help us if he ever did.

Whenever he came into my club with his guys, they tended to splash cash around the place like it was as common as water, so I didn’t mind his visits. I also had my girls feed back any information to me they heard about his business dealings because one, I was a nosy fucker, and two, Fox had me listening in on plenty of my customers anyway because Afterlife attracted the kind of dangerous people who could one day be a threat to us, or who would make a perfect asset to our crew.

Kaiser took over a booth with his men and a few of my best girls were soon surrounding them, including Di and Lyla.

Lilith caught my cheek, turning me towards her with a slanted smile. “What’s got you so distracted tonight, baby?”

“Am I?” I asked, painting on a smirk and she bit her lip, running her hand up my chest possessively and leaning close to speak in my ear.

“Do you wanna get out of here? I can take your mind off of whatever’s bothering you.”

I should have said yes. Or at least avoided the question, tried to get her to stay at the club tonight instead. But no. I didn’t do either of those things. I blurted the first thing that came to my head in an urgent whisper. “I’ve got the clap.”

I’ve. Got. The. Clap.

That was what I went with apparently. Lilith gasped, lurching away from me like I was contagious and I gave her an apologetic smile.

“Oh um, okay,” she said, getting to her feet. “Well perhaps we can rearrange something when, you’ve, um, dealt with that. Okay?”

“Yeah, sorry sweetheart.” I shrugged innocently. “I could see