Sam surveyed the bar and seating area with a smug feeling welling inside of him. It was packed. The dim of the hubbub and jazz music was the sound of money to his ears as he took a sip of his whisky and nodded appreciatively to the pretty blonde girl behind the bar. All his punters wanted something nice to look at while they were drinking illegal alcohol in a speakeasy below the streets of Chicago. If Sam could provide a view and the booze, he was in business and his dad, Benjamin, was happy. Content his investment was in good hands and, from the looks of things, the Stone Club was the best bar in the city. Their only competitors belonging to that of the rival gang.
Charles Ashcroft and Benjamin Robinson had once been friends, or at the very least, allies in this city. Infamous bosses that had ruled these streets with an iron fist. Upon their split, twenty-one years ago, it had been war. While things had calmed, Sam knew all was not forgotten. There was a new threat to concern themselves with.
Charles’s son, Damien. Sam’s own nemesis.
With a grunt of distaste, Sam looked over to the stage in the corner of the room where Anna was entertaining their customers as she did every night in a gown so obscene, it made Sam’s eyes pop out of his skull. But that wasn’t what caught his eye the most.
The pianist of the band, his very own Erika Waterstone was more dazzling still, singing along to the upbeat music without a microphone, feet tapping on the pedals of the piano, her agile elegant fingers dancing across the keys. It soothed Sam’s worries and fears as he downed the last of his drink and went to order another. Just as he did, he spotted someone very unlikely approaching him.
His accountant.
“Emily, what are you doing here?” he said, viewing her in her formal clothes that made her look like a nun compared to Anna on the stage, wiggling her ass and tits for the punters. Even so, his main act wielded her sexuality like a weapon. He dared anyone to mess with a girl who kept a Colt M19 in her garter.
“Believe me, if I had a choice, I’d stay upstairs but –,” with a tight swallow that made Sam stiffen with concern, Emily glanced over to the back door which led upstairs to their offices. “You’re needed.”
“I’m coming.”
Sam waved away the next glass the barmaid passed him and followed Emily around the outskirts of the tables. Noticing Dominic, Sticks and Will sat at a table nearest the stage, clinging to the shadows – Will’s formal police uniform sticking out like a sore thumb amongst all these partygoers – Sam beckoned them to join him. If it was who he suspected upstairs, he wouldn’t be facing them alone and unarmed.
He took the crooked creaking backstairs two at a time, thundering up after the smaller woman, her chestnut hair bouncing in tight curls around the shoulders of her plain green dress. Once at the top, the stairwell opened out into the office. It was kept immaculate, thanks to Emily’s need for tidiness. Even so, it was cramped and barely able to contain the vivid presence of their formidable guest.
“Samuel,” Charles beamed back at him, a black trench coat resting on his shoulders, his pristine pin striped suit underneath. He puffed on a cigar at his fat lips, hat still upon his head, a clear sign he wasn’t here for pleasantries. That and the beefed up men who stood scattered throughout Sam’s office, hands at their waistbands. Sam didn’t need to see their guns to know they were there.
“Charles,” Sam nodded politely, Dominic, Sticks and Will edging out behind him. Out the corner of his eye, he spotted Will telling Emily to leave. She refused. “What can I do for you?”
“Well, Samuel, you can start by telling me where your father is.”
“Vacation. Somewhere hot. For his joints,” Sam said, stifling a smirk at Charles’s twitch of irritation.
“Texas?”
“He prefers Cuba.”
Charles held up the cigar in his chubby fingers and gave a coughing laugh. “See you get your humour from your father.”
Sam didn’t reply. Feet apart, his stance solid and tense, he considered the club below and the noise an all-out gunfight would attract. He wouldn’t let it come to that. He glanced again to Emily, arms folded and a defiant expression on her face that almost made Sam chuckle. This administrator by day looked utterly bored by this exchange with one of the most notorious men of the city. Perhaps in the country. It gave Sam the confidence he needed to go on.
“What are you doing here, Charles?” Sam moved across to the main desk, shooing away the henchmen. Dominic, Sticks and Will followed, Emily at Sam’s side, the desk now in between them and Charles. “I have a club to run.”
“Your boys shot up my lads,” Charles said, gesturing to Sticks and Dominic.
“You come here asking for money for a new tire?” Sam chuckled.
“They chased us. There are rules we all abide by. Running us down and stealing our money isn’t one of them,” Dominic said with a terse hiss to his voice.
Sam raised his hand to quieten him. Only Sam could deal with this.
“A misunderstanding,” Charles said, looking to his henchmen who sneered in their direction. “You broke the treaty.”
“Bullshit,” Sticks spat.
“Steady now!” Charles said, pointing the burning tip of his cigar in Sticks’s direction. “The treaty said nothing about killing coloureds.”
“How dare you!” Emily bellowed, held back only by Will’s firm hand on her shoulder.
Sam shot her a sharp look to which she closed her mouth. It was the only thing he could be thankful for. Anna or Erika would have already fired a shot for a comment like that. A comment about their own.
It was the only way they had survived this long. They took care of their own. This club wasn’t just another outlet for his father to launder money and make a profit through. This was Sam’s only way to keep his friends off the streets. The collapse of the economy had destroyed them all. When he’d first met Erika, she’d been a month’s rent away from selling herself. Sam wouldn’t let that happen. Not to any of them.
“What do you want?” he asked again, this time through gritted teeth.
“Payment,” Charles smiled, revealing his rotted yellow teeth.
“How much?”
“Not how much. Who.”
Sam frowned, glancing fearfully to Emily. She was the best mathematician he knew. She cleaned his books. She was a valuable member of their staff. They each played their role. He couldn’t lose any of them.
Cocking his head to the side, Sam peered back at Charles chuckling to himself. “I must have misheard you –.”
“No, son. You heard me, alright. I want the girl.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you!” Emily spluttered, visibly horrified and amused by the notion.
Sam rested a hand on her forearm and felt the clamminess of her skin. She was scared. Of course she was. For all her talk, she was terrified. But he wouldn’t let any harm come to them.
“No, not you,” Charles scoffed “I already have an accountant. Two, in fact, both men.”
If Emily had been a cat, she might have hissed at the insult. Sam was thankful when she said nothing.
“No, I want the girl. The pretty blonde downstairs. She’s all anyone can talk about.”
Anna.
Sam’s oldest friend. The fiercest woman he knew, asides from perhaps Erika. His best friend.
“She’s not for sale,” Sam said.
“And I’m not buying,” Charles replied, “I’m taking her as payment.”
When Sam didn’t speak, a hole opening up in his chest, Will marched around the desk.
“You won’t touch her. Or any of our crew for that matter.”
Charles viewed him up and down as though Will was a contagious disease. “Samuel, you appear to have a copper in your midst.”
“He’s one of us,” Dominic spoke.
“Protective, aren’t you? Of your own,” Charles said. Stepping closer, pushing past a crestfallen Will, cigar between his wrinkled lips, Charles pressed his hands flat to the desk of papers. He peered down into Sam’s snarling face. “But sooner or later, Samuel, you need to realise that for as long as there’s a war on the streets and a treaty to keep to, everyone is collateral. That’s something your father understood.” He took a puff of his cigar, the smoke burning Sam’s eyes. “If you want to survive, you’ll do the right thing.
At that, Charles waved his hand and at once, his henchmen were moving, shuffling down the stairs, Charles between them, leaving Sam panting for breath in his desk chair, the papers crumpling in his fists.
“You can’t give them Anna,” Emily said, rounding the desk, Will at her side. “There has to be –.”
“You can’t do this, Sam!” Will bellowed.
“You can’t be serious!” Sticks said, fierce and furious.
“Sam!” Dominic said, swinging him around in his chair.
“Who the fuck do you think I am?” Sam said, silencing them all. “I’m not gonna give him Anna. I ain’t sacrificing any of you.”
“So what are we going to do?” Emily said, a mixture of relief and dread in her dark eyes.
Sam needed a moment to catch his breath. To consider the monumental decision he was about to make. Looking from each of his closest friends, his confidantes, he knew what he needed to do. What his father should have done two decades ago.
“We’re going to get rid of our competitors.”
Hillside Academy: AUs Copyright © 2020 Jodie May Mullen