Chapter 182

‘What else has she ruined? What other crass choices has she made and thrown on MY fucking club? ’ I throw my hands on my hips, that fierce in me coming out because I am damn protective of this place, and the thought of that skanky bitch undoing all my hard work in one fell swoop has me eating broken glass. I hate that snivelling prat with a vengeance and she just gave me a reason to want her to choke. Now I’m raging and engulfed in pure venom. My eyes tearing everything apart manically and I inhale as a smell lingers around me that I noticed coming in, but didn’t analyse until now.

It smells damp and musty in here as though it’s gone unaired for months. I start sniffing through my blocked and bunged up nose, like a crazy person, and Alexi lifts a comical brow at me studying my behaviour.

‘Look, Cam, there was a flood and she took care of it. I haven’t stopped to ask what that entailed, just paid the bills and let her get on with it. Truth be told, this is the first time I have been here in months and really haven’t had time to evaluate it.’ Alexi sounds defensive, as though answering to me rather than explaining, and seems hesitant. I don’t care how odd he is being, I am livid with him. He was meant to look after this place. He has let it turn to ruins. This was OUR baby, our joint pet project.

‘You’re an idiot. I can’t believe you didn’t care enough to even keep tabs on this or bothered to make the decisions at all. What the fuck is wrong with you?’ I am so enraged I cannot even contain it and Alexi is acting like this is no big deal, like he just doesn’t get how much I loved this place. I adored, held close, was proud of and worshipped these walls. It was mine … it was ours … and now it stinks.

Where the fuck is my bloody Club logo?

That thing cost three grand and weighs about ten kilos. If that bitch has tossed it, I will break her fucking face.

I throw down my jacket and bag on the floor, roll my sleeves up to inspect, for myself, just how much she has abused my rooms. I storm off towards the bar to examine it more closely, gawping and blanching at the rows of cheap booze on the smeared glass shelves—Dusty, dirty, unloved and covered in spillages. I feel sick at the sight of it all.

I waltz to the end, flip up the hatch and walk behind the bar on a mission, rage fuelling me now and ignoring how sick and tired I was when I arrived. I run my finger along the front of the bottles, across surfaces and glassware and grit my teeth at the black and encrusted dusty finger I pull back. The dust which clings to my skin makes me simmer like a demon from hell.

‘Have you seen this? The place is fucking filthy!! What’s with this booze? What the hell are you serving this shit for? It’s cheap and nasty and would be the same as serving your clientele battery acid!’ I swipe up a bottle of middle-grade whisky and wave it in the air towards him, wielding it like a weapon and slam it down on the surface harshly when all he does is continue silently to watch me get myself worked up into a tornado of fury. Annoyingly vacant in a casual pose.

This is crap he would never even serve his staff, not even the lowest paid, let alone his prized clientele. It is cheap tat and looking around I can see most of the drinks have been replaced with mediocre quality booze and nothing looks clean at all. In fact, there are smears on every polished surface and the very floor I am standing on is stained and sticky below my feet. Tears bite my eyes and I swallow down a huge lump in my throat at the incompetence of the people I left behind to keep this place afloat. He should fire every fucking one of them!

He crosses his arms over his chest and stands immobile in the centre of the floor watching me, that face completely deadpan and I turn back to the rows of bottles in front of me getting madder with every label I can see.

‘If she isn’t keeping up the hygiene on the bar what’s the bet the rooms are a fucking disgrace, and what is that rank smell? Alexi, what the fuck have you let her do? Did everything I implemented get thrown out the door along with me?’ I snap at him, unable to keep the hysterical heartbreak out of my voice, and he at least has the sense to look down and sigh.

My blood is boiling as I pull out glasses which are smudged and still dirty with residue of lipstick too. I slam them on the marble top noticing the bloody thing is covered in gouges and scratches, and run my hand over it angrily to feel out what I maybe cannot see. Leaning down to look across the surface in the shittiest light ever and smack my palm on it when I see more along the top of the full length of it. One long scrape from three feet down all the way to the end as though something heavy was dragged along it.

‘Waste of Italian fucking marble. Look at this shit! You didn’t pay a crap load to let the staff treat it like a chopping board.’

I am on rant mode and Alexi is not saying a word anymore, just letting me get it out it seems.

I can’t contain it. Storming out and heading straight for the first of the rooms like a hellcat on fire and almost kick it open when it jams slightly. The door frame warped, no doubt from water damage she hasn’t seen fit to get replaced, and I am faced with a room that stinks of damp, sweat and sex that makes me gag. A wave of nauseating smell hits me in the face like opening a furnace door; I turn my head and almost puke. Putrid air and visible uncleanliness, dim lighting that adds a grubby hue to everything in here. I can see a dirty vibrator peeking out under the corner of the bed, which has stained with filthy sheets from weeks of sex and God knows what else, and that’s more than enough for me. Bile continues to rise in my throat at the sheer pain from seeing my hard work has turned to absolute shit. She is a dirty bitch who has let this place become infested with filth.

I turn on him in the worst mood I have ever been in my life. All rational thoughts and feelings have been left in the middle of the floor, and I am so close to bursting into tears that I cannot contain it anymore.

‘I can’t handle this … that’s disgusting. Have you smelled that room? I bet the rest are worse … How could you let it get like this? Why don’t you care?’

My voice breaks as one silent tear escapes and trickles down my face. The thought she could single-handily destroy something I took so much pride and joy in makes me feel sick to my stomach. It’s all I ever had in my life that made me feel worthy of being someone else. It’s where I put all my effort into doing something I could have pride in! I was more than a broken prostitute within these walls.

‘Cam … I wasn’t here, this is all news to me too. I didn’t know it was this bad.’ Alexi is on the defensive again, tone low as he looks around the room with a fresh eye and shakes his head as it comes to rest on a broken mirror on the far wall. He doesn’t look pleased and seems abnormally sombre and guilty. Finally, he is seeing what I am and having some sort of reaction, although it’s nowhere near as intense as mine. I want to curl up and bawl my eyes out.

One of the huge custom-made gold gilded mirrors, cracked right along its ten-foot centre, has been left hanging up there like that would ever be acceptable. Not only is it horrendous to see but if that glass fell out of that frame, it would kill somebody. I can only guess at how out of hand the nights in here have been getting if they smashed one of the mirrors mid-party. Joanne doesn’t give a toss about this place—evidently. She doesn’t get what it means at all, what it means to me.

It’s out of my mouth before I even have a chance to think it through, moved by how much this has hit me and not thinking straight. All I can see is the mess, the flaws, the bad choices, broken things and the filth, and I know that left to her she will never look after this place the way it deserves. My baby needs me.

‘I want my club back! Mine to do with as I please and you can take that sloppy wench and tie her up in your fucking room indefinitely for all I care. She touches my club again I will cut her fucking hands off.’ Tears start rolling, complete conviction inside of me as I try to pull myself together. Common sense in the back of my brain telling me to slow down and think about this … but it’s too late. I’ve seen it now and I can’t unsee it; this will haunt me for a lifetime if I abandon it now.