Mafia Kings: Roberto: Dark Mafia Romance Series #5

Lau kept his word.

He signed a lease in a beautiful office building in Lan Kwai Fong, Hong Kong’s nightclub district.

While the space was being remodeled, I started interviewing. I decided to keep only my very best former employees; the rest were candidates from all over Asia. I wanted ensure my new staff of doms, dominatrixes, and submissives was truly world-class.

Three months later, we had our opening night.

I expected business to be slow at first, especially since our new pricing was exorbitant –

But Lau came through on that front, as well. The first night was filled with businessmen not just from Asia but from around the world.

And as Lau had predicted, they didn’t even blink at paying $3000 US (and upwards) per hour.

The money started rolling in…

The cops never darkened our doorway…

And I never once heard from my father.

Life was good.

Not everything was champagne and roses, though.

There were problems – and I don’t mean the kind that come with running any business, like employees getting sick or the plumbing breaking.

The biggest problem was Mr. Han.

He was Lau’s right-hand man – the one who did the dirty work.

One look at him and I could tell he was a gangster. He just dressed a lot better than the average triad goon.

He had a dead-eyed look to him – a real sociopath. Very handsome, but scary.

He was repeatedly disrespectful to my staff. When he tried to be rude to me, I chewed him out in front of the entire club, calling him a little-dicked butt-boy for his boss.

He just smiled in amusement and went back to his drink.

He didn’t retaliate, though. Apparently, he had orders that I was off-limits.

But, by the same token, I couldn’t bar him from the club –

Because it was Han who brought in the high-rollers.

At least once a week, he would show up with an extremely rich guy who would throw money around like confetti.

One time, out of curiosity, I tallied up the contributions of Han’s ‘friends’ to the bottom line.

The money they spent was 60% of our revenue.

So Han was untouchable.

Unfortunately, the men he brought around (always men, never women) tended to be entitled assholes.

And they started wanting drugs.

Drugs had floated around my old business, After Dark, but it was individual customers who brought them. I never supplied them.

Han pulled me aside two weeks after the opening and said, “My friend wants some cocaine.”

“Tell him to go find some, then,” I retorted. “He can get it on any street corner in Wan Chai.”

“I’ll handle it tonight, but you need to start offering it in the future.”

“No!” I said, incensed. “I’m a businesswoman, not a drug dealer.”

Han looked at me in disgust before walking away.

The next morning, I got a call from Lau.

“Do you recall what you and Mr. Han discussed last night?”

We’d only discussed one thing.

“Yes…?”

“Follow his instructions. He will put you in touch with someone.”

“But – ”

“Follow Mr. Han’s instructions,” Lau said curtly, then hung up.

At that point, I realized that Lau wasn’t just in bed with gangsters…

He was a gangster.

Albeit the kind that owned the bank instead of robbing it.

Han smirked the next night when I asked for his dealer’s name.

Asshole.

I used Han’s connection for a while, but I became incredibly uncomfortable with the guy. He was another dead-eyed sociopath – the kind of man who would put a bullet in someone’s head and complain about the mess afterwards.

Plus, he was always surrounded by tattooed goons in cheap suits.

I was sure they were all triad… and I hated anybody triad.

After a while, I asked some of my friends from the old days who they would recommend. Two of them mentioned a guy named Chaoxiang, a street hustler who worked out of the back of a noodle shop in Wan Chai. He dealt in just about everything – credit card fraud, guns, and stolen passports, as well as drugs.

The one thing my friends all told me was, “He can get you anything you need. Anything.”

Turns out they were right.

The best part, though, was that Chaoxiang had a friendly disposition, wasn’t triad, and wasn’t a psychopath. He was just a regular garden-variety criminal who was very good at his job.

When Han asked me why I’d stopped using his buddy, I said, “Your boy has serial killer vibes, so I found somebody else.”

When Lau called me the next day with the same question – after Han had tattled on me – I said, “You told me I could run the business as I see fit. I found someone else who gets me excellent product, is cheaper, and doesn’t remind me of a serial killer. Do we have a problem?”

“As long as the supply chain continues uninterrupted, we’re fine.”

And that was that.

Until the Russian oligarch incident.