Bad to Be Good - Andrew Grey Page 0,1

“And we gotta have the ‘keep your damn mouth shut’ conversation with Terrance… again.” He was getting so sick of this. For the millionth time he wondered if anything was ever going to be normal again. The answer that he kept coming back to was that it wasn’t.

Richard, Terrance, and Gerome had been friends and a family of their own making since they were twelve years old. They’d survived on the mean streets of depressed inner-city Detroit by their wits and having each other’s backs. The three of them joined the Garvic organization of the Italian mafia when they were fourteen and worked their way upward fast. They were tough as hell and none of them took any shit from anyone—or had to—because everyone in the organization knew that to take one of them on was to engage all three of them. They were tough, smart, and feared. Richard liked that.

In the end, the three of them had made a great deal of money for Harold Garvic. Richard ran the gay clubs in Detroit and was the king of the gay mafia… so to speak. He ran the entire enterprise and returned a great deal of money, managing the legitimate club façade while laundering millions in cash. Terrance was the muscle and feared well beyond their group. No one messed with any of them because no one in the Garvic organization wanted to see Terrance come through their door. Gerome was the idea man. He dreamed up new ways to make piles of money, and together the three of them made it happen. Life was fucking sweet.

Then Harold Sr. died, and his prick of a son didn’t want to be involved in “their” kind of business. Instead of letting the three of them have their little piece of the empire, he made his first and biggest mistake: Harold Jr. came after them. Now the Garvic organization was a shadow of what it was, their leaders were doing decades behind bars, and Richard, Terrance, and Gerome had different lives, living on Longboat Key in Florida, abiding by a million rules so the government could keep them safe. They were three brothers in spirit who were now trying to figure things out in a world where they didn’t understand the rules.

“All right, I’ll talk to him.” Gerome nodded, seeming resigned, his words pulling Richard out of his good-old-days fog. Of the three of them, Gerome had had the easiest time. He had been placed at a gift boutique that sold upscale tourist items. The thing was that Gerome could sell anything. He had rearranged the place within the first two weeks, asked about new items, and all of a sudden he was in charge of the sales floor when sales started going through the roof. At least one of them was doing okay. “I’ll handle it. See you later.” He raised the window and pulled out of the lot.

Richard took a deep breath, pushing away the hurt to his pride that each and every day seemed to bring, and went back inside. He had work to do. He checked that the kitchen was all right, then greeted Andi as she came in through the back door.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

Richard wiped the moroseness off his face, plastering on a professional mask. “Sure. You all set?” He went behind the bar to cut limes and lemons for garnish, taking a second as she wound through the floor of tables that looked as though they had been through one of Florida’s tropical storms and come out the other side. The chairs had seen the wear from hundreds of butts, and the walls, darkened with age and constant exposure to humid salt air, were decorated with mounted fish and old buoys, as well as pictures of great catches. The entire place seemed to have soaked up the scent of the sea, fish, and water.

“You know me. I’m always ready.” She gave him a little swing of her hips and then turned away. Andi was one of the few people outside of the guys who knew that he was gay. She had made a play for him the first week he’d worked at the bar, and he had turned her down. To tell the truth, she was attractive, with shoulder-length black hair, a great figure, and intense eyes.

“Too bad you never go for a guy who would deserve you,” he muttered and returned to work as the first patrons came through the front door.

The bar patrons were