Chapter 2

Not that Ellis had been able to tell anyone what he had wanted in the beginning, though he’d been dying to. Good thing Clark had seen what Ellis needed and dragged the then-hapless Ellis to his bar, intent on getting Ellis to talk.

* * * *

“So you own this place?” Ellis asked, fiddling with an empty shot glass.

“Mmhm,” Clark hummed in the affirmative. They were at the shiny wooden bar in the back of Glow after hours. The TVs up on the walls were on mute, the yellow overhead lights were dimmed, and everyone else had gone home. Outside the front door, Twenty-Second Avenue was still busy. The heart of New Amsterdam’s shopping district never rested.

“Voted the place to be last year in some magazine.” Clark leaned over the bar with his feet on the wooden rungs of his stool. He retrieved a bottle of top-shelf tequila and poured Ellis another shot. “We do a damned fine business. Between this joint and the clubs, I’ve given up sleep.”