Chapter 30: Less Teeth More Tits

Eric entered his kitchen which had been redecorated red by Pamela. The epicenter of the explosion happened where Eric had left the scumbag. Blood was dripping down the white kitchen cabinets, running down the walls, pooling on the floor, splattered all over the stove and countertops. He insisted having an all white kitchen was an idiotic design, Pamela disagreed. Now they were both going to pay for it.

She didn't say anything when he returned. In fact, she hadn't said much of anything since their last fight. He guessed she got impatient with Jake Purifoy, but any extra minute that vermin was allowed to exist on this earth was given with all the grace and mercy he did not deserve.

"The cooked bits didn't explode, I didn't know that happened," she noted,tossing chunks of flesh into a bucket.

But all his focus lied elsewhere. Eric gently took his hand out of his pocket feeling the thin red amber string wrapped around his fingers. When he stroked Olivia's hair in the office just moments ago, a strand of loose hair got stuck between his fingers and he carefully saved it in his pocket.

"I only found a gallon of bleach in the cupboard, should I send Chow for more?" Pamela asked, emptying the bucket of body bits in the kitchen sink where they had a garburator. All these years wondering why the hell she had one in the kitchen remodel 15 years ago, and he finally had gotten the answer. Maybe not all her kitchen design was bad.

He admired the golden shimmery hair in his hand, so fine, so delicate. He didn't caress her hair with false pretenses. He didn't know fate would gift him such a small piece of her. But now that he had it… Why not? Why not call doctor Ludwig and have her examine it? Find out what Olivia is really made of. Finally get some answers as to why he was so drawn to her.

"Eric!" Pamela shrieked. "Hello!?"

"We'll clean what we can, make sure it doesn't stain the marble. The cleaning lady will get the rest in the morning. Did you get any more information out of him?" He asked, finally addressing his progeny. Eric put the single piece of Olivia's hair on a napkin, folded it and tucked it safely back into his pocket.

"Yeah, he met Steve and Sarah Newlin at the Rose and Crown three nights ago. You can guess what happened - what's that?" She nodded to his hip.

"A piece of Olivia's hair," he told her while pulling out more rags from a drawer.

"What's so special about her?" Pamela asked without looking. Up until that moment, his progeny had never brought Olivia up in conversation, not once.

"I don't know yet."

Eric filled a large bowl with hot water and started wiping the top cabinets since his reach was much higher than Pamela's. When vampires meet their true death, it was quite a messy event. He wished Pamela had at least taken him outside and let the raccoons have him. "Jake met the Newlins in public?"

Pamela shrugged as she wiped the countertop, pushing all the blood to the floor. "They changed their looks and were discreet about it. The wolves, however, were less than thrilled at having a vamp in their bar, even if he was one of them a month ago."

Jake Purifoy was a lifelong member of the Shreveport werewolf pack who had a complicated relationship with someone on the wrong side of the tracks - a vampire named Hadley Stackhouse, whom Eric had no affinity for. Without his consent, Hadley turned him into a vampire which, as you can guess, did not go well. After he rose from the dead, a horrible fight ensued. Not only the lovers broke up, but in the heat of the moment, his Maker released him.

No vampire in the area trusted Jake due to his previous werewolf nature, and his pack abjured him into exile. Jake Purifoy was doomed to walk the valley of death alone. Had Jake asked Eric, he would have taken him in. Or at the very least forced Hadley to take responsibility for her own childe. Jake needed to learn how to navigate his new life, and she owed him at least that much. You don't give someone this kind of power without due diligence.

However Jake let himself go. He sunk into an ocean of rage and hunger and self-loathing. Jake started raping the women he fed on, leaving them on the verge of death to the wild animals in the forest. A survivor was found and saved by hikers three days ago. Under normal circumstances, Eric would happily let Jake Purifoy rot in whatever hole humans wanted to throw him in. However, little birds told him Jake had been up to no good and had leaked some sensitive information to people he shouldn't have. So while Eric was away in Baton Rouge doing AVL performative bullshit, Pam had visited the poor woman in the hospital and glamoured her to forget the incident. It was now up to Eric now to carry out justice.

To make matters even worse, Jake hated himself and his new nature so much he sought revenge by contacting Steve and Sarah Newlin, the vampire-hating Christian fundamentalists who were currently being prosecuted for domestic terrorism. As if this shitstorm weren't bad enough, Jake told them the Newlins were asking questions about Olivia Carson and who she worked for. They had recognized the woman they met as "Anne Hess" on TV, identified and tracked her all the way to Shreveport. What they were planning to do with her, he didn't want to imagine.

That was the real reason Eric had put a tail on her. Not because of some silly game they were playing, and to be frank, Eric didn't give two fucks about Alcide Hervaux. There was no way Eric could have known that dance at the ball could have led to this, but Eric should have known better. It's part of being a vampire, it's part of being him. Any human he cared for was fated to get hurt. It's the price you pay for power, or rather, that others pay for you.

He had been selfish and reckless for believing he could ever have her. He put her in danger, and now he was obliged to fix it. If anything were to happen to her he would never forgive himself. His own demise for failing the edict of protection would actually be the coward's way out. Eric weighed on telling her the truth, but for whatever reason being real with her was just… It was just easier being the bad guy. It was what she expected of him, and who was he to deny her that illusion?

Eric wrung out the rag in a warm water bucket and started cleaning the backsplash, turning the red stains to pink, while Pam finished on the stove. Her hair sample felt heavy in his back pocket. Betrayal always felt that way. But it was for her own good, he told himself. It was his fault the Newlins had found her, and if Eric knew what Olivia really was then maybe he would have a better shot at protecting her.

At least that's what he told himself.

It was Saturday night and Olivia desperately craved something stronger than coffee. She had worked tirelessly the entire week, and she couldn't remember the last time her face touched her pillow. Despite the lack of big disasters or literal fires, the past 48 hours had been nothing short of chaos. The cleaning crew overcharged since they had to work late into the night (surprise, surprise) but the place was spotless. The club looked quite beautiful and modern, the new lighting and furniture were sleek. Pamela really had an eye for design, and she seemed genuinely happy with how the place turned out. She almost smiled when she walked in.

The platform where Eric's throne was had been transformed into part of the dancing stage, which was extended into a T shape towards the center of the club. Couches, tables and booths surrounded the rest of the main floor. The biggest change was the old wall lined with booths. It was now a tall structure of a cascading two-tier mezzanine. Underneath it all, on ground level were the two champagne rooms for private parties. On the first level was the VIP area, each with its own small bar and single strip pole. And the very top was Eric's section, with a brand new black leather throne and lounge area.

The new lighting had all colors in the rainbow, but they were all set to red. The technician really wanted to add blacklights, but UV lights in a vampire bar? It was a no-go. The furniture was all light cream (which looked bright blood red under the lights) and all the tables and chairs were black.

Eric seemed bored by it all. He was more pissed that his old and trusty analog security camera system was gone. Olivia was unhappy about it too, but the upgrade was the only way they would get the insurance payout.

During setup, he took care of the cash float at all bar stations, refilled the ATM and then disappeared down in the basement (she knew better now than to follow). Ginger and Belinda restocked the bars and taught the new staff how to use the POS terminal. Pam, the official house mom, was walking the dancers through the stage/floor and VIP rotation with the dancers, and updating the very lengthy guest list with Chow, the head bouncer. Apparently, Pam had done a lot of local advertising with flyers and radio ads about tonight's grand opening, and a lot of people had bought tickets, both regular and VIP. They were set to be at capacity tonight. Everything was falling into place.

Olivia had given herself a small desk in the corner of Eric's office. She really wanted it to be elsewhere, but unless she wanted to work out of the dancer's locker room, or down in the basement, this was the only room left. She moved the rack of merch into the back storage room, and placed her small desk in its place, right beside the safe. Eric had left her a small gift: he hung a Fangtasia calendar on the wall right above her table featuring the local's sexiest vampires, as a joke. It apparently sold out every year at Christmas. Even though it was now August, the calendar was flipped to January. You can guess who was on the cover.

It was an aerial shot of Eric completely naked lying in bed, amidst white silk sheets. The soft fabric only covered the bare minimum. Eric's body was otherworldly. He had this V thing going on in his lower abs she had never seen. She looked closer, examining it for any signs of photoshop. Once she realized she was staring at him for a bit too long, Olivia flipped the calendar to August, to a lady vampire she thankfully did not recognize.

She set down her favorite new toy: a 2 thousand dollar money counting machine. It sorted bills, added totals AND flagged counterfeit money. It was the most exciting thing Olivia bought in a very long time, and even though no one cared about it, she was happy to have it. She was now in charge of accounts payable each night for the dancers and bartenders, and this was going to be a very cash-rich business. With her list of obligations piling up, she did not have the time to sit here and count money for hours on end with Mr. January staring at her - from the calendar or in person.

Music started playing in the brand new sound system. It was much louder than the old one. According to the security cameras behind Eric's desk, there was a line outside almost all the way to the end of the block.

"It's gonna work," Olivia whispered to herself. "It's gonna work."

She was going to keep her head in place. She was going to retire in 7 years and live the rest of her years sipping peach bellinis on private white-sand beaches.

"What's going to work?" Eric asked her while entering the office.

Olivia turned on her chair abruptly. She was still not used to Eric sneaking up on her. He also, you guessed it, looked as mouth-watering as before. He was wearing black slacks, a grey scoop neck t-shirt and a tailored-to-perfection black blazer.

"Everything. What's that?"

He was holding a black duffel bag, and by the sound it made when he chucked it onto the black pleather couch, it was heavy and full.

"920 thousand dollars in 20s, 10s, 5s and half of it are singles, as per your request."

The initial excitement of their Silk Road store had died down, but they still made 4.4 million dollars the past five days. It all sat safely across his many offshore bank accounts, but it was unusable in this country unless Olivia cleaned it. Thus, enters Fangtasia.

"I asked for a million."

Eric sat in his large office chair and leaned all the way back. "Had to pay Lafayette."

Damn, he had a good week, but it was well deserved. Liv got up and opened the black duffel bag. It wasn't every day you got to touch and hold that much money at once. She had gotten so used to working out of her laptop, managing spreadsheets and accounting software, it wasn't often she actually got to touch the stuff. She reached into the bag and pulled a stack of crisp 20 dollar bills. 2k of perfect, untouched, unaltered, undamaged, never folded, never rolled, never gone-through-the-laundry, cocaine residue-free, little Andrew Jackson patterned paper rectangles.

"Uhh, Eric?"

"What?" He asked without looking up from his phone.

"Where the hell did you get this?"

He gave her a look. "Did you hit your head this morning?"

Olivia dug through the duffel bag to examine the rest of the money. Just as she suspected it. "Eric, this money is brand new."

"Yeah, so?" He kicked his large feet onto his desk. Some things never changed.

"I can't deposit perfectly crisp dollar bills into the bank. This is a strip club," she took a bill out of the stack. "Does this look like it's been tucked into a G-string to you? They're gonna get suspicious."

He shrugged, eyes back on his phone. "Sounds like an Olivia problem to me."

She exhaled loudly, and threw the money back in the bag and zipped it shut. She grabbed the bag's handle and attempted to pick it up, but all she managed to do was let it flop it to the ground. As turns out, real money was really fucking heavy. Olivia dragged the million-pound bag across the floor and out of the office.

"Where're you going?" Eric called out, not getting up.

"To find an Olivia solution." She panted, pulling the heavy bag in spurts, and foot by foot she managed to drag it down to the storage room at the end of the hall. If this bag were a bit bigger, it would totally look like she was dragging a body out of the office (it probably wouldn't be the first time). The back storage room was filled with metal racks full of merch, glassware, spare kegs, and cleaning supplies but it also had the washer and dryer and a metal utility sink. First things first, Olivia changed the password on the room's keypad lock. She wasn't going to leave a cool 1 mil unattended in a place everyone had access to. She left a post-it note on the door warning only "senior management" had access to this room for the time being and texted the new password to Eric and Pam. Then, she reassembled a large broken-down cardboard box of hand paper towel refill, cut out the bottom and neatly placed it over the duffel bag to hide it, just in case. Rule number 8: hide your money in plain sight. In this case, literally.

When she returned to her office, Eric was gone. According to the security feed he had taken his rightful place at the throne. The place was packed, drinks were flowing, the dancers and DJ were doing a fantastic job at really selling the strip club experience. It was strange and new to be the eyes in the sky.

From here she could hear the music blaring downstairs. The playlist was full of absolute bangers - Britney, Rihanna, Justin Timberlake, Fergie, Kanye, and it was actually at a pleasant volume up here. Loud enough for her to enjoy it, quiet enough she could still concentrate on her work.

Returning to the office Liv pulled out 5 plastic bins, each one with the dancer's names on it, from under the sketchy casting-esque couch. Floor assistants collected all the floor money from each stage and lap dance and brought it up to the office, careful not to mix the money between dancers. At the end of the night, the dancers would come by and Olivia would give them their small share from their respective bin. This was how she was going to launder the money - by adding the duffel bag money into the mix. She just had to make sure it would physically be in the same condition as the money from guests so it wouldn't stand out for the dancers or the bank.

She spent most of the night working on her laptop, listening to the club music and the girls laughing and chatting down the hallway in the change room. The one named Dawn had the hots for Eric (they all did) and Crystal was by far the loudest of the bunch. If most nights went along like this, Olivia would have to change her routine to sleep and relax during the day and work nights. The club didn't close for guests until 2 AM, and then it was time to pay everyone out, cash out and seal the nightly money deposit.

Despite Olivia insisting she was more than capable of doing it alone, Eric insisted either himself or Chow would drop it off at the bank and then drive Olivia home. He had been extremely overprotective of her lately, and she was starting to think this didn't have anything to do with Alcide or the fact that she disobeyed him. He just loved controlling absolutely everything he possibly could, and she was just a challenging and exciting new thing to tame.

The floor assistant came up every thirty minutes or so - a guy named Terry - and as the money filled the bins, Olivia's fear that the bills wouldn't match was correct. The money coming from guests was far from new and crisp. After Terry's first midnight round, Olivia followed him back downstairs after closing the office. It was the first time she was on the club floor since before opening time. There must have been over 100 people in here, she had never seen this place so full, not even on a spring break weekend. Pam was behind the bar yelling at Ginger as per usual, and Eric sat upstairs with vampires she only recognized in passing.

She grabbed a tray from behind the bar and awkwardly made her way across the main floor grabbing near-empty drinks and abandoned cups. Olivia did not dare lower her mind shield as she walked past the crowds of (mostly) men whose eyes gazed on the dancers. Out of the corner of her eye, she recognized someone up in the VIP area, sipping tequila at the bar - Lafayette Reynolds. He raised his shot glass at her and she winked back at him. She wasn't sure what a gay man was doing at a tittie bar, but a party was a party she guessed.

After the tray was sufficiently full, she headed back to the supply room. She plugged the utility sink's drain and dumped all the leftover booze into it. She had to do two more trips to get the sink half full, and she also bought a half-full bottle of Victoria's Secret body shimmer spray from Felicity in the dancer's change room to add to her nasty sink concoction. Liv added some water to it to dilute the solution a bit and started throwing money into the sink, soaking all that ironically clean money.

She put on a pair of rubber cleaning gloves and started stirring the beer-glitter-herpes-cash soup. After a minute, she gathered the money in handfuls and shook the excess out back in the sink, wringing the bills as she went to make sure they were sufficiently wrinkled. She then tossed it all in the drier with a couple of clean dish rags to help soak the moisture and turned the machine on a timer - 3 minutes.

Olivia went back to the sink to prepare another batch of germ-dipped money. It was gross, but touching all that money with her own rubberized hands was hypnotizing and somewhat cathartic.

"What are you doing?" A voice spoke from the door.

Eric had unlocked the door and was standing in the doorframe, watching her work for God knows how long. She had been so hypnotized by the money she didn't even notice him.

"Close the door," she asked, taking a handful of cash out of the sink.

The vampire seemed rather amused by watching her elbows deep in the sink like some twisted housewife. "I'm ageing the money to blend in with the rest. You asked for an Olivia solution, remember?"

The dryer beeped, and she opened it to check the money inside. It was still a bit damp, but it didn't need much longer. She added another minute to the machine and made the mental note to set the next dryer batch to 4 minutes. God forbid she overcooked the money and accidentally set it on fire.

"Where did you learn to do all this?" Eric asked.

He was leaning against the door now, hands in pocket watching her work so quietly she almost forgot he was there at all.

Olivia shrugged, wringing out more handfuls of money. "When my father died, his bookie took me under his wing. I was always good with math and money, I think I've been doing my dad's taxes since I was 10. Apparently, Lorenzo made a promise to my father to take care of me in case anything happened to him. And his idea of taking care of me was teaching me from the Book of Illegal Things. Mostly he just taught me to be resourceful, I think."

The formal legal stuff she learned in college. The Ivy League was the source of most white-collar crime after all.

"And what did happen to him? Your father?"

It was strange that Eric cared about any of this at all. "Heart attack, when I was 16. Paramedics said he was dead before he even hit the floor."

The dryer beeped again, and Olivia took out the first batch. The lighting in here was dim at best, but the money looked wrinkled and shitty - perfect.

"Back in my day, they would just have married you off."

Oh, trust Olivia when she tells you her family had been trying. The number of blind dates her mother and aunt had tried to set up for her was embarrassing, and the Spanish Inquisition into her dating life every time she went home was psychological warfare.

"Marriage? Eric, I'm only 28. What am I? A child bride?" Olivia quipped, playing it cool in an attempt to throw off the conversation. It had also been a blatant lie - she had already been engaged twice by now, but she never successfully made it to the aisle. "How are things down there?"

"Loud."

He had also noticed the new sound system. Olivia put the new dirty money out of the dryer and into an empty glassware crate. She would figure out a better option later. Then she added batch two into the dryer and set the timer for 4 minutes before getting started on batch number 3.

"Have you called the Queen?" Olivia asked, her adrenaline rushing in her veins, and it wasn't from touching the money. She was given an impossible task, her life hung by a thread. She didn't know if Sophie-Anne would make good on her threat or if it was simply a bluff, but Olivia didn't care to find out.

Despite the odds, she successfully managed to up the Queen's income by far more than what was asked. But the imaginary gun to her head was still pointing at her unless Eric made the call.

He lazily pushed his shoulders off the door and approached her, eyeing her intensely. His blue eyes were both the brightest and the darkest thing in the room.

"Until the Queen's cut is clean and wired to her account, I'm afraid the clock's still ticking."

Fuck. "Well, can't you tell her that it's all coming and then some?"

Eric smiled cooly. "Why don't you tell her yourself?"

He reached down his pocket and pulled out his phone. His thumb started to slowly type the digit she knew so well. Theoretically, it should be an easy conversation. Their superior had given her a challenge, and she was just about to accomplish it. Except the superior was the vampire Queen of Louisiana, the enchanting woman who had stolen Olivia's heart and then discarded it like trash. The challenge was a death threat; and her mind was halfway running through the numbers, trying to estimate if she could launder it all in time. Assuming the club stayed busy all week, assuming the cops didn't raid it, assuming the public had liked their experience, assuming the guests would actually tip the dancers… It was too hard to say for sure if she could pull it off. It wasn't often Olivia felt afraid, or even doubted herself. But she knew in her heart this was too close to call.

Rule 10: if you are going to bluff, always double down. It had always been the most important rule, according to her father. She wasn't bluffing, but the rule applied to any and all self-doubt. Indecisiveness will get you killed. Eric stopped right next to her, phone mid-air, hovering beside the sink. It was all Olivia could look at, the Queen's incomplete number by 3 mere digits, glowing.

"Wait-" she muttered, closing her eyes.

No one breathed in that room. Eric knew it would be risky to call the Queen now. If Olivia failed to follow through, it would cost her life on a good day, let alone in the current circumstances.

Tucking his phone back in his pocket, he still had the same smirk on his face. "You can always take my deal. Be mine, and she can't touch you."

But she refused to believe him. "You can't promise me that."

The smile on the corner of his mouth curled deeper as if she had said some funny remark. As if to say, somehow, that he could promise much more. When he spoke again, Olivia knew he was going to say something else, but held back. "Have a drink later, on the house."

Before she could give him attitude for awarding her hard work with one of Ginger's weak-ass 4 dollar cocktails after making him a literal millionaire, Eric slipped out, leaving her alone in the storage room. Olivia looked down at the dirty sink filled with gross water and money floating, both rotten fruits of her own labor.

Her mind digressed. She couldn't help but imagine what else Eric was willing to promise.

Five rounds of money soaking/scrunching/drying later, she returned to her office with the prepped money. She ran it through the money counting machine, which made the world's most satisfying and beautiful sounds while it processed the bills. She then distributed it on each of the dancer's bins and recorded each amount on her excel spreadsheet. The drug money looked pretty indistinguishable (maybe a little too much glitter) from the rest. It was a start, but she knew should do another round of batches before the end of the night. In the future nights, she would leave a bucket behind the bar and have the waitresses dump the leftovers in it so it would save Olivia the hassle of doing it all herself. Her hourly wage was too fuckin high to be busing tables at the local strip club.

Off for another liquor round, she headed back downstairs, tray in hand. She returned all the empty glasses and bottles back to the bar and started another lap across the club. Each time she made her way across the club floor she worked on building the courage of scanning the minds of patrons. It was the only way to find out if there were undercover cops or federal agents. But all she found was lust, male entitlement, deep fantasies and other gross yet unsurprising thoughts. That's when someone tapped on her shoulder. It was past 1 AM, and surely this would be a drunk dude about to hit on her. When she turned around to tell him to kindly fuck off, she found another familiar face staring back at her.

Oh shit. "What the hell are you doing here?"

The girl giggled, tucking her shiny brown hair behind her ear. Standing right next to her in the middle of the crowded strip club was, according to TMZ and every tabloid in the country, her archnemesis Willa Burrel.

A.N:

hello bonjour!

My apologies for the lack of posting, summer is always so busy! I know I've spoiled you all with weekly updates but that was only possible due to my local's spring lockdown, which has slowly lifted and now I'm all caught up on complete chapters. This one is literally hot off the press, and I hope you liked it! As always, leave me some love in the comments. I miss you guys blowing up my email inbox.

until the next one xoxoxo