Falling in Love Read Online Free

shivered into tiny
fragments. The mirror shook and vibrated but remained intact, one
thin crack going through it on an oblique angle.
    The room went quiet as the fellow
glowered. Bouncers, sensing a problem about to get out of control,
moved quickly in on either side on a nod from Chauncey Mifflin,
seated at his customary booth right by the kitchen door where he
could hold sway with his selected cronies and watch the
action.
    The big man, sweaty highlights
gleaming off his face, turned and faced the barroom.
    “ There’s something wrong
with my drink.” His head came down and he was fully aware of the
men on either side of him.
    Even as Johnny Salon’s leg lifted in a
kick to the chin, something he had practiced over and over again as
a young lad, Olaf as he was called, dropped to a knee and pounded
an elbow into Johnny’s crotch in the area of the rectum.
    Johnny’s subsequent gasp and collapse
were ancient news as the man Olaf stood up, and spinning on his
left foot, the right leg came straight around and on the level, and
Billy Bawb’s knee crackled with a sickening crunch as he screamed
and went down even as he raised his truncheon.
    Chauncey sat with an arm around one of
his expensive babes, glass raised and thin cheroot sending thin
curlicues of smoke up and around his patrician head, elegant and
cool in the dark paneling and obscure light of Chauncey’s Bar and
Grille.
    It was late on a Friday night and
three more of his staff rushed Olaf all at once from different
sides as the bartender groped under the bar for a cosh, unable
seemingly to tear his eyes from the fight but determined to get a
swipe in if he could and defend his turf.
    “ Ooh!” It was a great show
as long as you weren’t involved, thought Chauncey.
    “ Ah.” The gasps were torn
from a hundred throats and women cried out for them to stop
it.
    “ Oh.!” The man was a
wonder.
    Olaf banged a pair of heads together,
as the evening crowd, heavier than usual, stared in suspense and
winced with every blow he struck. Gagnier came at him with a
baseball bat, whirling it like a baton queen, and spinning it with
one hand over his head in calm demonstration of what he planned to
do. Ned and Barney came at the double out of the kitchen
area.
    Olaf bolted, knowing he couldn’t win
against such numbers, with Gagnier narrowly missing a temple as
Olaf side-stepped, and then on seeing a solid phalanx of bodies
between him and the door, he bolted for the stairs and the upper
levels where the pleasure girls plied their trade.
    “ He obviously knows his
way around.” Chauncey yelled over the crowd to the bartender. “You
should have given him a bigger dose!”
    Chauncey winked and his party laughed
outrageously.
    In three massive steps Olaf was up the
stairs and the whole crew boiled up after him, shouting profanity
and making obscene promises.
     
    ***
     
    Her door slammed open and Olaf was
there.
    He turned and tried to snap the
rickety old lock, and the knob broke off in his hand in his fury.
Olaf needed to get to her window, which backed right onto the alley
and there was only one way out. He braced against the
door.
    Fists pounded on the wood and against
all of his strength, the solid maple slab began to push
inwards.
    Serena hit Olaf in the back of the
head as hard as she could with a flat-iron she’d been warming on
the radiator prior to smoothing out some wrinkles in her
kimono.
    Olaf slumped to the floor, the drugs
and the short sharp blow to the head finally more than that
remarkable body and those insane reflexes had ever been built to
handle.
    “ I’m sorry.” A tear
dropped from her eye as the door was pushed open against the weight
of Olaf lying in the way.
    The boys moved back and Chauncey
sauntered in, casually stepping over Olaf’s outstretched
arm.
    “ Nice.” He nodded at the
boys. “Take him.”
    He looked at the slender blonde girl,
taking in the situation.
    “ Thank you.”
    She still held the flat-iron, limp at
her