The entire nightclub went silent when Adrian Vale pointed at me beneath the spotlight and said, “Bring her to me.”
Chapter 1:
The entire nightclub went silent when Adrian Vale pointed at me beneath the spotlight and said, “Bring her to me.”
For three years, Las Vegas had whispered that the most feared man in the city had refused every woman put in front of him—but that night, while I was shaking through the worst decision of my life, his eyes never left me.
Twenty minutes earlier, he had looked at my worn sweater and cheap canvas shoes with open contempt outside Velvet Noir.
“Keep people like that away from the entrance,” he had told his security chief, Caleb Ross, as if I were something dirty the wind had blown onto his sidewalk.
That humiliation should have made me leave.
Instead, the eviction notice in my purse kept me there.
My roommates had vanished with three months of rent, my landlord had given me seventy-two hours to pay, and going home to West Texas meant returning to the stepfather whose hands had started lingering where they shouldn’t when I was seventeen.
Velvet Noir’s HELP WANTED sign had looked like my last chance.
I thought I would be serving drinks.
Instead, the manager offered me two hundred dollars for one ten-minute dance.
Desperation put me onstage.
Fear almost knocked me off it.
My hands trembled against the silver pole, my movements were clumsy, and every second under those lights felt like another piece of me being stripped away.
Somewhere beyond the glare, though, Adrian Vale sat motionless in a private section with his fingers crushing the leather armrest.
When the music ended, I stumbled behind the curtain.
“I can’t do that again,” I whispered.
“You won’t have to.”
I turned and found Caleb standing behind me in a dark suit.
“The owner wants to speak with you.”
My stomach dropped.
“The man from outside?”
His silence answered me.
“I don’t want to speak to him.”
“He isn’t accustomed to hearing that.”
“Then tonight can be educational.”
Something flickered in Caleb’s eyes before he led me through the club.
Adrian was waiting inside a private room overlooking the Las Vegas Strip.
At thirty-seven, he controlled casinos, clubs, construction companies, and businesses people with expensive suits pretended not to understand.
“Remove the mask,” he said.
I folded my arms.
“Ask properly.”
Caleb actually inhaled behind me.
Adrian stared at me, then stepped closer.
“May I see your face?”
Slowly, I removed the lace mask.
Recognition hit him instantly.
“You.”
“The garbage from outside,” I said.
“I didn’t call you garbage.”
“You didn’t have to.”
His jaw tightened.
Then his eyes dropped to the red bruises around my wrist from the cheap costume bracelet.
“Why were you dancing?”
“I needed money.”
“There are easier ways.”
“Not in the next seventy-two hours.”
He told me to sit.
I stayed standing.
“Do you refuse every order?” he asked.
“Only the ones I don’t like.”
Caleb coughed suspiciously.
“Leave us,” Adrian said.
“No.”
Both men looked at me.
“Caleb stays, or I walk.”
Adrian’s eyes hardened.
“You believe you can walk out after speaking to me that way?”
Fear climbed my spine, but anger kept my voice steady.
“I believe you can stop me.”
“I also believe that would prove everything people say about men like you.”
“What do they say?”
“That power makes you think consent is optional.”
The room changed.
Whatever dark interest had been burning in Adrian’s eyes vanished behind something controlled and unreadable.
“Caleb stays.”
Then he walked behind the desk, opened a drawer, and placed two thousand dollars in cash between us.
My throat tightened.
“For what?”
“A job.”
“What kind of job?”
Adrian leaned back slowly, studying me as if the answer might change both our lives.
May you like
Then he said five words that made Caleb go completely still.
“You’re coming home with me.”
