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Ava
I pacebeside the blood red couch, trying to block out the thumping bass coming from outside the door. Room number four isn’t a total shithole. It’s not anything like the horrors inside room nine, but it’s far from a honeymoon suite.
Although, there’s one of those down the hall.
Each VIP room has a different theme, depending on your kink. Bondage? Wedding night virgin? Bad schoolgirl? Naughty nurse? No problem. Seven fulfills any fantasy a patron could possibly desire. Even ones that make me nauseous, like the serial killer’s torture room.
That’s room nine.
I wish I were kidding.
Not that I’ve spent much time in there. Unlike the rest, I’m usually not offered up as an item on the psycho-kink secret menu. It’s my one saving grace. Not because anyone here gives a shit about me. It’s only because hard core sadism leaves scars, and scars cost sales.
It’s not about nepotism. It all comes down to the mighty dollar.
Still, all the other girls are horrified my father “lets” me dance in his club, but no one dares complain about special treatment. That’s because I’m one of them when the back room doors close. We’re all “highly encouraged” to entertain in the VIP rooms.
“Highly encouraged” is Chernov code for do it or die.
Once you sell your soul to the Chernov Bratva, they own you forever. There’s no happily ever after. There’s no ending where the guy saves the girl. That’s why I begged Rose to run as far away from here as she could. The minute she signs her name, it’s in blood, and it’s forever—or at least until she’s no longer useful.
Some of us never had that choice.
I’m not here willingly. I’m not some petulant mob princess who takes her clothes off just to raise a middle finger to Daddy. Years of threats, secrets, and violence forced me into a role of complete degradation because that’s what my father craves—penance by perversion and suffering by shame. Family or not, defy him and you pay with your life one way or the other.
I stop and rub my damp hands down my bare thighs. At least Ethan chose room four. This one kind of fits my mood. Everything’s bathed in red, from the tinted lights to the red walls to the red velvet couch.
Almost like the Scarlet Letter of Sin.
I resume pacing while glancing up at the iron clock hung above a partially mirrored wall. Ethan said we’d meet in room four at midnight, and it’s already almost half past that. My stomach is still in knots at the idea, but he swears he knows people who can hack into the security cams and block access so no one will know we’re not actually fucking.
VIP room four, he said.
Midnight, he promised.
He’s late.
A chill sends goosebumps scattering down my arms, and I rub them. The leather studded bracelet around my wrist catches my eye, and I shake my head. Sure, I’m absolutely dressed the part for a meeting with the FBI. If black strappy leather and a collar doesn’t scream I’m honest and trustworthy, I don’t know what does.
Maybe I should quit while I’m ahead and…
My thoughts trail off as the door opens. Relieved, I spin around expecting to meet Ethan’s lanky frame, but what I face stops my heart.
He steps inside and shuts the door, taking all the air inside the room with it. I can’t breathe. I’ve imagined this moment in my head a thousand times. I imagined what it would be like—what he would be like. But never once in eight years did I envision it happening like this.
“Hello, Ava.”
The shiver from moments ago becomes a violent tremor.
That voice. That low, gravelly voice. It’s the same as I remember. The one I hear in my dreams, and the one I cry out for in my nightmares. Hearing it is like drinking contaminated water when you’re dying of thirst. You know it can kill you, but the need is so strong it’s worth the risk.
However, the man standing before me isn’t the same one locked inside my memories—the one with midnight black hair always covering one stormy gray eye, and a cocky half smile. The loner who brought a broken little girl out of the shadows. The protector who held my hand during my mother’s funeral. The friend I grew to love with all my heart.
I watched that boy turn into a man and rise up through the ranks of the Miami Bratva. The same man whose last words to me were filled with so much volcanic hate, they could’ve melted steel.
The version standing before me is darker and more muscular. His floppy black hair is cut shorter on the sides and connects to a light beard, partially hiding a vertical scar on his left cheek. A scar I desperately want to know more about, but will never ask. Mostly because the next thing I encounter is a violent, angry tattoo of an eye that covers his fisted hand leading to one that disappears under his leather jacket only to reappear around his corded neck.
Flames burning tortured souls.
