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“I’m not above traumatizing these people with your splattered brains.”

His hands shoot up. His eyes nearly cross on the barrel as he finally recognizes the power I hold.

“Alright, alright! I’m gone!”

I wait a moment. Let him stew in the unknown. Let him picture the worst possible outcome, where his life ends right now. His chest heaves as time drags on.

Then I pull back. I gesture towards the exit with my gun.

He stumbles away, rubbing his throat, while everyone around us remains perfectly still.

As he pushes through people, security sweeps in to escort him out. His friends follow reluctantly, and I mentally pat myself on the back for doing my job. Curating the clientele of this establishment takes effort.

The moment the threat evaporates, the mass of bodies resumes its pulse.

I tuck the gun away and retrieve the last stack of cash on me.

“Take the rest of the night off, Katrina,” I say, handing it up to her. She doesn’t need to deal with this shit in her first week here.

She flips through the band of crisp bills, then takes my hand to step down from her platform.

“Thanks, Edwin.”

My name on someone else’s tongue. It’s a divine spark. It should be carved into the walls, whispered in fear and devotion.

I let this place run on autopilot and the swine have wandered in. They forgot who I am and what I’m capable of.

Now it’s too late.

One final taste of reverence will suffice.

Dave sees me stand and unhooks the rope without a word. He expects nothing, but I hand him a hundred. I’ll have no need for it after tonight.

This occasion calls for something more than an audience of the self-important. I need the stage.

Perfume hangs in the air, sweetened by heat and edged with sweat as I slip through the crowd. I’m reduced to a phantom drifting between bodies with no one to gasp at the sight of me.

They should feel me coming.

The band cleared out some time ago, leaving the stage empty even as the club rages on in these early morning hours. Only two chairs remain abandoned off to the left.

Calling them chairs is an insult. They’re thrones. Grotesquely regal, intricately carved, and upholstered in emerald velvet.

My father’s idea, naturally. His grand design to display my mother as the queen of this little domain. She would have preferred death to sitting up there alone before an audience—though, as it turned out, she preferred death to a great many things—so he requested two.

I pause below the stage, staring up at them gathering dust. The sight makes my teeth grind.

Everyone here believes this to be a place of pleasure. But this is a cathedral built by blood, atop a litany of secrets and bones. They dance over history they’ll never know exists.

I pull myself up onto the stage and drag the thrones into the open. Dust bursts from the cushions under my hand, glittering in the air like little galaxies dying in the green light.

I sink into the seat on the right. My father’s. It receives me with the cold intimacy of inheritance.

From up here, the sea of people is clearer. The upper level glimmers with a softer decadence.

My great-grandfather Elias built this place over a century ago as a refuge for the wealthy. I turned it into a sanctuary for degenerates.

Elias would strangle me himself if he knew how respect for the Crotavere name has waned. All thanks to me, according to the rest of them. Edwin the indulgent, the liability, the son too full of himself to follow the lineage laid out for him.