The club pulsed like a living, breathing beast.

Red and violet lights washed over half-naked bodies, while smoke curled through the air like fingers searching for something to hold on to. Music pounded from the speakers — heavy bass that made the walls tremble, the kind of beat meant to drown out thoughts and make men spend more.

Aria Kane slid a hand down the slick metal pole, arching her back as wolf whistles erupted from the crowd below. Her body moved on instinct, hips swaying, hair sticking to her damp skin. She hated the way their eyes clung to her curves, hated the way their money felt when it touched her palm, but she hated hunger more. She hated the thought of her sister going to school without shoes, her mother coughing in their tiny rented house two states away.

So she worked.

She danced.

She endured.

And tonight, like every other night, she was high enough not to feel the shame. The little white powder she’d snorted backstage dulled the sting of her trauma, blurred the faces in the crowd into nothing but shadows. It was easier this way. If she squinted hard enough, the men weren’t real. The hands that once tore her apart when she was sixteen couldn’t reach her here. Not when she was numb.

But him.

He was real.

Aria’s gaze slid past the drunk men throwing bills at her feet, past the businessmen with loosened ties and cheap whiskey breath, to the far corner of the club. He was there. As always.

The man in the shadows.

Damian Moretti.

He didn’t drink. Didn’t smoke. Didn’t laugh with the others. He didn’t even glance at the other girls twirling on stage. His eyes — cold, sharp, dangerous — were only ever on her.

Aria’s stomach tightened. Her pulse stuttered.

It should terrify her. He terrified everyone. Rumors about him traveled faster than the music that shook this club: the enforcer, the butcher, the man who cleaned up the Mafia’s messes without blinking. Nobody dared approach him. Nobody dared breathe wrong around him.

But every time she stepped on this stage, she could feel his gaze cutting through the darkness and pinning her in place. He didn’t leer like the others. He didn’t drool or beg. His eyes burned with something colder, something heavier — like judgment. Like possession.

And God help her, she kept waiting for him to move.

She twirled, sliding down the pole slowly, her thighs flexing, her lips parting just a little as she arched. A trick she’d learned long ago: fake desire, sell it, let them think they owned a piece of her. The men below roared, tossing bills, greedy hands reaching for her ankles.

But she only looked at him.

His face stayed carved in stone, unreadable. The shadows wrapped around him like he was part of them, a predator waiting in the dark.

And that was when the memory hit her — hard, fast, unshakable.

Blood.

A man on his knees, begging.

Damian’s gun pressed to the man’s head.

One squeeze of the trigger, and red sprayed across the alley wall.

She had been there. She had seen it. She had told herself to run, to scream, to pretend it never happened. But instead, she had watched the way Damian wiped his hands, calm, controlled, like death meant nothing.

That should’ve broken her. Should’ve kept her away.

But tonight, high and ruined, she wanted to touch those same hands.

The thought burned through her, reckless and insane. The part of her that still remembered the feel of men tearing at her sixteen-year-old body screamed at her to stop, to keep her distance. But the part numbed by drugs and exhaustion whispered something else.

Touch him. Just once.

Her song ended. The men howled, throwing their last bills, pounding tables. Aria slid off the stage, ignoring the groping hands, ignoring the bartender calling her name. Her bare feet padded across the sticky floor, slow but steady.

And then the room stilled.

Every eye followed her.

Every voice hushed.

Because she wasn’t walking to the bar. She wasn’t walking backstage.

She was walking straight into the corner. Straight into the shadows. Straight toward him.

Damian didn’t move. He sat with his legs spread wide, black shirt stretched across his chest, tattoos peeking from the collar. A glass of water sat untouched in front of him. His gaze locked on her, cold and sharp, but he didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch.

The crowd murmured, the silence almost louder than the music.

And then.

Aria reached him.

Her heart pounded like a drum, but her hand lifted anyway. Shaking, foolish, desperate. And she placed her palm flat against his.

A collective gasp tore through the club. She heard someone mutter, “Is she crazy?” Another whispered, “Walking into the lion’s den.”

But all she heard was silence.

All she felt was the warmth of his hand beneath hers — steady, dangerous, alive.

And when his eyes lifted, meeting hers, the weight of that stare stole her breath.