Don’t Fall For Your Favorite Customer

The first rule of Velvet Room was simple, never fall for a customer, and the second was even simpler, never let a customer think they own you. I had broken neither.Music throbbed through the dressing room walls while I fixed the collar of my black shirt in the mirror, breathing slow and counting down to the floor, and around me the other performers laughed and argued over tips and checked their hair and pretended they weren’t nervous about who might be waiting tonight. I didn’t have to pretend. Two years had taught me how to smile without meaning it, how to hold a gaze just long enough, how to leave everything real in this room before I walked out that door.“Zaire.” Ren filled the doorway, already dressed for the floor. “You have a VIP.”“Again?”“You say that like you don’t love VIPs.”“I love their money.”“Same thing,” he said, watching me grab my jacket. “Who’s mine?”His smile dropped before he answered. “Dorian.”I stopped moving. “Dorian Veyl?”“How many billionaires named Do

I didn’t sleep. I spent the entire night staring at the ceiling, replaying the same sentence over and over in my head. Ask your mother what happened the night your father disappeared.My mother had always hated talking about him, and whenever I asked questions she changed the subject, and whenever I mentioned his name she suddenly found something else to do with her hands. When I was younger I told myself it was grief. Now I wasn’t so sure.By six in the morning I’d made a decision. I was going home, not to sleep, but to get answers.Her apartment was forty minutes from the club, and I hadn’t shown up unannounced in months, so when she opened the door the smile on her face fell apart the second she saw mine.“Zaire?”“Can I come in?”She stepped aside without a word, and I walked past her into an apartment that smelled exactly the way it always had, lavender and coffee and something that used to feel like home, and for one dangerous second I almost forgot why I was there. Then I pulle

My father was alive. That was the only thought in my head, not the broken window, not the darkness, not even Dorian’s hand still wrapped around my wrist. My father, standing three feet away from me, older, thinner, but unmistakable, and when his eyes met mine something inside my chest cracked open. “Zaire.” I couldn’t move. “You know me?” His face twisted with something that looked like regret. “I’ve known you your entire life.” I swallowed. “Then why did you let me believe you were dead?” He looked at Dorian instead of answering, and that was the moment I understood there was something between the two of them, something I had never once been told. “You knew,” I whispered to Dorian, and when he didn’t deny it I stepped away from him. “Get out.” “Zaire.” “I said get out.” His expression hardened. “I’m not leaving you here.” “You’ve been lying to me since the first night you walked into Velvet Room.” “I never lied about wanting you.” My breath caught, and the room suddenly

“Give me the phone, Zaire.”Dorian’s voice was calm, but something in his expression told me he was anything but. I tightened my grip on the phone instead of handing it over. “No. Tell me who is sending these messages first.”My father stood near the doorway, looking like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole. Dorian glanced at him. “Did you tell him everything?”My father shook his head. “Not yet.”I laughed without a trace of humor in it. “Of course. Another secret.” I turned to leave, but Dorian stepped in front of me before I could reach the door.“Move.”“Someone is watching this apartment.”“And you think keeping me here will stop them?”“No. But walking out alone will make their job easier.”I stared at him. “Since when do you care about my safety?”His expression tightened. “Since before you knew my name.”Those words should have meant something to me. Instead they hurt.“You don’t get to say things like that after lying to me.”“I know.”“Then stop acting like