3. NOTHING LEFT

🌸VIOLET🌸

The club didn't open for another two hours, but Marisol had texted me to come early, and I hadn't argued, because sitting alone in my room replaying dinner at the Knight estate over and over was worse than anything waiting for me here.

“Where's Denny?” I asked. Our manager wasn't the type to be absent from the club.

"Denny's been hiding from creditors all week.” Marisol replied. "You look like you saw a ghost." She was sitting on the edge of the counter backstage, peeling an orange with her thumbnail, when I dropped into the chair beside her.

"Worse."

"Worse than a ghost. Okay." She pulled a slice free and held it out to me without looking up. "Eat something. Before you spill."

I took it because refusing would have started a conversation I didn't have the energy for yet, and chewed slowly while I tried to figure out how to say the rest of it out loud.

I had been turning it over since I woke up, the two of them sitting side by side in my head like they belonged together even though every part of me wanted to keep them separate. The man I'd danced for and the man in the doorway of that dining room, footsteps unhurried on the stairs, his eyes finding mine before his father had even said my name. I kept trying to convince myself they were simply similar, two tall men with the same kind of stillness, and every time I tried, my own memory called me a liar.

"I had dinner with my mother's future husband last night," I finally said. "His son is..." I didn't have the right word for it, and I'd been searching for one since I woke up that morning. "Terrifying. Like being in a room with something that's decided not to attack you yet, but hasn't ruled it out either."

Lydia appeared in the doorway, still in her street clothes, hair still down. She was younger than the rest of us, nineteen, and she had the kind of face that hadn't learned yet how to hide what she was feeling. "Who's terrifying?"

"Violet's new stepbrother." Marisol popped a piece of orange into her mouth. "Apparently he looked at her like he wanted to eat her alive."

"That's not funny." I said.

"I wasn't joking." Marisol's smile faded when she saw my face wasn't playing along. "Wait. Are you actually shaken up?”

"It was him, Marisol." My voice dropped without me deciding to lower it, some old instinct making sure the words didn't carry past the three of us. "Table six. Two nights ago. The one who tipped me all that money."

She went still, the orange forgotten in her hand. "You're joking."

"I wish I was." I sighed. I still couldn't make sense of it.

Lydia's face paled. "Does he know? That you're—"

"No." I said it fast, too fast, and made myself breathe before I kept going. "He didn't recognize me. I had the mask on, and I don't look anything like Angel with my hair down and no makeup on. He just kept watching me the entire dinner like he was trying to place something just out of reach, and it made every second at that table feel like standing in a spotlight with my back turned to a door I couldn't see."

"That's not nothing, Violet." Marisol said. “You stripped for your future stepbrother!”

"I know it's not nothing. I've thought about nothing else since I woke up this morning." I pressed the heel of my hand against my eye, willing the tension there to ease even a little. "He didn't say one threatening thing all night. That's what scares me most. My mother kept smiling like everything was perfect, like she'd finally found us a way out, and I sat there with my hands shaking under the table, because it felt like he already knew every wrong thing I'd ever done and was simply deciding what to do with that information."

BANG!

The front doors slammed open hard enough to crack against the wall, and every conversation in the building died in the same breath.

"Where is he?" A man's voice, rough, filling the sudden silence like it had been waiting for the chance. "Where's Denny? Where's my money? I am done being patient about it."

Marisol was on her feet before I was, pulling both me and Lydia back against the wall, one arm stretched in front of us like it could do anything against what was coming through the curtain.

Six of them filed in. The one in front had a scar splitting his eyebrow and the kind of walk that expected the room to empty itself out of his path, which it did, chairs scraping back, half-full glasses abandoned on tables.

"He's not here," Marisol said, her voice steadier than I felt standing behind her.

"Not my problem." He grabbed the nearest table and flipped it, glasses shattering across the floor, and two of his men swept bottles off the bar shelf one by one, glass exploding against tile, laughing like it was the best part of their night. "This club owes me hundred thousand in unpaid interest. Your manager's been dodging my calls for a month. Somebody in this room is going to feel that debt tonight if he's not here to feel it himself."

"We don't have that kind of money." Marisol didn't move even as he stepped closer, close enough that I could smell the liquor rolling off him.

His hand shot out and gripped her jaw, wrenching her head up, and before I understood what was happening his other hand cracked across her cheek, the sound of it ringing off the walls.

"Marisol!" I lunged and an arm caught me around the waist, dragging me back.

"Let her go." Lydia's voice cracked, thin and terrified, and his attention swung to her instead, slow, the way something looks at prey it's just noticed.

"Well." He tilted his head, dragging his eyes over her. "This one's really pretty." He glanced back at his men. "Bet she'd be sweet to break in bed, don't you think."

One of them laughed low in his throat. "Won't take much convincing."

"No." I put myself between him and Lydia before I'd finished deciding to, every instinct screaming at me to run the other way instead. "You're not touching her."

"Big talk for someone with nothing to offer me."

My heart slammed hard enough that I felt it behind my eyes, but I held his stare anyway, because Lydia had frozen solid against the wall and Marisol had a handprint blooming red across her cheek.

I glanced at Lydia. They were going to take her if I didn't do something.

I did the math in my head faster than I wanted to. The stack of bills I hadn't spent yet, sitting in the drawer of my dressing table. My mother's medication. My sister's next hospital bill. Every bit of breathing room Xavier's money had bought us. Untouched because some part of me had wanted to hold onto it a little longer before it disappeared into loan payments like everything else did.

"I have something." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Not a hundred thousand. But I have something."

"Violet, don't." Marisol grabbed my wrist, and I pulled free of her without looking at her, because if I looked at her I'd lose whatever nerve I'd managed to scrape together.

"How much." His eyes narrowed, assessing, the same way Xavier's had at dinner except there was nothing careful about this man's attention, nothing considered. Just hunger.

"Enough to buy you some patience." I walked past him toward the dressing room, my legs shaking with every step, and pulled the drawer open with hands that wouldn't fully cooperate. The money sat folded exactly the way I'd left it, thick and solid, the closest thing to safety I'd felt in months.

I carried it out and pressed it into his open palm before I could think better of it.

He thumbed through it slowly, counting under his breath. "This isn't a hundred thousand."

"It's everything I have." I said. "Take it. Come back for the rest from Denny. Leave my friends alone tonight."

He studied me long enough that I heard Lydia's breath shudder somewhere behind me, and then his fist closed around the bills and he shoved them into his jacket.

"Smart girl." He tucked the money into his jacket. "Tell Denny next time I won't settle for scraps.” Then he jerked his head at his men. "We're done here. For tonight."

They filed out over broken glass and toppled chairs, the door slamming shut behind them hard enough to rattle the frame.

Nobody moved for a long moment after they'd gone.

"Violet." Marisol pressed a hand to her cheek, her eyes wet with tears, fighting hard not to let it show. "That was everything. All of it."

"I know." My voice came out hollow, because saying it out loud made it real in a way handing the money over hadn't quite managed to.

Lydia was shaking too hard to speak, and I pulled her against me instead of answering, because I didn't have words yet for what I'd just done to myself, standing there with an empty drawer and nothing left to fall back on if anything else went wrong this week.