Chapter 4 - Amber

The mirror over my station had a crack like a fault line. It split my face in two: left side hard and mean enough to survive; right side blurred like it was still deciding. That was the truth of me. Half armor, half fracture.

Bright eyes got me hurt.

I yanked the corset laces until my ribs complained. Breath went shallow, smile went on. Survival didn’t sparkle. It suffocated in sequins and pretended it liked it.

My grandma used to call me bright-eyed back in Nebraska—feeding chickens, dust on my knees, sunburn on my nose. I can still hear her voice sometimes, soft and steady, telling me that bright eyes meant hope. Hope doesn’t pay rent or buy groceries.

After she died, Nebraska turned from home into a place I had to run from. And when I ran, I learned fast that the world doesn’t wait for girls who read slow and stumble over words. Men don’t wait. They see weakness and call it opportunity. That’s how I ended up here.

The mirror didn’t lie. It just didn’t help.

Bright eyes make you a target. Masks keep me paid. I pressed crimson onto my mouth until the girl with the sunburn drowned and never clawed back up.

Overhead, the fluorescent hum did what it always did: expose pores, seams, bruises, every flaw that perfume lied about. I snapped my garter and listened to the little crack travel the room like a warning.

The dressing room was noise and spray and nerves. Women tugged and pinned and arched and pretended it didn’t sting.

Megan popped into my mirror, sailor cap tilted wrong, eyes too soft for this life. “Jesus, you look like hell,” she said, playful on purpose.

“Sweet as always,” I said, tapping nails on the vanity to keep my hands from shaking. Megan’s the only one who makes me laugh when my chest feels too tight to breathe. She looks out for me in ways the others don’t, like checking my straps before I go on stage, or warning me when some creep in the audience has a reputation. Sometimes I think she’s the only reason I haven’t snapped and walked out yet.

“You good?” She nudged my shoulder, quick check, quick exit if I lied.

“Always.” That was the script.

Across the room, Kyra tossed her red wig and venom. “Try not to slip this time, Nebraska.”

I kept my chin up. “Stage will decide.”

Her smirk thinned. Silence is better than a slap. I took the win.

—

Someone told me a man was looking for me in the corridor. One of the bouncers shoved an envelope into my hand—$1,500 in cash. Just to walk down a hallway.

Fifteen hundred. I’d bled more for less.

Men don’t spend that kind of money unless they want to own you. My stomach turned. I hesitated. Being naked here doesn’t mean being bought. But hesitation doesn’t pay rent, so I walked.

The hallway reeked like it always did. No matter how long I’ve worked here, I never get used to it. One man leaned against the wall, broad, hard, looked like security.

Further down, another waited. Not as big, but heavier somehow... presence that pressed.

The suit was cut to punish anyone who didn’t measure up. Shoulders tight, posture tighter. He carried himself like power wasn’t just in his wallet... it was in his spine, in the way the air bent around him. The kind of face that didn’t ask, it audited. Money on a body that looked like it knew how to use its hands without a pen.

I should’ve turned around. I didn’t. Curiosity is another kind of hunger.

Attraction hit low, sharp, traitorous—because attraction is dangerous when it costs more than you can afford.

“You’re the man who doesn’t go through doors he doesn’t own,” I said, because better to strike first.

“You’re Amber.”

“Depends who’s asking.”

“Ryan Carter.”

He waited for the flinch. He didn’t get it. I crossed my arms. The robe slipped higher on my thigh; his eyes clocked it and didn’t pretend not to.

“You pulled me off my set,” I said. “Expensive.”

“I’ll pay for your two minutes.”

“My minutes cost more than most men’s egos.”

“Good. I don’t buy egos.”

We let the bass fill the silence. He didn’t look around. He didn’t fidget. He didn’t apologize for being here. That’s what scared me: not his words, but the certainty. Men who chatter want to impress. Men who wait want to own.

“You want me to dance for you?” I asked. No flirt. A test.

“No.”

“Then say it. Because I don’t fuck clients. You can look, you don’t touch. That’s the rule.”

He laughed once. Cold. Surgical. “I don’t pay for pussy, Amber. I prefer women who claim to be refined.”

If the word refined had hands, it would’ve slapped me. I set my jaw hard for one beat. I didn’t give him the flinch he wanted.

“So what do you want, Carter?”

“A role.”

“A role,” I echoed, because sometimes repeating is a way to buy time.

“One year. Appearances. Events. Cameras. You’ll be my wife on paper and in public. We don’t have to like each other. We do have to look like we do.”

My brain stalled. Wife. He said wife like it was logistics, not a vow. I’d heard men promise rings before, but never like this—cold, businesslike, like fucking tax law.

“That’s a hell of a pitch to make in a hallway that smells like bleach.”

“It’s not a pitch.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know enough.”

“Enlighten me.”

He stepped closer. He moved like a man who knows how far to come without crowding you and how close to get without leaving you room to breathe.

“You don’t have a pimp waiting outside,” he said. “No boyfriend skimming your tips. No powder ring on your keys. No OnlyFans link feeding the same men pretending to hate you. Your file is clean where I need it to be. You’re the cleanest kind of dirty. Which makes you useful.”

Useful. It should have stung. It made me curious.

“Useful. That what you call women you get hard for and pretend you don’t?”

He didn’t blink. His control wasn’t a mask. It was bone-deep.

“Why me?” I pushed. “You’ve got money. You’ve got looks. You could have any woman from your world, someone who’d kill to wear your ring. So why a stripper?”

He let it sit long enough to make me feel the air leave my chest.

“Because I don’t do girlfriends. I don’t do soft. And marrying a stripper is payback to a man who thought he could dictate my life even after he was six feet under.”

So someone dead was still pulling his strings. Didn’t matter. The dead don’t scare me. Only the living do.

“What does payback buy me?”

“Half a million.”

No flinch from him. No gasp from me. I did the math while keeping my face bored. “Half up front?”

“No. Three parts. Signing. Six months. Completion.”

“And the rules?”

“No scandal. No leaks. And once you sign, you don’t go back to the stage.”

I lifted my chin because the only thing I own is my body. “You think you get to tell me where my body goes?”

“I tell my name where it goes. And it won’t go on a marquee.”

“Then maybe I’ll think about it.”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Eight. Somewhere that doesn’t smell like bleach. You’ll have the contract.”

I gave him a shrug sharp enough to cut. “We’ll see if it’s worth my time.”

He didn’t step back. He stepped in so his cologne erased the hallway stink.

My throat went dry. I hated that it did.

“Think it over. But don’t take too long. If you don’t bite, I move to the next. Simple as that.” The corner of his mouth tilted, cruel like it enjoyed itself. “But Amber—you’d make a fucking good payback.”

My chest tightened. Because for a split second, I wanted to believe him. Not the money. Not the contract. Him. That was the danger.

And danger had always known my name.

I turned first. Rule of survival.