Chapter 3

The backstage was in chaos. Cheap perfume choked the air as girls in various states of undress screamed over the thumping bass while fixing their tits and lashes in cracked mirrors. 

I ignored them all, my focus locked on the envelope hidden under my bag and the lethal gift inside. I needed somewhere to hide it before someone saw it. Olga was already making her rounds and that meant I had to move fast.

I couldn’t stash it in my assigned locker. That was the first place they’d look. My eyes scanned the cramped, humid space, darting past racks of feather boas and abandoned high heels. 

Then I saw it. 

A loose ceiling tile, just above the row of sinks in the grimy bathroom.

 It was a risk, but it was the only one I had.

I slipped into the bathroom, the door swinging shut on the noise and hopped onto the chipped porcelain sink.  I pushed the tile up and shoved the envelope deep into the dark cavity, my fingers brushing against cobwebs. 

The tile clicked back into place just as the bathroom door burst open.

"Raven! You’re on the main stage. Now," Olga barked, her beady eyes sizing me up like they always did, like she was appraising meat instead of a woman. 

She was the middle-aged manager who ran Lust & Lace but sometimes she carried herself as if she owned the damn place. Maybe she did, in a way. The Bratva let her run the club in their stead, which meant her word was law around here. Bossy didn’t begin to cover it. Olga had teeth and everyone knew it. Nobody fucked with her and walked away clean.

I had followed the rules strictly for the six months that I had worked here to avoid being on her radar and I'd been okay. Mostly. 

"And what the hell are you wearing? This isn’t a funeral." She gestured at my black outfit. 

"Maybe it is," I said, hopping down and smiling smugly. "For someone’s standards."

I caught the edge of her smirk as she sized me up and down again. I knew she liked me secretly. I was one of her best girls. I brought in more money than most and maybe that's why she tolerated me. 

​"The Bratva is here. I expect the best show you've ever given. Don't fuck this up." It was a warning. 

My blood went cold and hot at once. He was here. The man I'd been waiting all these months for. My target and next victim in the long blood-soaked list of men I'd extinguished.

I didn’t answer. Just brushed past her, my heart hammering so hard in my chest. She didn’t need to know that the Bratva was the whole reason I was here.

The walk to the main stage was a blur of red lights and leering faces. The music shifted into a low predatory beat that vibrated up through the soles of my feet as I climbed the steps to the circular stage.

The bass rattled the floor as the spotlight sliced through the haze of smoke and bodies until it landed square on me. The crowd’s roar rose like a wave, the hungry sound of men who’d been waiting for this moment, for me.

Bills rained before I even touched the pole. Twenties, fifties, even hundreds, crumpled and tossed like confessions at my feet. Some men leaned forward, their drinks forgotten, their mouths slack as if my body were a prayer they didn’t know how to recite.

But I wasn’t here for them.

I let them watch, let them groan when I spun slowly, dragging my thighs along the chrome, arching my back until my tits threatened to spill from the bra. Their cheers hit me like gasoline, but none of it mattered. Not the money piling at my heels. Not the hands clutching the edge of the stage, desperate, begging.

I wanted him.

Dominic Sokolov. 

I couldn’t see him. He was shrouded in shadow at the back of the VVIP booth, but I knew he was watching. Letting his gaze crawl over the dozen girls on stage like he was sampling from a platter, deciding which one was worth tasting. 

And I was going to make sure he chose me. 

I dropped into a split, slow enough to make them lose their minds. The front row went feral, waving bills, shoving them onto the stage. One guy even crawled closer until security shoved him back. 

I began to move, my body remembering the choreography I had practiced a hundred times. But this wasn’t just a practice. It was a performance for an audience of one.

Every spin, every dip, was a challenge to him.

 You see me. You want me. Come and get me.

I let my hands roam over my body, tracing the curve of my waist, sliding up to cup my breasts through the flimsy fabric of the bra.  My eyes never left the shadowy booth. 

The song built to its crescendo. This was the moment. Holding the pole for balance, I hooked my fingers into the sides of my shorts and peeled them down my legs, moving with an agonizing slowness. I stepped out of them, kicking the scrap of leather to the edge of the stage. I was exposed, save for the tiny bra, thong and the rhinestone strap on my thigh. The crowd roared, but it was a distant buzz. My entire world had shrunk to the devil in the shadows.

I turned my back to him, bending over deeply, offering myself to his gaze. I looked back at him through my parted legs, not at the bastards throwing money but at the darkness where he sat watching. Judging. Deciding if I was worthy.

When I straightened up, one of his guards was already at the stage, a mountain of muscle in an expensive suit. He didn’t speak, just jerked his head toward the VVIP section. 

I’d been summoned.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, deafening drumbeat of fear and vicious triumph all at once. I followed him, every nerve ending screaming a mixture of Stop and Go. But I couldn’t stop. I had to walk straight into the Devil’s mouth, even if it meant I wouldn’t crawl back out.

As we neared the VVIP area, the hulking guards at the booth parted like synchronized automatons and I stepped into the dim periphery of his domain.

I had studied the dossier Olek had scraped together, memorized every bare scrap of intel but nothing prepared me for him.

He wasn't a man. He was a god dressed in sin and carved into a devastatingly beautiful man; too fucking beautiful for a monster. His dark hair was slicked back, and extensive black tattoos crawled like shadows from beneath the collar of his tailored suit, a flawless facade marking the devil hidden inside.

And his eyes… Christ. They were the palest grey I’d ever seen, glinting in the dark like shards of broken glass. And they were locked on me, stripping me bare, pinning me in place, devouring every inch of me without a single word.

He didn’t speak. He just looked. His gaze traveled over my body with the slow, thorough assessment of a man examining a weapon he was about to purchase. 

He finally lifted a hand, a slight, almost imperceptible gesture. The guards melted away, leaving us in a sphere of relative privacy.

"The color of mourning does not suit a creature so full of fire," His voice was low, a rough rumble that vibrated deep in my core. His voice in my dream was a whisper but this was a damn earthquake.

His dark gaze pinned me in place like he already knew I was playing dress-up to get his attention. Like he could see past the lace and rhinestones, past the mask I painted on every night and straight into the inferno I tried so fucking hard to keep buried.

For the first time, I understood why even saying his name made men shudder. He was terrifying up close. It finally made sense why everyone called him the Devil.

I forced my voice to stay steady, layering it with a husky tease I didn’t feel. "Maybe I’m mourning the death of good taste in this city."

A ghost of a smile touched his cruel mouth. It didn’t reach his eyes. "Or perhaps you are simply reckless."

He leaned forward and the scent of him washed over me; a sharp smell of whiskey, expensive cologne and something darker, something utterly masculine and dangerous. "Come here."

It wasn’t a request. It was a command. Every instinct screamed at me to run, to fight, to reach for the gun stashed in the ceiling. But I was here for a reason. I knew that one wrong move, one twitch and I’d be snapped in half by him, or the stone-faced guards looming just outside. 

I needed him to want me to take me with him, to lower his guard for even a fraction of a second. And when that moment came, I would strike. But that time wasn't now. I had to play the obedient naive stripper he thought I was. I took the two steps that separated us, stopping just before his spread knees.

His ice-chip eyes held mine captive. "What is your name?"

"Raven," I breathed.

"Raven," he repeated my name like a dark, intimate caress on his tongue. "A scavenger. A bird of ill omen. Fitting."

His hand came up, and his knuckles brushed against the inside of my thigh, just below the rhinestone strap. The touch was electric, jolting through my entire nervous system. It was a threat, a demand, and a caress all wrapped in one sickening jolt that nearly shattered my focus.

"You wanted my attention, Raven," he murmured, his fingers tracing a slow, maddening circle on my sensitive skin. "You have it. Now, what will you do with it?"