Chapter 2 – The Price of Skin

They called her *Stella* on stage. Some manager had picked the name because it sounded like a p**n star and was easy to scream over a deafening bassline. But when the lights went down and the music died and the glitter stuck to her skin like shame, she was just **Sera** again.

Sera Devlin.

Twenty-three years old. College dropout. Full-time stripper.

Part-time liar.

She hated this place. *The Crimson Room* pulsed with the stench of greed and desperation. Men sat in velvet booths, drinking themselves under at bourbon and lust. Women moved across the floor in sequins and high heels, red paint on their lips, eyes lifeless behind their lashes.

And Sera? She danced.

Horribly, she'd admit. She wasn't as cool as the other girls. She didn't know how to make her body promise anything. Her movements were stiff, unsure—like she was moving through something dirty and didn't want it to smear on her skin.

And yet she came here. Night after night.

Letting strangers look at her like they were hers. Letting music drive her like she was made to do anything else.

She tied her robe more tightly around her torso and sat down in front of the mirror. Her reflection stared back at her with smudged mascara and damp skin, one glitter star clinging stubbornly to her cheekbone. She looked older than she should. Empty.

But her lips were red. Her nails were manicured. Her body was oiled and waxed and made up like it should be in a window.

Her stomach rebelled.

Her phone buzzed on the table beside her. A text.

**Noah:**

*Had the scan today. They want to repeat. Said the tumor hasn't increased.*

Sera's throat tightened.

She pressed the message to her chest, shutting her eyes as if the words might penetrate into her ribs and prevent her from breaking. *Not worse* didn't mean *better*, but it meant *hope*.

And hope was all she had right now.

Noah was her little brother. Nineteen. Too smart for his own good. Been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor last spring. Their mom had been gone years ago, and their dad—well, the last time he'd ever really cared about anything but himself was probably before she was born.

Her and Noah, alone now.

She'd sold everything. Flunked out of school. Waitressed. Housecleaned. Run up more debt than she could hold up two fingers on both hands.

But it wasn't enough.

So when the bartender asked if she'd ever danced, she said no.

When he paid her $500 to spend an evening at the club, she said yes.

And when the manager told her that she had the kind of face that would cause men to behave badly, she said nothing.

She simply nodded. And began learning how to fake being somebody else.

A knock knocked upon the door.

Sera leapt, heart pounding, but the next voice that emerged was a female one—Jasmine, one of the dancers.

"You okay, girl? Heard you screamed at some VIP the other night. You *have* to calm down, that guy is not a dude you mess around with."

Sera rose up slowly. Her muscles spasmed from tensing up the entire night. She cracked the door open and glanced out.

"What am I saying?"

Jasmine looked at her as if she'd just gotten run over.

"Are you kidding? That was *Valerio Moretti*."

Sera blinked. "Who?"

Jasmine moved closer. "He owns half the city. Guns, girls, clubs. That man does not wait around for things. He takes them. You were lucky he left."

Sera's mouth dried up.

Her pulse skipped a beat.

Valerio.

The name weighed something. A heavy, dangerous kind of weight. It clung in the air like smoke, filling the space behind her ribs.

That man—who had stood there watching her dance like he was committing every line of her body to memory. who had come into her room without being invited and grinned like he already claimed her—that man was *him*?

Her stomach twisted.

He'd been standing so near she could smell him. Leather, smoke, and something darker. Something primal. And when he said, *fire looks good on you*, she could feel that heat tickle down her spine, flickering low in her belly.

She hadn't been touched.

But it felt like he had.

"Thanks," Sera breathed. She closed the door before Jasmine could get another word out and leaned against the door, chest thudding.

What the fuck just happened?

No—no, she wasn't going to let some dick in a three-piece suit bully her out of a job. This wasn't ego. This wasn't pride.

This was Noah.

His treatments. His medication. The idiot, ridiculous amount of money she had to pay in order to keep him going.

She wasn't doing this for fun.

She was doing it for love.

Even if it was killing her a little more with each night.

---

The shower backstage barely managed to pump out warm water, but Sera didn't mind. She scrubbed at her skin vigorously, as if she could wash the night away.

The men who ogled. The one who tried to slip a hand up between her thigh and her underwear before she kicked his knee in. The low, nasty threats from management to be "nicer" or get fired.

And *him*.

Valerio's eyes still rested on her body. The way he'd looked at her—as if she were a puzzle he was going to take apart with his hands and mouth and tongue.

Her nipples hardened at the fantasy, and she gasped, shocked with herself.

No.

Not him.

Not someone like him.

She towel-dried roughly and shrugged on her baggy hoodie and leggings, covering every inch of skin. Only when she was dressed like herself again—dreary, unobtrusive Sera—did she feel she could breathe.

She grabbed her bag, moving fast and quiet out of the dressing room. She passed by bouncers. Bartenders. The tawdry crowd behind velvet ropes.

And then—

A body separated from the hallway.

"Leaving without a goodbye?"

That voice.

Steel and silk.

Her breath caught.

Valerio stood against the corridor wall, appearing to have nowhere else to be on the planet. His shirt was still unbuttoned at the top, his tattoos curling over the collar. His eyes raked over her dressed-to-the-teeth figure with precisely the same interest he'd shown when she'd been nearly naked.

"You again," she spoke stiffly, fighting the rush of heat in her chest.

He grinned. "You make it sound like a negative."

"You're a negative thing."

The left corner of his mouth curled upwards. "Now you're only flattering me."

She retreated. "I don't care what you are. I'm not for sale."

Valerio rose to his feet, inching towards her. Not reaching out. Never reaching out. But the atmosphere around him ripples like gravity itself warps to his commands.

"Everybody has a price," he muttered.

Sera squared her shoulders, trying not to show how her heart was hammering.

“Not me.”

He stepped even closer, and this time, she didn’t move. He leaned in until his mouth hovered near her ear.

“We’ll see about that, *little dancer*.”

And then—just like that—he turned and walked away, vanishing into the haze of lights and smoke like he’d never been there at all.

But Sera knew better.

He had *been* there.

And she got a sick hunch he wasn't leaving at all.