Chapter 6

“Come to the club. Now.”

Silas’s voice through the burner phone was so absolute I felt it in my jaw, a low, vibrating command that obliterated any hesitation. The call ended before I could answer. My hands were already moving, numb and mechanical, as I stared at the dress box on the bed—a delivery that had arrived with no return address, only a slip of paper with the club’s name written in heavy black ink.

I peeled back layers of tissue paper. Red. The kind of red that made my skin look pale and new, the kind that belonged to a different woman in a different story. The fabric was a whisper against my fingers, silk cut low at the back, a hemline that flirted with indecency, every detail a dare. I put it on. I did not look at myself in the mirror. The feeling of being seen—by him, by anyone—was already crawling across my skin.

The driver was waiting outside, the car a black animal crouched at the curb. Inside: silence, cool air, a single glance in the rearview mirror. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. My hands tangled in my lap, the phone a heavy stone in my purse, and all the while, my heartbeat was a countdown.

The club’s foyer was all velvet and shadow, the kind of place where money moved quietly and every surface seemed to drink the light. I ignored the stares, the quick, appraising glances from staff who knew better than to ask questions. Upstairs, a private corridor. A guard with a clipped nod, and then a door opening onto a world that didn’t belong to me.

Silas was waiting inside. He wore black—always black, like he was carved out of some darker material than everyone else. The room was cut in half by a wall of one-way glass. Down below, the main floor glittered with laughter and the clink of glassware, but up here, it was silent except for the slow, deliberate sound of his breathing.

He didn’t greet me. He didn’t need to. His eyes swept over the dress, his mouth flickering with something that wasn’t quite approval. He held out a glass of champagne, and when I reached for it, his hand closed around mine, steady and unyielding, forcing me to meet his gaze.

“Look.”

The word was soft, but it hooked under my ribs like a wire. I turned to the glass, and there—

Liam. My husband. Down below. In a suit I had pressed for him that morning, his posture all eager deference, a dog desperate for a scrap. He hovered at the edge of a table ringed with men in tailored suits, their laughter just visible behind the glass, their smiles sharp and dismissive. Chloe was there, too—her legs, bare to the thigh, draped carelessly over Liam’s lap, her hand stroking his cheek as if he were her pet, not mine.

My hand shook. The champagne sloshed dangerously close to the rim, but Silas’s grip didn’t move. If anything, it got firmer.

“Look at him, Ivy,” he said. His breath was warm at my ear, the timbre of his voice vibrating through the thin silk of my dress. “Look at what you starved yourself for.”

Liam laughed at something Chloe whispered, his hand sliding up her thigh as he leaned in, hungry for her attention, for their approval. The men at the table ignored him, their eyes sliding over him like he was part of the furniture.

Something twisted in my stomach—shame, maybe, or a grief so old it had fossilized. I pressed my lips together, fighting the urge to look away.

Silas let out a low, humorless sound. “Now look at me.”

He shifted behind me. His body was a wall of heat, the kind that made it impossible to forget how cold I’d been for so long. His palm slid from my wrist to the inside of my elbow, up and over my bare shoulder, settling at the small of my back. His touch was not gentle. It was deliberate, a silent claim.

“I could buy his miserable life with pocket change,” he said, almost conversational. “He sells himself for scraps. You—” His hand slid lower, fingers tracing the edge of the dress, finding the hem, the soft inside of my thigh. “You are not a thing to be starved for.”

I shivered. Not from fear. Not exactly. The sensation was more complicated—anger, humiliation, want. My eyes pricked, but I refused to look away. Down below, Chloe threw her head back and laughed, the sound lost in the glass, but Liam looked up at her like she was oxygen.

Silas’s hand pressed higher, the silk bunching and sliding up my skin. “You’re shaking.”

My voice was a whisper. “I’m fine.”

He leaned in, his mouth at my ear. “You’re not. But you will be.”

He turned me, slow and inexorable, until I was facing him instead of the glass. Up close, his eyes were unreadable—unforgiving and hungry at once. He didn’t ask permission. One hand cupped my jaw, tilting my face up. The other slid up the line of my thigh, under the dress, a promise and a threat, warm and unrelenting.

My breath caught. He waited, watching me, his gaze heavy with the certainty of someone who knew exactly what he was doing to me. I closed my eyes, not in surrender but in self-preservation. The world narrowed to the heat of his body, the pressure of his hand, the taste of champagne lingering on my tongue.

When his mouth found mine, it was not gentle. It was possession disguised as a kiss, a lesson in how it felt to be wanted for something other than silence. I made a sound—small, desperate—and he swallowed it whole.

I pressed closer. My hands—when had they moved?—found his lapels, clutching at him like a lifeline, and for the first time in too long, I let myself lean into someone else’s gravity. His mouth gentled then, just a fraction, a question hidden in the insistence. I answered it, wordless, my fingers curling in his jacket.

Below us, the laughter shifted. A chair scraped. I felt it before I saw it—the prickle of being watched, the ancient, animal sense that somewhere, someone’s attention had shifted.

I opened my eyes. Silas didn’t let me go, but his gaze flicked past me, toward the one-way glass. I followed it—

And saw Liam, five stories down, his face tilted up, eyes fixed on the dark glass as if he could see straight through to where I stood, red dress and all, wrapped in a stranger’s arms.

The air in the room changed. Silas’s hand tightened at my waist.

We did not move. We did not hide.

Let him look, I thought, and for the first time, the shame was not mine at all.