Chapter 2: A Wolf in the VIP Booth
The silence that followed was worse than the music had been.
Emma couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. The man—what was his name, she hadn't caught it, something Italian and forgettable—was crumpled against the edge of the table, blood streaming from his nose in dark rivulets that soaked into his expensive shirt collar. He was groaning, trying to push himself up, and Craig's hand was still fisted in the fabric of his jacket like he might haul him up and do it again.
Nobody in the club moved. The music had cut off—someone must have killed it—and the sudden absence of bass left a ringing in Emma's ears that made everything feel surreal. Like she was watching this from outside her own body. Like none of it was really happening.
"Craig." A voice from somewhere behind her. One of the security guys, maybe. "Craig, come on, man. Not here."
Craig didn't respond. His eyes were fixed on the man bleeding on his floor, and there was something in his expression that Emma recognized. Something cold and empty and utterly without mercy. She'd seen that look before, in her father's eyes when he'd come home drunk and looking for someone to blame for his failures. She'd learned to read that look the way sailors learned to read the sky. It meant run. It meant hide. It meant the storm was coming and there was nothing you could do but survive it.
But she couldn't run. Her legs had turned to stone, and she was still pressed into the corner of the booth, her hands gripping the leather seat so hard her nails had left crescents in the hide.
"Say it again." Craig's voice was quiet. Too quiet. He yanked the man up by his collar, and the guy's head lolled back, blood bubbling between his lips. "Go on. Say what you said to her."
"I didn't—I wasn't—" The man's words were wet and garbled, his nose already swelling to twice its size. "Craig, I swear, I was just—"
"You were just what? Putting your hands on my cousin's fiancée? Telling her she should be grateful?" Craig's grip tightened, and the man made a sound that wasn't quite human. "That's what you were doing, right? That's what you were saying?"
"I was joking. It was a joke."
"Funny." Craig's head tilted, and his smile was a slash of white in the dim light. "I'm not laughing."
He slammed the man's face into the table again. The crack was louder this time, wetter, and Emma flinched so hard she knocked her elbow against the glass wall of the booth. The pain was sharp and grounding, and it pulled her back into her body just in time to watch Craig release the man's collar and let him slide to the floor in a heap.
The guy wasn't moving anymore. Just breathing. Shallow and fast, like a wounded animal.
Craig straightened, and his knuckles were red. Dripping. The blood looked black in the neon glow from beyond the glass, and Emma couldn't stop staring at it. At the way it ran down his fingers and pooled at his cuticles like he'd been finger-painting with something that used to be alive.
"Someone get this piece of shit out of my club." Craig's voice carried, and two security guards materialized from the crowd, hauling the man up between them and dragging him toward the exit. Nobody else moved. Nobody else spoke. The entire VIP section had gone still, a gallery of frozen faces watching the scene unfold like it was a play they'd paid to see.
Craig turned to face her.
Emma pressed herself deeper into the booth. It was an instinct, the same one that had kept her alive through childhood—make yourself small, make yourself quiet, don't give them a reason to notice you. But Craig was already noticing. His eyes were on her, green and burning, and there was something in them that made her skin prickle with a heat that had nothing to do with the club's temperature.
He leaned down. Close enough that she could smell the whiskey on his breath and something else underneath it, something clean and sharp like cedar and lightning. "You don't thank me."
The words didn't make sense at first. She blinked up at him, her mind still scrambling to catch up with reality.
"What?"
"You don't thank me." He reached out, and his bloody fingers caught her chin, tilting her face up toward his. The touch was surprisingly gentle for hands that had just broken a man's nose. "You don't say a word. You just remember—in this club, you're mine to protect. Dominic's too much of a coward to do it himself."
The words landed like stones in her chest. Possessive and hot and wrong in so many ways she couldn't count them all.
"I'm not yours," she managed. Her voice came out small, but steady. "I'm not anyone's."
Craig's smile was slow and sharp. "Sweetheart, you're engaged to my cousin. That makes you family. And in this family, we protect what's ours. Whether you like it or not."
He released her chin and straightened, and Emma felt the absence of his touch like a physical thing. She watched him turn away, watched him raise his hand to signal the DJ, watched the music slam back into existence like nothing had happened.
But everything had happened. The blood on the floor was still there, a dark stain spreading across the polished wood. The man's groans still echoed in her ears. And Craig's words were still burning through her, possessive and terrifying and something else she didn't want to name.
She stayed in the booth. She didn't know what else to do. Her hands were shaking, so she pressed them flat against her thighs and focused on breathing. In through her nose. Out through her mouth. The way her therapist had taught her, back when she could afford a therapist. Back before her father had drained her savings account for the third time.
The music pulsed. Bodies moved. The club returned to its rhythm like a machine resetting itself, and Emma sat in the middle of it all, invisible and exposed at the same time.
Where was Dominic? He'd left her here, told her not to move, and disappeared into the crowd. That had been—she checked her phone, which she'd been clutching like a talisman—almost forty minutes ago. Forty minutes of sitting alone in a VIP booth while men with hungry eyes circled like sharks.
She thought about leaving. Just standing up and walking out, disappearing into the city, finding a bus or a train or anything that would take her far away from this place and these people.
But she couldn't. Because if she did, her father would die. And even though a small, dark part of her thought that might not be the worst thing in the world, she couldn't have his death on her conscience. She couldn't be the reason someone died, no matter how much they deserved it.
So she stayed.
A woman approached the booth—tall, blonde, dressed in something that barely qualified as a dress. She had a bottle of champagne in one hand and two glasses in the other, and she smiled at Emma with the kind of practiced warmth that didn't reach her eyes.
"Hey, sweetie. Craig sent me over. Said you looked like you could use a drink."
"I'm fine."
"Sure you are." The woman slid into the booth beside her, uninvited, and set the champagne on the table. "I'm Katya. I work here. And I'm here to tell you that you've got nothing to worry about. That guy? He's been a problem for months. Craig's been looking for an excuse to rearrange his face."
"I didn't ask for an excuse."
"No. But you gave him one anyway." Katya poured two glasses and pushed one toward Emma. "Drink. It'll help."
Emma didn't want the champagne. She wanted to go home. She wanted to curl up in her bed with a book and pretend this night had never happened. But Katya was watching her with something that might have been pity, and Emma found herself reaching for the glass anyway.
"I don't even know what to call you," Katya said. "Dominic's fiancée? Craig's new obsession? The girl who got sold to the Morettis?"
"Emma."
"Emma." Katya nodded, sipping her champagne. "Pretty name. Pretty girl. You don't belong here, do you?"
"No."
"No." Katya's laugh was soft and knowing. "I could tell. You've got that look. The one that says you'd rather be anywhere else. I had that look once. Then I got used to this place."
"I don't want to get used to this place."
Nobody asked what you wanted." Katya set her glass down and leaned closer, and her perfume was sweet and cloying, like flowers left too long in standing water. "They just take and take and take. And eventually, you learn to like it. Or you break."
"I'm not going to break."
Katya's smile was sad. "That's what I said too."
She stood, smoothing down her dress, and Emma noticed the way her hands trembled. Just slightly. Just enough to see if you were looking.
"Good luck, Emma." She walked away, disappearing into the crowd, and Emma was alone again with her champagne and her thoughts and the bloodstain on the floor that someone still hadn't cleaned up.
Dominic returned twenty minutes later.
He didn't apologize. Didn't acknowledge that he'd left her alone for over an hour. Just slid into the booth across from her and signaled for a drink like the world was exactly as it should be.
"You're still here."
"Where else would I be?"
"Good point." A waiter appeared with a whiskey, and Dominic took it without acknowledging the man. "The announcement's been made. Everyone knows you're mine now."
"I'm not—"
"You're wearing the ring." He pointed at her hand, and Emma looked down. The ring was there. A simple platinum band with a diamond that caught the light and threw it back in cold sparks. She didn't remember putting it on. Didn't remember anyone giving it to her.
"I don't—" She tried to pull it off, but it wouldn't budge. Her finger had swollen around it, or maybe it had been sized to fit and she just hadn't noticed.
"It's a symbol, Emma. You wear it, people know you're claimed. You take it off, people think you're fair game." Dominic's eyes were hard. "You don't want to be fair game in this world."
She thought of the man with the bloody nose. She thought of Craig's fingers on her chin, his voice in her ear. She thought of Katya's sad smile and the warning in her eyes.
"Fine," she said, and dropped her hand back to her lap. "I'll wear it."
"Good girl."
The words made her skin crawl. But she smiled, small and tight, and swallowed the rest of her champagne in one bitter gulp.
Craig wasn't watching her anymore. He was across the club, surrounded by a different group of people, laughing at something someone had said. But even from here, she could feel the weight of his attention. The way his gaze kept drifting back to her, checking. Marking.
She didn't know what was worse. Dominic's cold indifference or Craig's burning obsession.
Either way, she was caught between them now. And she had a feeling that getting out was going to take more than quiet stubbornness and a fake smile.
She was going to need an army.
The night blurred after that. More champagne. More faces. More whispered congratulations from people whose names she'd never remember. Dominic kept her close, his hand on her elbow, his words in her ear, and she played the part of the dutiful fiancée like a woman playing dress-up in someone else's life.
But underneath it all, something was shifting. Something was hardening.
She'd always known she was alone. She'd always known she had to save herself. But now she had something else to protect too—her father's life. And she was beginning to realize that in order to protect someone else, she might have to do things she'd never imagined herself capable of.
When Dominic finally drove her back to her apartment, the sky was starting to lighten in the east. Purple and pink smeared across the darkness like a bruise, and the city looked almost pretty in the half-light. Almost innocent.
"I'll pick you up tomorrow," Dominic said. "We have things to discuss."
"What kind of things?"
"Wedding things. Living arrangements. Everything you'll need to know about being a Moretti."
"I don't need to know anything about being a Moretti. I need to know how to survive being one."
Dominic's smile was thin. "That is what you'll need to know. Don't be so sure I'm the enemy, Emma. I'm the only thing standing between you and the rest of them."
He drove away before she could respond, and Emma stood on the sidewalk outside her apartment, staring at the taillights as they disappeared around the corner.
The rest of them.
She'd already met one of Craig's employees. That had been enough to know exactly what Dominic meant.
Upstairs, she locked the door behind her and checked the windows and sat on her floor with her back against the wall, her knees drawn up to her chest. The ring on her finger felt heavy. Wrong. Like a handcuff disguised as jewelry.
She didn't cry. She'd promised herself years ago that she was done crying over things she couldn't control. But she sat there until the sun came up, and she made a plan.
A simple plan. A slow plan. A plan that would take weeks or months or years to execute.
She was going to survive this. She was going to survive the Morettis and the marriage and whatever Craig was turning into when he looked at her like that.
And when the moment came—when the opening appeared—she was going to run.
Until then, she'd play along. She'd wear the ring and smile the smile and be everything they wanted her to be.
But she'd never stop watching for the cracks. And when she found them, she'd tear them open wide enough to swallow herself in.
She was done being a victim. She was done being someone's property.
She was just done.