Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Riot
Problem - Natalia Kills
I knew she’d be a fucking problem.
The second I bet on her, I saw it coming—mouthy, reckless, impossible to ignore. The kind of girl who makes chaos look good and doesn’t know how to stay in her damn lane.
What I didn’t expect?
Was how much I’d start liking the fucking problem.
Didn’t expect her voice to stick in my head like a loaded trigger. Didn’t expect my cock to twitch every time she rolled her eyes at me, or my chest to twist every time someone so much as looked at her wrong. Didn’t expect her to crawl under my skin and stay there.
But here she is.
Riding behind me through the afterglow of Verge, arms tight around my waist, body warm against my back, alive. Awake. Still a pain in my ass, and still mine.
The district’s still burning in color—neon signs glitching like heart monitors on the edge, strip lights flickering over bloodstains that haven’t dried yet.
Drones buzz above like vultures wired for profit, broadcasting every flicker of movement to the highest bidder.
The crowd behind us? Still screaming, still betting, still addicted to the spectacle.
We survived.
Again.
But this isn’t survival. Not really.
This is war, and at this point, she’s the only fucking reason I’m still in it.
The farther we ride, the more she presses into me. I feel her muscles tight against my back, feel her chest rise and fall in rhythm with mine. She’s calming. But I know her well enough now to know she’s thinking too. Watching and waiting.
I cut left off the main grid. Down a forgotten road where the lights dim and the Syndicate’s eyes don’t reach.
Past what used to be theaters, hardware stores, and seedy cafes with menus that read like sin and tasted like regret.
We ride until the streets are empty, the sounds are dulled, and the Verge pulses behind us like a bad dream trying to follow.
Then I stop.
Sin doesn’t ask why, she just climbs off, stretches her legs, and looks up at the place I’ve brought her to.
Neon pink lights bleed down the alley, casting everything in a candy-coated glow that can’t hide the rot. The building ahead is crumbling brick and shadow, its rusted-out sign barely hanging on. Only a few letters still flicker with power, just enough to spell one word in pulsing light: FLESH.
Her lips part. “Subtle.”
I smirk. “Wasn’t meant to be.”
I swing off the bike, boots crunching glass as I pull my helmet off and toss it onto the seat. Reaching back, I take hers too, setting it beside mine like it belongs there. Like she belongs there.
Then I fish out a cigarette, bite the filter, and flick my lighter to life with a sharp snap. The flame glows for half a second in the neon haze before the first drag scorches down my throat. Smoke curls up into the Verge’s electric night—sharp, bitter, grounding.
We step inside.
The music’s still playing—somewhere in the bones of the place. A bassline low and primal, vibrating through cracked walls and shattered tile like the heartbeat of a body that forgot it died. The air tastes like sweat, smoke, and something sweeter, like syrup poured over rot.
The club’s half-dead, half-alive. Glitching dancers stutter on old poles, their holos catching mid-loop, torsos stretching into static before snapping back to form.
Some aren’t holos. Some are real. Girls with smeared makeup and blank stares, moving like they forgot how to stop, hips swaying to a beat that never ends.
They don’t look at us. Don’t acknowledge anything.
Like the place swallowed them whole and refused to spit them back out.
Glitter dusts the floor like fallout. Dollar bills curl on the stage, sticky with dried booze.
There’s an overturned table near the bar, a trail of broken glass leading to a cracked mirror that’s still catching light in violent bursts of color.
Neon pink. Toxic green. A flickering ultraviolet strobe that strobes so fast it feels like it’s trying to erase time.
“Looks like they vanished mid-fuckin’ party,” Sin mutters, stepping around a puddle of something that might’ve been champagne, might’ve been piss.
She’s not wrong.
There are half-finished drinks still perched on the bar. A heel snapped in two near the edge of the stage. Cigarette butts in lipstick-stained ashtrays. Bottles of booze—some full, but most empty—scattered across every surface like someone called last call and no one listened.
“You’ve been here before?” she asks, her voice low, sharp with curiosity as her eyes drag across the chaos.
“Once,” I mutter. “Years ago. Different crowd back then.”
She gives me a look. “Let me guess. Less glitchy tits, more bloody knuckles?”
“Something like that.”
We keep moving through the mess, past sagging couches with torn leather, through light beams that cut the dust into shifting diamonds.
And beneath it all, the music pulses on an endless loop.
Like it doesn’t know how to stop. Like it refuses.
Like the building itself is still waiting for someone to finish the party.
We pass a table still sticky with someone’s drink or blood. Could be either. There’s a booth with torn leather and old graffiti etched into the wall behind it.
WE FUCKED HERE.
Sin snorts, brushing her fingertips across the faded lettering. “Romantic.”
“Wait ‘til you see the bathroom.”
She shoots me a look over her shoulder. “You say that like it’s a selling point.”
“It was, back in the day.” I shrug, flicking ash off the end of my cigarette. “Drugs, dancers, broken noses. Lotta bad decisions got made in this place.”
“You speaking from experience or observation?”
“Both.” I grin around the smoke, then tilt my head toward the hallway past the stage. “Back room’s that way. Used to be lockers. Might be something clean back there if you’re tired of walking around with brain matter on your skirt.”
She raises an eyebrow, arms crossing over her chest. “And you know this because…?”
“I used to work here.”
She stops walking. “Bullshit.”
“Nope. I used to work the door.”
“Riot fucking Carter worked security at a strip club.”
“Only job I could land back then where hurting people was part of the description,” I say flatly. “No fake smiles. No bullshit. Just bounce assholes, crack skulls, and mop up the blood after.”
She gives a slow, mock-impressed nod. “Adorable. A real Hallmark story. You getting misty-eyed on me?”
“Only if I see you looking like this for another five minutes,” I mutter, flicking my cigarette to the floor and grinding it under my boot.
She laughs and flips me off with both hands before heading toward the hallway.
I watch her go, hips swinging despite the exhaustion, braid hanging loose, blood crusted on her tank and dirt smudged across her cheek like warpaint. She doesn’t slow down. Not even after everything. Not even when she should, and yeah, she’s a fucking problem.
She’s my problem, and I’ll burn every goddamn district left standing if someone tries to take her from me.
I drop into one of the busted old booths, using my forearm to swipe the trash off the table—empty bottles, glitter-stuck flyers, a heel missing its pair.
The surface’s still sticky with whatever the last party left behind.
There’s a pole mounted dead center, rising from the table like it’s daring someone to remember how to move.
I lean back, arm stretched along the torn leather and light another cigarette, inhaling deep. The bass thumps beneath my boots, low and steady, looping the same haunted, glitched-out track over and over, like the club itself forgot time was supposed to move forward.
She steps out of the hallway like a fucking problem I asked for and still wasn’t ready to solve.
The lights hit her first, neon bouncing off every glittering inch of skin, every sharp pink strap hugging her body like sin incarnate.
The top’s barely there. Shimmering, triangle-cut with gold studs lining the edges, the kind of fabric that clings when it’s supposed to tease.
Her pierced nipple glints every time she shifts, just enough to make my jaw lock.
And the bottom?
Fuck me.
Pink straps cut high on her hips, crisscrossing around her waist and thighs like a blueprint for obsession.
That glittery little scrap between her legs might as well be a target.
There’s silver shimmer in every curve, every shadow.
The way she walks in those clear platform heels—slow, intentional, one step at a time—makes my cock ache and my fists clench.
I kiss my teeth and shake my head, breath caught halfway between a groan and a growl.
She knows exactly what she’s doing, and fuck, if it doesn’t make me harder.
She heads straight for the pole in the middle of my booth like it’s hers now. Grips it. Owns it. Starts to climb—grinding, spinning, hips rolling like a goddamn goddess with blood on her tongue and me on her mind.
No words.
Just that look.
That smirk.
That promise in her eyes that tonight, I’ll be ruined.
And I can’t fucking wait.
I kiss my teeth and shake my head with a dark smirk. “You tryna kill me, Little Stray?”
She twirls once, slowly. “Depends. That a complaint?”
“More like a fucking warning.”
She walks right up to the pole in front of my table and curls a hand around it like she owns the damn place. Like she owns me.
“Funny,” she says, eyes flashing. “You brought me to a strip club, Reaper. You didn’t think I’d put on a show?”
My hand drops to my thigh, fingers curling slow around the ache in my jeans. “I thought you’d try. I didn’t think I’d be two seconds from losing my mind.”
She leans into the pole, dragging one heel up her leg, slow as sin. “What can I say? I like making you suffer.”
I groan under my breath. “You like making me hard.”
She shrugs, playful and smug. “Same thing.”
I palm myself once shamelessly. “You gonna fix that, or just keep teasing me?”
Her grin turns wicked. “Patience, Reaper. Gotta earn it.”