Chapter 18
Chapter eighteen
FUCK NO.
She did not just give me that devilish smile.
Something inside my chest tore loose—hot, violent, immediate—and my hands clenched into fists. A red haze spread across my vision, and I dared anyone to stop me from getting to her.
I launched myself off the wall.
Blind rage burned through my veins.
MINE.
The word landed in my skull with the force of a verdict.
The moment that sleazebag actor had laid hands on Scarlett, the ground had shifted.
And when he ripped her costume off, exposing her to a theater full of drooling strangers, the plan for this night not to be a public spectacle vanished.
I had instantly devoured the sight of her fair skin under the lights. Soft. Exposed. The kind of beauty that was addictive. She didn’t hide. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t run. And when she lay back, knees spread wide, the sight of her pussy—oh God—pink and glistening beneath soft golden curls, wrecked me.
My body had no other fucking choice than to respond when I watched another woman lower her face between Scarlett’s legs and taste her—tongue sliding over her clit, mouth devouring her—while Scarlett took her turn, working her tongue into that cunt as if she owned it.
Blood roared south; my sanity evaporated. I was a man, not a saint, and the sight of her—open, defiant, performing without shame—lit something feral in me.
That body wasn’t an offering.
It was territory.
My territory.
No one else was ever touching her again.
I didn’t care what game she believed she was playing, or what lies she wore like armor. I didn’t care about the job I was sent here to do, or the leverage The Syndicate sought. All of it went up in flames the moment she looked straight at me and dared me to judge her.
I would burn the world down before I let another man lay claim to what my body already knew was mine.
She’d set me on fire in a way no woman ever had, without fucking mercy—and whatever I’d planned walking into this place died the instant her eyes locked on mine.
This was no longer a job.
This was possession.
I barreled toward the stage, shoving through anyone stupid enough not to move.
I never imagined that when we first started following Scarlett, the evening would end like this.
This club was a fucking joke—cheap whiskey and sloppy security more interested in the show than the threats in the room.
I’d walked in through the back with a pair of late-shift employees, as if I belonged there—no questions asked.
Places that bragged about discretion were always the easiest to gut.
Scarlett had been under my surveillance all day.
She’d walked out of her father’s place without him even glancing up—without a word, without acknowledging that it was her birthday.
He’d assigned two worthless security men to keep tabs on her, and she’d shaken them with a simple fake, leaving them sitting there like fools.
Hayes had assumed she would never disobey him, that he had absolute control over her.
A failure of a father in every way that mattered.
Every step closer to the stage tightened the vise in my chest. The sight of her on that table, tipping her head back and opening her mouth for that idiot playing the king to fuck her throat, burned behind my eyes, and there was one thing I knew for certain: no one else would touch her again. Not tonight. Not ever.
I was done standing in the shadows.
The second my boot hit the stage, restraint died.
I caught the King’s forearm mid-motion as he reached for the back of her head, wrenched it away, and slammed his hand flat to the table. Before he could react, I ripped the dagger out of the tabletop and drove it straight through his hand.
His flesh tore, and the steel point punched deeply into the wood beneath, pinning him there like an insect.
He shrieked like a goddamn girl.
Blood welled fast, spilling over his fingers and pooling across the polished surface. The crowd went wild, none of them understanding that this was no longer a theatrical performance.
The jester bolted.
The knights rushed me.
Sofia screamed and scrambled backward, tumbling off the table in a tangle of limbs. Scarlett didn’t move. She just stared at the knife buried through the King’s hand, eyes wide, mouth parted, shock locking her in place.
The blonde knight came at me first.
I grabbed him by the back of the neck and slammed his face down onto the table—once, twice—his body went slack, and he crumpled at my feet.
The dark-haired one swung.
I blocked without thinking, drove an uppercut hard into his diaphragm, the air exploding out of him, then followed with a left hook that shattered his nose. Blood sprayed across Scarlett’s bare skin.
The red stood out viciously against her pale flesh, streaking her breasts and stomach. Her hand flew to her mouth, a small, broken sound tearing out of her as she tried to scamper away from me.
Security flooded the aisles, shouting. Chaos rained down as everyone in the room fought to get away.
I didn’t hesitate.
I stripped off my suit jacket, wrapped it tightly around her naked body, and scooped her up against my chest. She was shaking, fingers clutching at the lapels, desperate to cover herself.
“Come on, birthday girl,” I said, already moving. “Time to go.”
She slurred angrily. “Put me down, you bastard—”
But she didn’t fight me as she had done at the church.
Her fists stayed twisted in my jacket as I plowed through the backstage, down a long hallway, and out the back door, leaving screams, blood, and broken men behind.
I burst into the alley with Scarlett locked against my chest, the rain slicking the concrete. Fireworks detonated overhead, their concussion ricocheting off the alley walls. Scanning the area, I was surprised security from the club hadn’t taken a shot at me yet.
This wasn’t the clean exit I’d planned.
Out of nowhere, a flash popped to my left. Some rat bastard with a camera lurked near the dumpsters, lens trained on us. Fuck!
Tomorrow’s headline wrote itself: Mayor’s daughter, naked, carried out of a sex club by a man in a blood-splattered shirt.
I ate up the distance, ignoring the flashes and the men now pouring out the back door.
Lach waited at the mouth of the alley. I yanked the back door open and climbed in with Scarlett still in my arms. Before I could even pull the door shut, Lach was moving.
Tires screamed over wet pavement as I slammed the door shut.
Scarlett jerked away from me, scrambling across the seat like a cornered animal. The second the locks clicked, her palm smacked the glass hard and slid down it, leaving a streak as her forehead dropped against the window.
Rain ran in rivulets down the outside, blurring the city into streaks of light and piles of old snow lingering on the edges of the street.
Her shaky hand steamed the glass from the inside.
She curled in on herself, locking her arms around her waist, defeated.
Her body trembled from the cold and fear.
I carefully wrapped my hand around her arm, wanting to tug her into my arms. “You’re safe,” I said softly. “You’re—”
“Don’t fucking touch me!” she screamed, twisting away from my hand as if it scorched her skin.
If she squeezed any closer to the door, she’d be on the other side of it. I bit back any further comment, catching Lach’s eyes in the rearview.
He winced, face tightening for a brief second before he shook his head.
Yeah, this was a fucking mess.
I huffed out a breath and leaned back, giving her the space she needed for the moment. She was freaking the fuck out—anyone would—and I wasn’t about to make it worse. I’d handle her with kid gloves for now.
“Turn up the heat,” I ordered Lach, trying to think of anything that might help her in this moment.
She shifted just enough to shove her arms through the sleeves of my jacket, wrapping it tight around herself, pulling the fabric closed.
The car was silent.
After a few minutes, Lach tapped the screen, and Sam Smith’s Unholy throbbed through the speakers, turning the inside of the SUV into a pulse. A hymn for liars and sinners. I grunted, and Lach shrugged with a smirk, turning the volume down a bit. This had already been one hell of a night.
I angled my body away from her, giving her the space she’d demanded, and still couldn’t stop studying her.
Her posture stayed rigid, every muscle held in check, as if she were bracing for a hit that never came—as if this wasn’t the first time she’d had to ride out something bad.
The music hit the word unholy again, and my jaw locked. I shoved the back of Lach’s seat, and he switched the music to some of that country shit he liked so much.
Earlier, when we started following her after she left her father’s place, I’d expected an easy tail and a simple extraction when she and her friends made their move.
Watching her with her father and reading her expressions over the last few days, I figured she’d do something out of character tonight.
But I sure as hell never imagined she’d detonate.
When the door of her friend’s house opened, the illusion of Sister Scarlett died so hard that I was stunned—it took a lot to have that effect on me.
She’d stepped out wearing a short black coat that barely covered her ass, hair down her back, and curled in fiery red waves.
I’d grown up around hair like that, and it hit something primal in me.
The image of my fingers buried in those curls, her on her knees, looking up at me with those wild green eyes, with my dick in her mouth, played behind my eyelids.
I’d expected a wholesome girl in jeans.
What I got was a fucking goddess.
Scarlett Hayes was no nun.
Not the way her father sold her to the world.
Not the way she’d been forced to sell herself, either.
The girls had slid into the Uber, and we’d followed at a distance.
West Fifty-Seven had been a madhouse. I’d slipped in just before her, while her friends distracted the bouncer at the door.
For a big man, I was good at slipping through the shadows.
When she stepped into the bar area, that little black dress nearly snapped what was left of my control.
What little fabric there was hugged every curve.
Men were drawn to her like moths—wandering hands, wicked smiles, entitlement dressed up as charm.
But I held back.
Not because I wanted to, but because a public scene was a bullet you couldn’t put back in the chamber.
I stayed in the shadows because she was a good girl, flirting enough to be polite and then disappearing when things got a little heated. I had assumed all of this was new to her.
I was wrong.
She downed shot after shot as if she’d done it a hundred times. No wobble. No giggling. She stayed sharp, enjoying herself with her chin up. She laughed and leaned into the night of fun as if her body belonged to her again for the first time in years.
I’d told myself I was observing. Learning about her. Waiting for the right moment to take her without a commotion. Nik sent over a basic dossier on her friends from what we’d pulled at the bar.
Then Sofia’s plans dragged them to, of all fucking places, the Black Ledger.
The moment the car pulled up and that discreet entrance swallowed them, disbelief hit me so hard it almost turned into laughter. This wasn’t a bar. This wasn’t a mistake.
This was a line she chose to cross.
The Ledger had its reputation: a Moretti club—consent, discretion, and rules. A place where wealthy people went to indulge in excess without consequences. But it reeked of entitlement in the same way every polished sin pit did. Rich men paid for the right to be hungry in public.
Sofia obviously thrived in it. She wore the place like a crown. That girl didn’t get swallowed by spectacle—she fed it. She wanted eyes on her. Wanted the performance. Wanted the edge.
Scarlett didn’t belong in that world.
Not because she was innocent—but because she was used to pretending. She’d learned to play a part well enough to fool anyone watching. I noticed it immediately, how she swallowed discomfort and kept going.
But this time it hadn’t been about surviving the night. It was about choosing it. And that was foreign territory for her.
The costumes had been the first evidence of Scarlett’s true nature.
The girls had come out of the dressing room in slutty little fantasies, and the theater’s attention snapped onto Scarlett.
There was something about those red curls and that fair, creamy skin that made people lean forward.
Their hunger was immediate—quiet, predatory, and worth every penny they’d paid.
Then the velvet-robed prick’s eyes had landed on her, and the night turned dark.
The song on the radio rolled into a keening ballad that threaded itself through my skull, setting off a dull ache behind my temples.
On the stage, Scarlett had done what she always did—performed.
When she refused to bow, I saw the conflict brooding beneath her skin, but she held her chin up and committed to what was to come.
Then she kept her face calm while men treated her body like a prop.
Her annoyance had been obvious to me. It wasn’t just the obvious motion when she’d squeezed her knees together, but the more subtle tells: the tightness at her mouth, the slight recoil in her shoulders, the way her eyes went flat.
But she let it happen anyway.
Not because she wanted it, but because she could endure it.
It meant she’d learned that sometimes the safest way out was to go quietly, to give in, and disappear behind a secret door in her mind.
The realization hit like a punch to the gut: this wasn’t new to her.
It didn’t make me think badly of her.
It made me violent.
Scarlett rested the side of her head against the glass, eyes half-lidded as rain traced crooked tears down the window. Her fingers picked at my jacket sleeves, then curled into the fabric, pulling it close.
She wasn’t crying, and that almost made it worse.
I’d thought I was doing a job tonight, taking leverage The Syndicate sought.
What I’d taken instead was a complication that didn’t just threaten the plan—it blew it up. A woman who could smile while the world used her. A woman who had learned to survive in ways that made my stomach turn.
And when she’d met my eyes—when she’d chosen defiance, chosen provocation—something inside me detonated.
Not romance. Not tenderness.
Claim.
Possession.
A dark, ruthless certainty that she was going to be mine to protect, mine to keep, mine to ruin the world for if I had to. And she had no idea.
Scarlett shifted again, just enough to glance at me from the corner of her eye—wary, furious, still ready to fight even with shock sitting heavy on her chest.
I held her gaze.
The radio kept playing.
The car kept moving.
And the silence between us turned thick enough to choke on.