9. NIKOLAI
Chapter nine
I nside, the club throbbed with bass and blue strobes.
Fog machines spilled mist across the floor, which glowed blood-red from harsh uplighting that lined the walls.
Fake cobwebs were draped everywhere, and animatronic ghouls writhed around in the corners.
The tables were packed with men in suits, frat boys wearing plastic fangs, and hedge-fund assholes drenched in overpriced cologne.
Discreetly, I slipped into a corner booth at the very back. This would put a wall behind me and give me a full view of the stage. I reached beneath my coat, unlatched the Glock from its harness, and clicked the safety off. It stayed holstered but ready—close enough to draw blind.
A waitress in black lingerie and bat wings slinked over.
“Beluga Gold Line. Neat. Double,” I said.
She winked and vanished.
I scanned the stage. A pair of dancers spun lazily around twin poles—routine shit, all spray tan, silicone, and vacant eyes. The crowd hooted and howled like they’d never seen a pair of tits before.
Fucking animals.
A few men at a table near the stage shouted something obscene. One threw a bill at a girl’s face. She laughed and batted her eyelashes at him. Trained behavior. These performers were conditioned to always bow down to the patrons.
For a few minutes, I sat there emotionless, scanning the place and taking note of the layout, the doors, and the men running the club.
Then the lights shifted, the spotlights dimmed, and the heavy red drapes closed.
A hushed silence fell over the club, everyone eagerly anticipating what might come next.
Dramatic music swelled, and slowly, the drapes parted to an empty stage.
Purple strobes cut through the darkness, synchronized with low, rhythmic thunder as lightning flashed across the backdrop, revealing swirling, eerie storm clouds.
“Gentlemen…and monsters…” the announcer purred through the speakers, her voice velvety and ominous, like a demon’s lullaby.
“She’s your midnight sin. Your unholy queen. Bow down for…Miss Lyla Laine.”
A single bright spotlight clicked on, aimed center stage.
First came her feet—bare, perfectly arched, poised in the air.
Then her calves, sleek and flexed.
Inch by inch, more of her was exposed as her pole was lowered from the stage’s fly loft into the bright light. Her thighs parted in a wide split while she descended like a dark angel falling from heaven.
The silver pole spun slowly, revealing more of her with every second. The audience couldn’t fully see her yet.
Then she moved—an effortless shift, one hand gripping the pole, the other trailing along her body while she leaned back into the spotlight. Her chest arched, her back bowed, and her face tilted upward into full view.
The black-jeweled tiara caught the light as she spun in midair.
Her face was painted like a queen of the dead—black lipstick, eyes rimmed in darkness, and a single blood-red tear on her cheek.
Her outfit was barely a costume, just a few thin scraps of black leather that cut across her thighs and waist, and some sheer lace dripping down her back like tattered wings. Sequins traced her ribs. Blood-red crystals shimmered along the beltline of her hips.
Barefoot and powerful, she was beautiful.
She didn’t perform.
She ruled.
And the crowd? They obeyed.
My dick hardened instantly. I adjusted myself under the table and leaned forward, mesmerized.
She swung high, using nothing but the power of her legs and the strength of her core, wrapping herself around the pole and rolling down it slowly like a silk ribbon unraveling.
Her pelvis arched out. One hand extended behind her head.
The other gripped the pole as she let her body descend in a perfect drop and caught herself with the balls of her feet.
Then she climbed. Faster this time. Twisting. Arching. Inverting.
At the apex, she let go.
She flew.
The pole swung out across the crowd, gliding left to right as she flipped backward into a knee hook and let herself hang upside down, arms wide like a goddess at an altar.
The men below were groaning.
My blood burned.
After a few heartbeats, she righted herself, clenching the pole between her thighs, hair wild and chest heaving.
She ran her hand from her navel to her throat, kindling lustful fantasies within every man’s imagination.
Then she rotated into a series of aerial spins so fluid it looked like the air itself carried her.
I’d fucked dozens of women—models, dancers, spies, wives of men I hated. But it had always been cold, calculated, transactional. I’d never felt anything but friction and release.
But watching Lyla? This was something else.
It wasn’t about sex.
It was about sensuality.
About the way her body defied gravity. The way her chin tilted up like she owned every depraved eye in the room. The way she didn’t give herself away—she made the crowd beg for it. And she knew exactly what she was doing.
The tiara glinted again.
My queen.
The need to protect her and destroy anyone who even looked at her—that was new for me. Uncontrollable. Fucking savage.
I started to catalog the threats in the room. That man near the bar—the one with the fake Rolex and bloodshot eyes. The prick on the left snapped a photo with his phone. The drunk fucker pounding the stage.
My finger tapped the side of my glass.
One by one, they would all bleed.
When the music ended, she dropped into a perfect split at the bottom of the pole and rose like smoke. Her bow wasn’t submissive. It was wicked. Controlled. Erotic.
The crowd erupted. Bills flew onto the stage.
Men howled. Whistled. One screamed something obscene.
I flexed my jaw and had to swallow my rage.
“Another,” I said to the waitress, pushing my empty glass forward.
She flitted away.
Lyla had two more performances.
I had to calm the fuck down.
But I wasn’t sure I could.
The red haze didn’t fade.
Other women came and went—legs spread, breasts bouncing, glitter dusted over dead eyes. I didn’t even see them. Nothing pulled me in.
Until she stepped out again.
This time, she looked like a dream some dirty bastard might’ve had in high school detention.
She wore a short, pleated pink plaid skirt, white knee-high socks, and a buttoned-up cardigan with a candy-red heart patch stitched above her left breast. Glasses. Pigtails. Glossed lips.
Sweet. Na?ve.
Bait.
The music started—a pop remix with a wicked pulse—and she strutted across the stage with a lollipop in one hand and a shy little bounce in her step. She spun once, then kneeled at the edge of the stage in front of a man holding a whiskey glass and clamping a cigar between his teeth.
The crowd screamed for him to touch her.
And he did.
She leaned in, shimmying her tits just inches from his face. A lecherous stagehand who was standing off to the side grinned widely and gestured for the man to go for it, nodding with shameless approval.
The man reached up, his hand trembling with drunk anticipation, and grabbed Lyla’s tits over the soft pink fabric of the cardigan.
My body lunged forward, and my hands gripped the table. Rage detonated through my chest.
Then—
She laughed.
A sultry sound that made half the men choke on their drinks.
All at once, she yanked back hard. The cardigan and skirt were ripped away, left in the man’s hands as she fell backward and executed a perfect back walkover, rising to stand like a devil’s ballerina.
Underneath, she wore a hot pink bikini so tiny it could hardly be called clothing—just a few thin straps riding her hips and some barely-there cups that curved over her breasts. Her schoolgirl act had turned feral. Pure sin. Playful, provocative, devastating.
My blood pounded.
She started climbing again, wrapping those perfect legs around the silver pole and lifting into a flip so clean, so sensual, I could already feel her wrapped around me.
I wanted her like that—up high, out of reach, only mine to touch.
But more than that, I wanted her gasping my name as I slammed into her, my hands gripping her thighs, my mouth claiming that pretty pink pussy she teased every man with.
And then—
“I heard she’s the next sacrifice,” someone slurred from the table next to mine.
My full attention snapped to him.
He was a bloated prick, all sweat and gold rings, leering around like he owned the fucking place.
“Yeah,” his friend grunted. “They told me she’s getting auctioned soon. Real sweet. I’ve been saving up. They say she may go for a half-mil.”
I went still.
Every cell in my body thrummed with bloodlust.
Auctioned.
They were going to sell her.
I gripped the edge of the booth so hard the leather split beneath my fingers.
This wasn’t just stripping. This wasn’t just sleaze.
This was what I’d suspected. Delgado’s empire wasn’t run on drugs, booze, and tits. It was flesh slavery. Trafficking for high rollers, dressed up in velvet and spotlights.
Right out in the open. In fucking Manhattan.
And they wanted to sell Lyla.
My Tennessee temptation.
Mine.
My jaw locked. I forced myself to keep my breathing steady. I couldn’t break cover now.
But one wrong move from anyone in this room—
And I’d kill every last one of them.
One of the other dancers approached my booth.
She was tall, tan, covered in glitter from cheek to thigh, and wearing devil horns and a painted-on smirk. She sauntered closer, swaying her hips in the kind of rhythm that made most men drool.
I didn’t give her my attention.
Undeterred, she ran her hand along the edge of my table and leaned in close. “You look tense, baby. You want some company?”
I turned my head slowly—just enough for her to see my expression.
Cold. Blank. Dangerous.
She recoiled instantly, blinking hard. “Right. No problem.” She backed off as if I’d pulled a weapon, retreating to another table.
A couple of men laughed at the exchange.
Onstage, the show continued. One girl climbed the pole and tried to stir the room, but no one paid much attention. Not really.