Chapter 2
Ruby
My blood turns to ice.
I stare at him.
At the clipboard.
At Luke.
My throat closes.
Someone in the front row chuckles.
“Redhead,” a man murmurs, pleased.
I shake my head, tiny and frantic. “No.”
The presenter lifts the microphone. “And yes,” he adds, like he’s sharing a fun secret, “verified virgin.”
The room hums.
My body locks up.
Luke did that.
Luke told them.
Luke sold me.
The world tilts.
I yank hard against Luke’s grip, panic making me wild. “Let me go!”
Luke’s smile never slips, but his voice turns sharp. “Stop.”
Men start calling bids like they’re ordering drinks.
My breath comes in broken pieces.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t do this.
I twist again, trying to tear free, but Luke drags me closer, fingers biting into my waist hard enough to bruise.
“Be good,” he hisses. “Don’t embarrass me.”
Embarrass him.
Like I’m the problem.
A sob claws up my throat.
I look around the room, desperate, hunting for anything. A crack in the walls. A face that looks human. A way out.
That’s when I see him.
Halfway back, shadowed in a private booth, like the dark made space for him on purpose.
Big. Broad. Still.
Dark hair, slightly out of place. A short beard carving his jaw into something harder. Tattoos winding up one forearm, ink over muscle, the kind of art a man like that earns. His shirt sits open at the collar, just enough to show the pale slash of a scar near his shoulder.
He doesn’t lean forward with the others.
He doesn’t laugh.
He sits there like violence on a leash.
Then his eyes lift.
And find me.
Deep brown. Heavy. Steady.
The room narrows to the space between us. The lights, the voices, Luke’s hand on my waist, all of it blurring at the edges.
Because those eyes feel like being seen.
Not as a body.
As me.
My pulse stutters so hard it hurts.
For one stupid, desperate heartbeat, my mind reaches for the stories I sell every day. The ones where the heroine is trapped and the man who finds her is all danger and promise.
He looks like that man.
Like the kind of hero who would step out of the pages and tear this nightmare apart with his bare hands.
Then the bidding climbs.
A number cuts through the air.
Another.
Higher. Faster.
My name becomes a prize.
My virginity becomes currency.
The fragile hope inside me twists sharp, because he’s here too. In this room. In this place. One more man with enough money and power to sit in shadow and watch.
Then, when the presenter calls for the next bid, the man in the booth lifts his hand.
My breath catches.
Of course he does.
Of course the man who looks like a fantasy is still a man in a room like this.
The presenter’s smile widens. “Yes,” he says, pleased. “Sir?”
The man says one number.
Quietly.
No show. No effort.
The words drop cold and certain, slicing clean through the room.
Silence crashes down.
For a second, nobody moves.
Nobody laughs.
Nobody breathes.
My skin tightens, my vision tunneling, because the number he just named changes everything. It kills the other bids where they stand.
And I’m left staring at him, heart hammering, caught between terror and that impossible pull.
Because he isn’t looking at me like something he just bought.
He’s looking at me like something he came for.
The presenter blinks, then grins. “Well,” he says, delighted. “We have a winner.”
A few men curse under their breath.
Beside me, Luke goes rigid. His grip loosens for half a second, shock flashing across his face.
“What the hell? Why would anyone pay that much?” he mutters.
The man stands.
He’s even bigger on his feet. Built like someone who doesn’t just know violence, but trusts it.
He walks toward the stage without hurry.
My heart hammers harder.
The presenter taps his clipboard. “Payment first,” he says cheerfully. “Then the merchandise is yours.”
Merchandise.
I flinch like I’ve been struck.
The man reaches into his pocket.
The presenter’s smile widens, already tasting the money.
Then the man pulls out a gun.
For one frozen second, the room forgets how to breathe.
He lifts the barrel and fires into the ceiling.
The crack is brutal.
Plaster and dust rain down. Someone screams. Chairs scrape. Glass shatters.
The whole room jolts awake.
At the same time, four other men rise from different parts of the theater like they’ve been waiting for that exact signal. Guns appear in their hands with terrifying ease.
More shots crack overhead, and the lights flicker as something sparks above us.
The room erupts.
One of the men fires into the spotlight rig. Glass explodes. The stage drops into a strobe of broken light and shadow. Screams get louder. Bodies surge in every direction.
Another man steps into the aisle like a wall, weapon up, and the nearest security guard stops so fast it’s almost comic.
“Back,” he barks, voice hard enough to cut through the chaos.
The guard hesitates.
That hesitation is all it takes.
Luke jerks me backward on instinct, but the man from the booth is already moving.
He reaches us in two strides.
His hand closes around my wrist, firm and hot.
“Move.”
I stare at him, mind blank.
He yanks once, sharp.
My feet obey before my brain does.
Luke lunges, rage twisting his face. “You don’t touch her!”
The stranger pivots and slams a punch into Luke’s face.
Luke crashes into the wall, stunned.
The gun comes up, steady and merciless.
“Stay there,” the stranger growls. “Or you die.”
Luke goes white.
For the first time all night, he looks afraid.
My breath catches on something jagged.
The stranger tightens his hold on me and drags me toward the side door.
My legs barely work.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“You can,” he says, rough and hard. “Now.”
Behind us, his men fan out with practiced precision.
Guns raised, bodies set like a wall.
The stranger doesn’t look back.
He doesn’t need to. He trusts them.
Like they’ve done this before.
He pulls me through a side door and into a back hallway that smells like smoke and cleaning chemicals.
Footsteps thunder behind us.
Someone shouts Luke’s name.
Someone shouts mine.
My lungs burn.
A door slams. Then another.
Security voices bark orders. Radios crackle.
Then a gunshot sounds behind us, closer than I want to think about.
The man dragging me forward never breaks stride.
“Listen to me,” he says, low and brutal. “Don’t stop. Don’t scream. Don’t fight me. You do exactly what I say.”
My throat tightens. “Who are you?”
“Later,” he snaps. “Run.”
We burst into the cold night behind the club.
The air slaps my face.
A motorcycle waits in the alley, black and sleek, angled like it’s ready to fly.
The sight of it should terrify me.
Instead, something hot and dizzy unfurls low in my stomach.
Because of course a man like him would have a bike.
Because of course he looks like every dangerous fantasy I was too smart to believe in.
He swings onto it like muscle memory and shoves a helmet at me.
“Get on.”
My hands shake so hard the helmet knocks against my teeth as I drag it on.
“Now,” he growls.
I scramble onto the bike behind him, arms locking around his waist because I have nowhere else to hold. My cheek brushes the hard line of his back for one stolen second, and heat flashes through me so sharply it feels like a betrayal.
He fires up the engine.
The roar devours the night.
The bike launches forward. The alley smears into shadow. Velvet Reign falls behind us like a nightmare burning out in reverse.
I cling to him, breath ripping in and out of me, my mind stuck on one impossible truth.
Luke didn’t take me to a club for a date.
Luke took me to sell me.
And somehow I ended up escaping with the most dangerous man in the room.