Chapter 4
chapter four
NOT-KADE
It’s been a week, and my life has shrunk down to two things:
Keeping a terrified eye on TikTok.
Wondering if the black-haired tarot kitten is sharpening her knives again.
I tell myself I’m only checking because I have to. Damage control. Self-preservation. Mutual blackmail insurance. But that’s bullshit, and I know it. I’ve been refreshing her profile like a junkie calling his dealer over and over. But I’m waiting for my life to implode instead of a hit of bliss.
But she hasn’t.
Willow hasn’t said one word about Saint Shade since Halloween. Not a single card-pull about who’s behind the mask.
At first, I felt relief. Like dodging a guillotine by a hair’s breadth.
But the longer her silence stretches, the heavier it feels.
Relief curdles into disappointment, and I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me, because it feels like she’s ghosted me.
Which is insane—she doesn’t even know me.
Not really. Not beyond the man in the mask and the freak that helped her clean blood off the floor.
But I can’t get the damn woman off my mind. I just keep replaying it, over and over. The smirk she wore just before her daggers slid clean through that guy’s palms. The blood. Her calm, steady hands.
You’d think watching her kill a man would be the thing to finally put me off her. The thing that would snap my unhinged obsession.
Something is wrong with me. Fundamentally wrong. Because instead of making me run, it’s gasoline on the fire.
And what does that say about me? That I watched a woman commit cold-blooded murder, and instead of reporting her, I wanted to applaud?
I scrub my palms over my face, groaning into the empty room. The silence in my penthouse gnaws at me. Even with the Strip glowing outside my windows like a damn carnival, it feels too quiet. Too sterile. Too much space for my thoughts to ricochet.
I should let it go. I should delete the app, go train, rehearse, drink, do literally anything else.
But instead, I’m back on her profile, scrolling through her videos like a man possessed. Her smirk, her laugh, the sharpness of her words when she reads the cards. She looks like sin wrapped in black velvet.
And she hasn’t posted about me in a week.
Why does that feel like punishment? It’s exactly what I asked—no, begged her to do. It was always my downfall. I’ve always craved attention. And I may be an addict, because I hate that I cut Willow’s unhinged thirst comments and curiosity. It’s left me fucking starving.
The next afternoon, I’m dangling forty feet above the stage, one wrist wrapped in a length of crimson silk, my entire body stretched in a hold that makes my shoulders burn like they’re on fire.
“Higher,” Marco calls from the ground, squinting up at me. He’s one of my longest-standing coaches—ex-gymnast, muscles like coiled springs, a stickler for details. “Your angle’s off. If you try to roll into the drop like that during the show, you’ll break your damn spine.”
“Noted,” I grunt, flexing my core and correcting my line. The silk creaks against the rigging, a sound that always spikes adrenaline straight into my blood. The only thing between me and a headfirst fall onto hardwood is a strip of fabric and grip strength I’ve spent years building.
I shift, wrap, and release, flipping upside down into the drop. Air rushes past me. The ground comes up fast. At the last possible second, the silks tighten around my calves, jerking me to a halt just inches above the stage floor.
The crew claps halfheartedly, used to me defying gravity like it’s a game. To the audience, it’ll look effortless. To me, it feels like cheating death one rehearsal at a time.
I flip upright, landing lightly and tugging the silk free from my ankles.
My body hums, muscles sharp with exertion.
This is the part the world doesn’t see when they watch my thirst-traps on TikTok or buy tickets to Saint Shade: the bruises, the burns, the constant gamble that one mistake could mean a hospital visit—or worse.
“Again,” I say, rolling my shoulders.
“Boss,” Marco fixes me with a cold glare, “maybe take a breather. You’ve run the routine four times already.”
But I wave him off. If I stop moving, I’ll start thinking about her again. The smirk. The daggers. The blood.
I climb back up the rigging, wrapping the silk around my wrist.
My palm is slick with sweat.
My arms are shot.
And my focus is slipping.
Halfway through the next stunt, I fuck up. Just for a second—just long enough to miss my grip and swing too wide. The edge of the flame prop licks my side, heat biting into skin before I yank myself out of range.
“Fuck!” the curse rips from my lips as pain sears through me. I slip again as my attention goes straight to the burn, and I barely catch myself from splattering across the stage.
“Shit!” someone yells from below.
“Down! Get him down!” Marco barks, already dragging the floor mat across the stage to catch me if I fall.
I curse again, wincing at the pain. I spin, twist, and finish the drop with a clean snap. I land, though as I try to straighten, the pain screams through me. I wince, hunching against the burn. Bianca, the former EMT turned backstage guru, darts across the stage with her kit.
I yank off my rehearsal mask, trying to wave her off. “I’m fine, I’m fine. See? Still pretty.”
“Shut it, Kade,” Bianca barks at me with a pointed look.
She pulls a white tube from her medical bag and starts dabbing at my side.
I’m ready to scream out against the burn, but whatever she’s putting on me, it doesn’t hurt.
“If we don’t deal with this now, there’s no way you’ll be ready to perform on Wednesday.
Is that what you want? A cancelled show? ”
“I don’t cancel shows, Bee,” I say, serious as the grave. “Broken bones only. The only excuse for cancellations.”
The crew groans, exasperated. Marco mutters something in Spanish that I don’t need translated to know it isn’t flattering.
It’s true. The only time I’ve ever cancelled shows is when some rigging broke, a mechanical failure, and I dropped eighteen feet, breaking my collarbone.
It fucking killed me that we’d had to cancel shows for six weeks while I healed.
A stagehand, Jessie, brings me a bottle of water and gestures at the angry red welt across my ribs.
“Saint Shade,” she says, tone dry, “you’re not fireproof.”
“Don’t tell the internet,” I shoot back, chugging the water. The burn stings.
Marco growls that rehearsal is over, and now I’m in a bad fucking mood, so I don’t argue.
I pack my shit up and head home. Not that it’s a long commute.
The walk from the theater to the parking garage takes me longer than the drive to my building one block away.
It really would be easier to walk to work, but privacy is kind of a big fucking deal to me.
So, it’s heavily tinted windows and commutes straight out of the gated parking for me.
I ride the elevator up fifty-one floors to a glass box in the sky that’s supposed to scream success. A penthouse with floor-to-ceiling windows, Strip lights flooding in like I’m living in a snow globe made of neon.
Saint Shade has been one of the most popular shows in Las Vegas for six years. The Vegas life has been good to me. It wasn’t even that much of a stretch when I bought this place two years ago, and I could buy ten more of them over now.
My place should feel like triumph. Like proof that the old me stayed dead and Saint Shade won.
Instead, it feels like a tomb.
I toss my rehearsal bag down on the leather couch—designer, custom, worth more than my first car—and it makes no sound in the cavernous silence. No voices. No laughter. Just the low hum of the air conditioning.
Floor-to-ceiling windows wrap the entire penthouse, giving me a panoramic view of the Strip’s neon glow.
Everything inside gleams—dark hardwood floors polished to a mirror sheen, white marble counters in the kitchen that look like they’ve never seen a dirty plate in their lives, stainless steel appliances with a protective sticker or two still on the sides because I barely touch them.
The living room is all sharp lines and expensive leather, black sectional couches arranged around a glass coffee table that has exactly one item on it: a deck of cards.
The décor is modern, cold, impersonal—like a catalog showroom some designer put together for a client who never moved in.
No rugs. No family photos. No knick-knacks or clutter.
The only hint of life is the faint scuff marks on the floor from where I practice acrobatic moves when I’m too restless to stay still.
Even my bedroom looks like it belongs to a stranger: king-sized bed with crisp white sheets, a nightstand with nothing on it but a lamp and a phone charger, and blackout curtains I usually close the moment I get home because the lights are so damn bright.
The whole space smells faintly of ozone and new paint, as if the walls themselves know nobody really lives here.
It’s the kind of place that screams money, success, security. But walking through it makes me feel… hollow. Like I’m still crashing on some stranger’s couch, waiting to be told it’s time to go.
Five thousand people come to see me perform five nights a week. Seven million people follow me on TikTok. My DMs are flooded every single day.
But every damn night, I take off the mask of Saint Shade, and I come home to this empty fucking place.
It’s easier to live as Saint Shade than it is to live as the man who takes the mask off at night. Because here? Here, there’s no crowd. No music. No distraction. Just me and the kind of silence that eats at your bones.
I hate it.
So, what shall I distract myself with tonight? My favorite little obsession.
I should leave it alone. Pretend I never saw what I saw. Pretend the Dagger Kitten didn’t stab a man through the hands and suffocate him without breaking a sweat.