Chapter 4
One Party, One Bad Idea
Violet
Saying yes should’ve felt like the moment where everything tilts, and you realize you can’t go back, but it came out easier than a sigh. Just… yes. Like, I didn’t understand what I was agreeing to. Like I wasn’t fully awake when I said it.
But I was. God, I was.
Making drugs for a room full of strangers—rich ones, the kind who can get away with anything and destroy you without blinking—shouldn’t have been something I agreed to with barely a pause.
One wrong move and I’d be in way over my head.
This isn’t some movie where the “one illegal favor” turns into a quirky montage, and everyone laughs about it later.
This is my actual life; my actual face on the line, and I don’t have the kind of money that fixes things when they blow up.
And then Cami, in true Cami fashion, waits until after I say yes to let it slip she usually buys her party drugs from the Crimson Order.
The Crimson fucking Order. The same people whispered about in back rooms. The people whose money touches everything in the city like fingerprints you’re not supposed to see. And I’m stepping onto their turf with something they don’t own.
I tried explaining that to her—attempted getting the words out that this wasn’t a cute, rebellious little hustle, and that this is the kind of thing people vanish over—but she just waved her hand and said something like, “As long as I keep buying the usual from them, one little tab won’t matter.”
Which is… objectively insane. But she believed it, and now I’m here, giving up my only day off from the clinic, ferrying into the city with a backpack full of guilt and caffeine.
The town car drops me at the warehouse, and I swear the place looks different today.
Or maybe it’s me. Maybe everything inside me is louder, harder, and more cautious now that I’ve actually committed.
The driver hands me the keys like he did last time, and he doesn’t look surprised to see me again. That somehow makes it worse.
I stand outside the metal door for a breath.
Not long—I don’t let myself think enough to start panicking—just long enough to acknowledge the shift.
The door groans when I push it open, and the sound scrapes something in my chest. I don’t linger in the front where all of Cami’s bizarre luxury clutter is stationed like a museum no one visits anymore.
I walk straight back to the thing I’ve been trying not to think about since the moment I told Ella she’d get to go to Langport.
The lab hums under the fluorescent lights, cold, sharp, and familiar in a way that almost hurts. I wash my hands until the water turns too hot, and my skin starts to sting, then I do it again. Fear makes me feel dirty in a way soap can’t fix.
Once I start laying everything out, muscle memory takes over. The precision. The heat control. The way the solution shifts colors right at the edge of perfection.
I check the ratios twice. Then again. I’m terrified to mess up, not because I’ll ruin the product but because there’s no backup plan. No wiggle room. Ella’s entire future sits in glassware, waiting for me to either save it or break it beyond repair.
It feels different this time. Heavier. Like the air is thicker around me, like the building knows I’m not pretending anymore. I’m not experimenting. I’m making Zephyra for a high-class party, on someone else’s turf, knowing damn well what could happen.
But I’m doing it anyway. For Ella. God, it always comes back to her.
When the tabs finish setting, I test the edge of one with my thumb—still warm, smooth, and clean. They’re a tiny piece of chemistry that could buy my sister a one-way ticket out of the life neither of us chose. Or it could take everything from me.
Probably both.
I text Cami when the last batch cools, watching the shimmer settle through the solution like something alive.
Me: Done.
I type, fingers trembling more than I want to admit.
Me: Sealed and packed.
She replies instantly.
Cami: Driver’s coming back for the case. You don’t need to haul it across the city yourself.
Relief hits me so fast my knees feel weak.
Carrying this thing through Manhattan would’ve made me look like a nervous drug mule—because I would be one.
I still need to break down the lab—wipe surfaces, log the batch, and make sure nothing traceable stays behind.
The warehouse smells like ethanol, steel, and ozone, while my head buzzes from chemistry and adrenaline.
Fifteen minutes later, the town car arrives. Same driver. Same unblinking professionalism.
He doesn’t speak, just lifts the case out of my hands with the careful confidence of someone who’d transported far worse. He clicks it into the trunk like it’s a violin instead of a felony.
“It will be delivered to Ms. Devereaux,” he says, then pauses. “I’ll return for you when you’re ready.”
Not if. When.
The trunk closes with a soft, final click, and just like that—my drug, my creation, my biggest mistake, or my only way out—is gone without me.
I stand on the curb for a moment after the car pulls away, cold wind sliding down my collar. I’m not going home. There isn’t time. And even if there was, Jersey feels impossibly far from what waits tonight.
Cami texts again.
Cami: Come to my place. We’ll get you ready.
I glance at the warehouse, then at the garment bag slung over my shoulder. I’d brought everything—dress, heels, and makeup—fully preparing to get ready here between stainless steel tables and chemical stains.
Me: I have all my stuff here. Just come get me on the way to the party.
Cami: Absolutely not. You’re not getting ready in a warehouse like a crime goblin. You’re coming to my place. The car is on the way back.
Of course. She couldn’t resist playing fairy godmother for her chemist-turned-sin-dealer. I huff out a breath, equal parts annoyed and grateful. I stroll inside and clean the last of the lab, trying to erase myself from the room, knowing the car would return soon.
The elevator glides so quietly it feels like it’s floating, while my stomach tightens, full of things I don’t want to name yet.
Zephyra. The Order. The money I shouldn’t be taking, but can’t afford not to.
Ella’s acceptance letter burning a hole through my skull.
My hands smell faintly like ethanol, no matter how hard I scrub them.
Cami stands beside me like she owns the whole damn building. She was born on marble floors and raised on champagne bubbles.
Her arm hooks through mine, light and warm. “Breathe, Vi,” she murmurs, checking her reflection in the elevator’s mirrored walls. “You’re fine.”
I’m not fine.
Cami squeezes my hand once. “Showtime.”
The doors slide open, and I swear the temperature changes. Warm, sultry air rolls in like it’s alive, like the whole penthouse is breathing in my face. Music thrums through the floor—slow and deep; the kind that sinks into your bones and tells your body to sway before you even think about it.
I step out before I’m ready. Too late to back out now.
The penthouse is exactly what Cami promised—expensive and over-the-top.
The kind of place you only see in magazines when you’re pretending you didn’t check the price tag first. Gold everywhere.
Velvet cushions big enough to drown in. A chandelier that probably costs more than everything I own combined.
But that’s not what makes my stomach flip.
It’s the way the room is already coming apart at the seams.
People aren’t mingling. They’re touching. Not coy, drunk flirting. Not party-cute kissy faces for Instagram. No. This is raw. This is need.
A man has a woman pinned to the wall near the bar, his hand shoved under her dress like he’s starving for the heat between her thighs. She arches into him, her mouth open as a helpless sound slips out even though half the room can hear her.
Two women press together near the balcony door, fingers hooking in each other’s hair as their lips slide across each other’s throats like they’re worshipping instead of kissing.
In the middle of the room, there is a couple on the chaise. God.
A woman lies across it, her back arching over the plush cushion while her dress rises high enough that there’s no mystery left.
The man with her is on his knees between her legs, one hand gripping the inside of her thigh, and the other teasing slow, steady circles over her bare, slick center like he’s coaxing every sound out of her one by one.
She’s trembling, panting, her heels digging into his shoulders as if she can’t decide whether to pull him closer or push him down harder.
He kisses a path up her stomach, dragging his mouth along her skin, and she cries out—sharp and shaking—her whole body tightening like something inside her just snapped.
My breath catches.
Heat rolls low and heavy through me, pooling between my thighs so suddenly I shift my weight to hide it. It’s embarrassing how fast it hits me, how sharp the ache is, and how watching them feels like I’m being touched through someone else’s hands.
Zephyra moves like a pulse in the air, a frequency you feel before you breathe, and I know every twitch of it—every ripple and every tremor. It’s my formula. My chemistry. My fault.
I shouldn’t watch. But I can’t stop.
Cami breath warms my ear. “Told you,” she purrs. “Your little science project is making them feral.”
I swallow hard. “Yeah,” I whisper. “I see that.”
She pats my hip, already slipping into the crowd while glitter catches the light like she was born in it.
And suddenly I’m alone.
Alone in a room full of bodies losing themselves. Behind the mask, I’m grateful for now more than ever.
I tug at the lace edge, trying to hide the way my face betrays me. I can feel the flush crawling down my neck. My pulse feels too loud. My hands won’t stay still.
And then I feel it—that unmistakable weight of being watched.
My eyes snap up, scanning the room until they land on him.
Standing near the glass doors that open to the balcony, half in shadow like it belongs to him. Tall. Still. Composed in a way no one else in here is. Dark hair swept back. Sharp features. A suit that fits him like it was sewn onto him.
And his eyes— his eyes are locked on me.
Heat shoots straight through me, embarrassing and instant. My hand instinctively runs down my dress. It feels like he’s touching me without moving, like he’s peeling back the mask, the dress, and the skin beneath it, looking at something bare.
I can’t breathe.
He doesn’t look away. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t pretend he was staring by accident.
There’s a slow pull at the corner of his mouth—a smirk, but not a friendly one. More like he already knows what I look like when I come apart.
My heart stutters. I stand frozen, caught in something that feels like gravity and danger, while being undressed in front of a stranger who looks like sin carved into a man.
Irritation hits me fast—sharp and hot. It’s a shield I throw so I don’t have to admit what’s actually happening in my body. Of course, he’s stupidly handsome. Of course, he knows it. Of course, he stands like the universe personally tailored him to ruin someone’s life.
I want to roll my eyes or throw my champagne at his face… or climb him like a tree.
Hard to tell which, honestly.
My pulse does something humiliating, while my skin feels too tight for my bones, and I hate he can probably see all of it.
He doesn’t look away. He doesn’t even pretend to. He just watches me—slow and assessing.
I should look away. God, I should.But I don’t. I can’t, and somehow that pisses me off even more.