Page 5 of The Last Dance

I nodded. “Grabbed my wrist.”

Vadim considered this. “Why not report it?”

The answer was obvious, but I said it anyway, “Management doesn’t care, as long as he pays his tab. The other guys think I’m exaggerating.”

Vadim smiled, but it wasn’t nice. “They always do.”

Parsons had drifted closer, still outside the rope, but now within earshot. Vadim turned toward him. The motion was subtle, but it was enough.

Parsons stopped.

For a long, cold second, nobody said a word. Then Vadim asked, “You want him gone?”

The way he said it didn’t sound like a threat. It sounded like a simple menu option: would you like the fries, or would you like the salad?

I hesitated. “I just want to do my job. That’s all.”

Vadim nodded. “You’re good at it.” He didn’t say it as a compliment, more like a man confirming the authenticity of a dollar bill. “But you’re not safe here.”

I wanted to argue. I wanted to say that I was safe enough, that I knew how to take care of myself, that I’d done it for years, but the words got stuck in my throat.

Vadim looked at Parsons again, then flicked his fingers. Parsons didn’t flinch, but the two guards re-materialized at either side of him. They didn’t touch, didn’t speak. They just stood there, close enough to make the air feel smaller.

Parsons watched me the whole time.

Vadim said, “Stay here. I’ll have someone escort you home.”

I wasn’t sure if it was an order or a suggestion.

Either way, I nodded.

He stood, towering, and adjusted his cufflinks as if he was about to deliver a TED Talk and not whatever came next. He stepped off the platform, moving with a lazy, predatory calm.

The guards followed, and Parsons backed up, step by step, to the door. They all vanished, leaving me alone in the booth.

I let out a breath and tried to unclench my jaw. My pulse was still high enough to register as a federal emergency.

The bartender brought me water. “On the house,” he said, and winked.

I drank it. It tasted like tap, but it was cold and I needed something to do with my hands.

I looked down at the bar, at the little pool of water where the glass had sweat onto the lacquer. I stared at it, at the way it trembled, until I could make out my own reflection. I didn’t look scared. I looked alive.

I sat there for a while, listening to the thump of the music, the laughter, the cash register ring. I watched the bodies on stage. I thought about the price of safety. I thought about Vadim, and the way his eyes never asked questions, only answered them.

And I wondered, not for the first time, what it would feel like to be something worth protecting.

Chapter Two

~ Vadim ~

The owner’s booth was raised above the main floor by less than three feet, but it might as well have been a lighthouse for how it cut the room. The velvet rope was a joke—anyone in the club could jump it—but no one did. Not even the staff. They knew better.

I started out my evening watching the crowd the way a man watches live feeds from security cameras: everything in the periphery catalogued, nothing escaping the sweep.

The lights on stage rotated in programmed sweeps of amber and violet, washing over the bodies in calculated intervals. The effect was deliberate. It made it impossible for anyone to focus on anything for too long, unless you were above it, like me, or unless you wanted to.

I wanted to.