I led her down the aisle and out into the new day.
Bronc and Juliet stood on the gravel tarmac, faces in the sun, Alpha and Luna there to receive a new member of their pack.
I’d brought her home. Now the real work started. For both of us.
Chapter 9
Waylon Steiner
Thirty minutes after closing, I sat alone in the Eyrie’s top-floor office with a $400 bottle of bourbon sweating on the credenza and a sea of midnight black glass reflecting my kingdom. Every inch of this place had been custom: the Italian leather on the desk chair, the mahogany that looked like it was whittled out of a Rothschild’s casket, the embedded safe I’d had welded to the foundation and hidden behind a wall-sized lithograph of a dying bull. Even the lamplight was calculated—two yellow halos burning the corners into shadow, leaving just enough dark for secrets to hide.
The club’s earnings for the week loaded on my laptop, columns of green digits stacked like casino chips. I could have watched them pulse all night, each line a tiny confirmation that I’d won, again, while the world’s suckers slouched toward their cubicles with nothing to show but pay stubs and a half-hard-on for retirement. Even with the bonus Maltraz had scraped off the top for “consulting,” the take was obscene. My share alone would cover five years’ tuition at the kind of prep school that built Supreme Court justices.
I lit a cigar, not because I needed it, but because the smoke curled in the air and clung to the skin like a velvet glove. The night had been slow, but there was a residual hum in my veins—maybe the aftershock of watching Maltraz, or maybe just the satisfaction of seeing a job done right. I’d always been a sucker for good craftsmanship, even when it was evil.
Maltraz had come early. Rage delivered him through the back corridor, where the sensors were dead and the girls didn’t go. The demon was dressed in Tom Ford, black on black, hair slicked to his scalp and tied off with a braid that looked like it would cut your palm if you grabbed it. He filled the room with the heavy iron stink of his kind, even as he smiled and shook my hand like we were closing a real estate deal instead of planning a felonious future.
He didn’t bother with pleasantries. He wanted his girl.
Harper was brought in, docile and glass-eyed, still under the aftertaste of whatever shit Darlene had slipped her. She walked like a wind-up doll with a dead battery. I made her dance and then kneel at his feet. Maltraz didn’t hesitate. He wanted her to swallow that monster-sized pierced and twisted cock down her throat. And my slave slurped it until his demon moans filled the room. When he couldn’t stand another minute, he jerked her up onto his lap, impaling her on the iron rod. I’ll admit I winced to myself with a tiny bit of worry that she’d incur an injury, but hercries only made me harder. The demon king used her the way a wolf uses a kill—brutal, fast, purposeful. She made no sound after the first whimper, and the only proof it mattered at all was the way her hands curled into the velvet cushion. Maltraz grunted, finished, and licked the blood from his own hand where his claws had dug into her hips, like it was caviar. Then he wandered into the bathroom to clean up.
We wound up back here in my office to discuss business. He wanted the next shipment accelerated. Asia this time, not Europe. He’d sweeten the pot by covering customs and providing a witch for logistics. In return, he wanted “dividends” up front: first pick of the talent, plus a fifty percent cut of the net until the channel stabilized. It was extortion, but I nodded. The truth was, without his shadow, none of this worked. I was the face and the spreadsheet, but he was the engine. My hands were clean—he kept them that way, so long as I paid.
As he left, Maltraz paused at the door. He said, “The girl is wasted here. You know that, right?” And then he was gone.
I poured myself a double, let the cigar burn down to a cold inch, and replayed the scene over and over in my head. Harper’s body—pale, perfect, marked with old scars and new bruises—made me think of nothing except the opportunity cost. I could’ve sold her to any high roller in the South for ten times what she made onstage, but I kept her because she was rare. Because she made the other girls work harder, and the clients spend more. Because, somewhere deep down, I hated my father for breeding a pack that valued only brawn and violence, and I wanted to show him that you could dominate the world with nothing but leverage and a knife’s edge.
I thought of the other girls, the ones I had broken and remade, and how none of them ever lasted as long as Harper. I wondered if she even remembered her old life anymore, or if theclub had become her entire existence. I wondered if she hated me, or if she had learned to love the leash.
I told myself it didn’t matter. Not anymore. The money, the power, the connections—those were the only things that counted.
I was about to shut down the computer when the door banged open so hard the hinges groaned. Rage stumbled in, red-faced and panting, like he’d run the length of the building with a wolf on his heels.
He didn’t even bother with a preamble. “She’s gone,” he blurted, voice trembling.
I let the words hang in the air, like the smoke. “Explain.”
He swallowed, looked down at the floor. “Harper. She didn’t make it inside the truck.”
My hand tightened on the bourbon glass until I thought it would shatter. “You’re supposed to walk her out you dumb fuck.”
Rage flinched. “I did, boss. I walked her to the Escalade myself. She was behind me the whole time. I checked the rear lot before I got in. I unlocked the doors and got in. She never got in the backseat.”
He looked up, desperate for forgiveness, but all I saw was a liability.
“Part of the protocol is that you personally open her door and strap her the fuck in!”
He looked at the floor. “I understand, boss.”
I stood and set the glass down with surgical precision. “Show me,” I said.
He didn’t hesitate. He hustled out, and I followed, my body moving with a cold efficiency I hadn’t felt in years. We moved through the private corridor, past the guest suites, past the dead-eyed bouncers who watched us with the same numb indifference as always. Rage led the way to the loading dock, where the Escalade sat in the alley by the back door.
The spot was empty. The gravel showed no marks except the usual tire tracks and boot prints.
I scanned the ground, then the fence line, then the roof. “Pull the tapes,” I said. “Now.”
The security room was a frigid little box, all cinderblock and the humming blue heat of a hundred screens. The staffer on duty—a bland, balding drone with a face like a collapsed soufflé—looked up and nearly fell off his chair when Rage and I stormed in. The air stank of burnt circuits and energy drinks, a kind of electrical desperation that never left the place, no matter how many times I made them swap out the carpets.
