Kate’s face softened just a little. “Brooklyn, listen to me. Club Z is… it’s a world you don’t get out of once you step into it. It eats people alive.”
My stomach knotted. “And your dad goes there?”
She gave the barest shrug, eyes flicking away. “He’s not like other men, okay? He’s… complicated. And Club Z isn’t for girls like us.”
Her words hit like a slap. Girls like us. I wanted to ask what kind of girl am I then? The one he pins to walls, strips bare, dares until I’m begging? The one who can’t breathe when he looks at me, who can’t stop wanting him even when I swear I should?
But I didn’t. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, because what the hell could I say? That her father had already dragged me into his darkness and I couldn’t find the door back out?
Kate flopped onto the bed beside me, her head hitting the pillows. “I’m serious. Promise me you’ll stay away from it. From him when he’s in that world. It changes him.”
I turned my face so she couldn’t see the truth in my eyes. Too late. I had already changed.
And the sick part? The part I hated myself for?
I wanted to know exactly what Club Z did to him.
Club Z
The black glass doors of Club Z shut behind me, and the world outside doesn’t exist anymore.
Inside, it’s red light and shadow. Leather and smoke. The air hums with bass that isn’t music so much as a heartbeat, steady, brutal. You can taste the filth in here, the hunger, the want that strips a person raw and leaves them unrecognisable.
I’ve been here a hundred times, and still it never feels like walking into a club—it’s stepping into a cage.
Masks everywhere. Women with ropes at their throats. Men with scars down their knuckles and no names worth speaking out loud. Nobody asks questions at Club Z, because answers aren’t part of the trade. Only flesh, only secrets, only currency soaked in sin.
Someone claps me on the shoulder, a voice cutting through the din. “Walker.”
I don’t even look at him. I know who it is—Rafe. He thinks we’re the same. Maybe we are. “Rafe.”
“You slumming it tonight?” he smirks, eyes tracking a girl crawling past on all fours, leash held by a man in a suit. “Didn’t think I’d see you back here.”
“Business.” The word is clipped. Final.
He laughs low. “Right. That’s what we all tell ourselves.”
I leave him with his lies and cut through the bodies, the cages, the heat. Every scent—perfume, sweat, fear—presses in until it sticks under my skin. Normally, I can sink into it. Normally, Club Z gives me exactly what I need: control, silence, oblivion.
Not tonight.
Because all I see is her.
Brooklyn, standing in the glow of red light, not here but burned into my mind anyway—her mouth defiant, her eyes lit like she’d dare me to ruin her twice. She doesn’t belong in this place, not in her ripped jeans and too-honest smile. But she’s in my head all the same, and it’s a worse punishment than anything Club Z could put me through.
Rafe circles back, drink in hand, watching me with too much interest. “You’ve got that look.”
“What look?”
“The one men get when they’ve found a new obsession.”
I grip the glass he offers but don’t drink. My jaw aches from clenching. “Stay out of my business.”
He smirks, unconvinced. “If you bring her here, she won’t survive it.”
His words hit like a blade, because that’s the problem, isn’t it? I’m not sure I want her to survive me at all.
The bass thunders low, steady as a pulse, vibrating through the floor and into my bones. Club Z doesn’t do music. It does rhythm. It controls. The kind that crawls beneath the skin and doesn’t leave until you’ve bled something for it.
