I smile faintly. “Anonymous doesn’t do bylines.”
“Tragic,” he sighs.
We finish our coffee in comfortable silence. When we part outside, he hugs me—brief, warm, sincere—and heads off toward the newsroom.
I watch him go, then turn the other way.
Marcus Delaney doesn’t know it yet.
But the walls around his life are already cracking.
And I’m done watching from the dark.
14
ROWAN
Istand across the road, swallowed by shadow, watching them arrive.
Not crowds—curated bodies. Beautiful. Dangerous. Polished. Men and women dressed like wealth and sin are twins, each wearing masks: gold, bone-white, obsidian, feathers, filigree. No two alike.
They move with the rehearsed ease of people who belong. People who know the rules because they helped write them. No stumbling, no drunken giggles, no chaos. Every step is intentional. Predatory.
This is Marcus Delaney’s preferred stomping ground. It also looks like the sort of place where the wrong kind of stories begin.
The music throbs under my skin, a heartbeat I’m not supposed to hear. My fingers tighten around nothing, knuckles whitening in the dark.
An hour passes—maybe more. Time gets strange when you’re watching a world that isn’t yours. A world you’re not supposed to witness.
Because this isn’t just a club. This is the city’s worst-kept secret—a sanctuary for the powerful and the damned.
The most exclusive underground den in the city. And tonight, it’s where my surveillance of Marcus Delaney begins.
I spend a couple of days haunting the street across from the Slay Pen. Three nights of standing in the same spot, my cold breath coiling in the air like a ghost that refuses to leave me alone.
By the fourth night, the club beats in my veins like a second pulse.
I know the rhythm now—the way the doors open and close with the precision of a heartbeat, the lull between luxury cars pulling up, the exact moment the music inside shifts from seductive to dangerous. The place glows like something holy that forgot what holiness means. Red and gold spill from the stained glass windows and ooze onto the pavement, staining my shoes like fresh blood.
I stand across the street with my coat tucked tight around me, watching the parade of beautiful predators slipping inside. It’s the same masks, wearing the same sin-soaked confidence. Their clothes shimmer under the streetlamps—silk, satin, leather. Not a single hesitation in their stride.
It’s that night—standing there in the cold, watching bodies drift in and out beneath masks that erase distinction—that something inside me finally hardens. Faces blur together. Patrons become interchangeable shadows, anonymity wrapped in velvet and privilege.
Enough.
I break from my place across the street and cross toward the entrance, heels steady on the pavement, pulse sharp and decisive. The bouncers barely glance at me at first—just another woman testing her luck.
I step closer.
And ask to be let in.
My voice is steady, my fake name ready. I get denied.
“Members only,” the bouncer deadpans, without even glancing at me twice. How does he even know whether or not I’m a member with my face concealed behind a mask?
My eyes track every woman allowed through after me. The rejection burns like a slap I wasn’t expecting.
The next night, I try again. I’m greeted with the same cold eyes at the entry.
