White wings hang from her shoulders, too delicate for a place like this. She looks like sin disguised as salvation. The gold wash of the lights slides over her skin.
She moves like something rehearsed, perfected, untouchable. Silk clings to her hips as they sway under the lights, lace flashing with every shift of her legs, bare skin gleaming like temptation carved into flesh. Every curve of her body dares a man to look—and promises he won’t survive the wanting. Her mouth is painted soft pink, innocence at a glance. A lie.
Then she lifts her gaze.
Green. Not just green—feral, burning, a shade carved into the inside of my fucking skull. That’s what I remember. That fire. That defiance. The same eyes that looked up at me from twisted hotel sheets in Detroit two years ago, wild even as she begged, unyielding even as she broke apart beneath me. Eyes that cut me open while they pleaded for more.
It’s her.
The woman I searched for. The one who slipped out of my bed before sunrise and branded herself into the obsessive recesses of my mind. I scoured cities chasing her, followed whispers, burned through leads until nothing was left but smoke.
And now she’s here. Onmystage. Wearing another name that I’m sure isn’t hers, moving like sin incarnate, daring me to recognize her. And I do. I’d know the shape of that mouth, the tilt of that chin, the fire in those eyes anywhere.
Lilly.
All I ever had was a taste. Her voice unraveling against my ear when she shattered. The vice of her thighs locked around me. The slick heat of a lie slipping off her tongue even as her body confessed the truth. I’ve replayed that night in a loop that I couldnever stop breaking open, hating myself for remembering every detail of how she felt beneath my hands.
And now—she’s here.
My hand tightens on the railing, brass biting into my palm as the metal creaks. I don’t blink. Can’t. She leans into the pole, arches her back with a practiced roll, hair whipping over her shoulder like a goddamn signal flare. I’ve seen a thousand women do it. But that curve of her spine?That’s her.Not a ghost. Not the half-remembered addiction I tried to scrub from my system.
She’s real.And every part of me goes still.
The room moves without me—men shifting in their seats, rising, gathering near the stage like a congregation. Cash flashes in eager hands, and I watch it happen with the hollow ache of a man who’s seconds from snapping. They throw their bills like offerings to a Goddess.
My jaw grinds until it aches, breath locked somewhere in my chest that refuses to move. She isn’t just dancing—she’s bending the room to her will. Every step, every sway, is a claim staked in my territory. She doesn’t need to speak for me to hear it. And whether she remembers or not, she carries my name in the way her body moves, in the fire still burning behind her eyes.
Two years. Two fucking years of tearing through cities, laying foundations, carving out an empire brick by bloody brick. All of it done with her ghost circling me, with the memory of a night I could never burn out of my veins. I told myself she was gone, just a woman I couldn’t chase, couldn’t catch. A lie I fed myself to keep from going insane.
But there’s something she doesn’t understand yet. The second she stepped onto that stage, my decision was made. She bound herself back to me without a word, fuck, without her permission and I will not let her go again.
The base from the speakers thrums through the floor, but it’s background noise now—just static against the chaos in my mind.
I don’t take my eyes off the stage when Lars appears at my side. I know it’s him without looking. The weight of him. Thestillness. The fact that he doesn’t speak until he’s certain I won’t snap his head off for interrupting.
“You look like you’ve seen a fucking ghost,” he says finally. “Everything good?”
I drag in a breath, trying to mask the punch to the ribs I’ve been taking ever since she stepped into the light. “Not a ghost,” I say, tilting my chin toward the stage. “She’s the girl I told you about. Detroit.”
Lars is quiet for a beat. “The one who vanished?”
I nod once, jaw clenched. “On my fucking stage.”
He leans on the railing beside me, arms crossed, following my line of sight. “You sure it’s her?”
“Positive.” My voice is steady. “Same eyes. Same mouth. She’s using a different name, but it’s her. No fucking question.”
Lars whistles under his breath. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“You want me to pull her?”
I shake my head. “No. Not yet. Let her finish. I want to see how she moves when she doesn’t know I’m watching.”
Lars glances at me. “And after?”
I shift my weight, eyes narrowing on the way she turns her back to the crowd, hips swaying like sin, completely unaware that I’m about to dismantle every lie she’s been living. “Tell the men she doesn’t leave this building without me. I want eyes on every exit, guards at all doors.”
