Page 129 of Lovely Venom

“Come here.”

I resist the idea internally, but my body doesn’t get the memo. At least, not until he leads me to the sofa and pulls me onto his lap.

“Cristian—”

“I want to show you something.”

He retrieves his phone from his pocket, but he doesn’t unlock it right away. The hesitation on his face triggers the urge to flee, but before I can pull away, he secures one arm around my waist.

He swipes the phone open with a resigned sigh, tapping at the screen before he shows me. At first, I’m not sure what I’m looking at, but the moment the video starts to play, I recognize the hallway.

“How did you get this?” I blink up at him. “There aren’t any cameras allowed at Black Velvet.”

“Just watch.” He speeds up the time, and I see him and Javier enter the frame, pausing to talk in the hallway for a few minutes.

Javier is a fellow performer, but I can’t think of a reason Cristian would have to talk to him. As the conversation continues, Tiffany comes down the hall, locking her sights on Cristian.

She calls out to him, and he glances up at her with an irritable expression.

A painfully long moment of silence stretches between them as she waits for him to say something, and when he doesn’t, she gets annoyed.

She storms into the dressing room, and Cristian resumes his conversation with Javier for the next few minutes. When he’s done with that, he opens another video from a different angle backstage, where this time, he’s talking to my stage manager, Meredith. He fast-forwards that conversation, then goes to open another one before I stop him.

“What is this?” I ask. “Why are you talking to all these people at the club?”

When he meets my gaze, it sinks in why he was hesitant to show me.

“You put the cameras in, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“In the dressing room⁠—”

“There’s no camera in there, but there is an audio recorder.”

I sit with that for a minute, trying to process how I feel about it.

Based on the tension in Cristian’s body, he’s preparing for the worst.

“It’s for your protection,” he tells me. “I need to know who your stalker is so I can⁠—”

“I know,” I cut him off. “It’s fine.”

It doesn’t really feel fine, but honestly, I’m tired of the notes, and I want it to be over.

“Does Viktor know?” I grimace, imagining how that conversation would have played out.

“No.” Cristian shakes his head. “Nobody does.”

“Do I even want to know how you pulled that off?”

A hint of amusement flashes in his eyes, dissolving some of the tension from earlier. “Probably not.”

“So you didn’t have sex with Tiffany then?”

“No.” He settles a possessive hand on my thigh. “Why would you think I did?”

“Because she made it sound like you did.” I sigh, realizing this is just another one of her games, and I can’t believe I fell for it.