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“And I’m supposed to take your word for that?”
“I don’t care what you believe. I care whether you survive long enough to become difficult about it tomorrow.”
Her eyes flashed. “No man gets to decide my life because he thinks I’m in danger.”
“I’m not deciding your life.”
“You’re telling me I have to leave with you.”
“That I am.”
“That sounds like deciding to me,” she countered.
“It sounds like keeping you alive.”
“I never agreed to any of this,” she argued, her voice rising slightly.
I stood up, and her body tensed immediately, but I moved past her and picked up the robe she’d cast aside.
“Put this on.”
“Now you care about modesty?”
“Just put it on, Alessia.”
Beyond the glass, movement broke across the VIP floor. A man near the railing shoved another guest hard enough to send him into a table. Bottles crashed. Someone shouted. The second man swung back with the exaggerated fury of someone performing violence rather than feeling it.
It was a staged fight.
The nearest bouncer moved toward them. The taller man turned toward the service corridor. The man at the elevators reached inside his coat. I caught Alessia’s wrist before she could look around the curtain.
“Stay beside me.”
“Take your hand off—”
The first scream came from the main floor. Someone had drawn a weapon too early. I touched the small controller beneath my cuff, and Nocturne went black.
The amber lights died. The music stopped mid-beat. For half a second, the entire club fell into complete darkness before the red emergency strips along the floor activated, turning every corridor into a narrow river of blood-colored light. Guests shouted. One of the dancers screamed. Glass shattered somewhere below.
My security team moved, comfortable in the darkness. The attackers faltered. They hadn’t trained as my men had.
“Theo, seal the VIP elevators,” I said into the microphone beneath my collar. “Marquez, move the dancers into the green room and lock it. Hold the main exits. No one fires into the crowd unless fired upon.”
Alessia tried to pull her wrist free. “You have an earpiece?”
“Move.”
“What’s happening?”
“Your father’s enemies are attempting to remove you from the premises.”
“That sounds very dramatic.”
A suppressed shot cracked beyond the curtain. The bullet punched through the smoked-glass panel two feet to our left, sending a spray of dark fragments across the carpet.
Alessia froze.
“Dramatic enough for you now?” I spat.
