Chapter 2

Riley's POV

Dress shoes click against the wood floor. In this kind of dead silence, every step sounds like a countdown to my own death.

He's dressed in a black suit, cut close to his body, tall with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. Long silver hair tied back loosely with a red ribbon.

But the face is the real killer. Pale, but so gorgeous it's practically a weapon. Blood-red eyes glow in narrow slits, giving off an air that says I'm royalty, and none of you deserve to be alive.

[The boss is here! Owner of the Bloodred Theater, Julian Vale!]

[Run! This guy's the ceiling of power in this game!]

[Whoever catches his eye is getting torn apart!]

Julian looks down at us from above, blood-red eyes with zero warmth in them.

"First audition. We begin now."

His voice comes out low and rough, magnetic enough to make your ears ring.

"Theme: fear. Show me your deepest fear. Entertain me. Or else..."

He lifts a hand slightly, black mist curling around his fingertips.

Preston stumbles through some confession about a guilty secret. Vanessa sobs, snot and tears everywhere. Wade's already wet himself.

Me? I shove the diagnosis into my pocket and walk straight up onto the stage.

I get close enough to Julian to catch the faint, cold scent coming off him, mixed with blood.

He frowns slightly, looking at me the way you'd look at a corpse. He raises a hand, and the black mist condenses into a blade, pointed right at my throat.

"What's your fear?" he asks, cold.

My eyes drag shamelessly down that gorgeous face of his, past his Adam's apple, and lock onto the outline of his chest through his suit.

"My deepest fear is that a guy this insanely hot is standing right in front of me, and I'm gonna die without ever getting to touch his abs."

The words are barely out before I grab his tie and yank it down, my other hand landing on his stomach.

Hard.

Really damn hard.

The whole theater goes dead silent.

[?!?!?!?!]

[Am I blind or did the world just go insane?!]

[She's actually feeling up the god of death?!]

Julian freezes like he's turned to stone. The bloodlust in his eyes vanishes in an instant, replaced by pure shock and confusion. He looks down at my hand on his stomach, then back up at me like he can't believe it.

"You..."

His voice actually cracks.

I push my luck and squeeze again, twice.

"Handsome, dying's worth it after this. Come on, before you kill me, how about one kiss?"

"Watch yourself!"

Julian jerks back a step, and the black mist around him dissolves instantly.

I rub my fingers together, savoring the feeling.

Top-tier. Worth every second.

Julian stares me down, chest heaving, blood-red eyes wide with disbelief. He raises a hand like he's about to crush me with the mist, fingers trembling for a long moment, but nothing comes out.

"You... you have absolutely no shame!"

I shrug. "I'm basically dead already. What do I need shame for?"

Then I throw him a wink.

Julian sucks in a sharp breath and turns his back to me.

The system's mechanical voice comes through with a slight glitch:

[Player Riley Bennett... has passed the first audition.]

[Reason: successfully triggered... an intense emotional response from the theater's owner.]

The livestream chat explodes.

[An intense emotional response?! System, come on now!]

[Help, I just watched Julian get forced to turn his back on someone for the first time ever!]

[What breed of shameless is this woman?! She down-bad'ed her way through the audition?!]

[Taking notes. Next game I'm in, I'm groping the boss's abs too.]

Once the system finishes its announcement, Preston and the others scrape by too, technically for "displaying extreme fear."

Julian doesn't even look at us. He just drops one cold line.

"Three-hour break. Second audition starts at midnight."

Then he dissolves into black mist and disappears behind the stage.

The lights in the theater come up, just a little.

Preston wipes the cold sweat off his forehead and snaps right back into his elite-player act. He stands up and looks at me and the other two.

"Look, we got lucky making it through round one. But the auditions only get harder from here. We need to work together and find a way to survive this."