Chapter 1

Cecilia Moretti's POV

The bass crawled up through the soles of my feet and settled somewhere in my teeth.

The Golden Cup didn't feel like a building tonight. It felt like a mouth, breathing in sweat and money and bad decisions.

Expensive cologne and cheap perfume fought each other in my throat, and I had to breathe through my mouth just to keep my head straight.

"Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for our gorgeous girls working that pole tonight—let's make it rain, St. Jude!"

Two strippers worked the pole for the night shift, their moves sharp and well-practiced.

The brunette near the front had long legs. She hooked her knees over the metal pole and bent backward slow, her hair sweeping across the floor.

Guys down in the front row went crazy. Fifty and hundred-dollar bills flew everywhere like cheap confetti, raining all over the stage.

Three bottles of crystal champagne on one tray.

My wrists ached. My back screamed.

And if one drop spilled, Danny would take it out of my pay like I had personally offended him.

VIP booths lined the east wall.

Booth seven had been occupied since nine, three guys in tailored suits sat inside. Whatever they talked about, it sure was not the dancers up on stage.

I forced myself to tune everything out.

Number one unwritten rule for surviving at Golden Cup: pretend you hear nothing, see nothing, and never hold onto anything you witness.

I set the champagne down at booth four, grabbed my tip, and pulled up that smile I had practiced a thousand times.

"Hey." A hand closed around my wrist.

My whole body went tight before my brain caught up. Forty, red-faced, tie loose—the kind of drunk who thinks his wallet makes him charming.

"You. What's wrong with your face?"

"Sir?" I kept my voice light, like he had said something funny.

"Your makeup." He squinted at me. "You look like you lost a fight with a Halloween store."

His two friends laughed.

"Was it really that bad? I spent two hours on this tonight. Two whole hours."

I leaned in slightly, dropping my voice like I was confessing something.

"Honestly? I just really wanted to look nice for the gentlemen in tonight. Guess I still have a lot to learn."

He laughed so hard he almost knocked over his glass.

"Sweetheart, it's a disaster." He pulled out his wallet, still grinning, and dropped two fifties on my tray without me asking. "But I'll give you points for effort."

"You're very kind," I said, and I was already gone.

I was good at it. I had been doing it since I was old enough to understand that the right words at the right moment could be the difference between walking away clean and not walking away at all.

I had barely stepped away from the bar when I heard Coco's distress.

Nineteen-year-old Coco still had that naive glow that life had not yet beaten out of her.

She was pinned against the far end of the bar, nowhere left to run.

A dead-drunk man had his grip clamped around her arm, the kind of drunk who turned vicious the second you said no.

Seeing panic flash across Coco's face, I moved without thinking and stepped right between them. I called out to her like we had been searching for each other.

"There you are." I said it loud enough for the drunk to hear. "They need you at booth twelve."

Coco's eyes blew wide with relief.

The drunk's hand slipped off her arm, but his focus snapped straight onto me.

He staggered closer. "Hey. Who are you?"

"Just staff," I said, trying to soothe him. "I can get you whatever drink you want."

"Cut the crap." He snagged the strap of my work apron and yanked me toward him.

The tray tilted.

Ice-cold champagne crashed over my chest, soaking clear through my shirt and streaming down my stomach.

I froze. I was soaked right in front of the whole room.

The drunk roared with laughter at my mess.

His laugh died instantly. Danny, our floor manager, set one firm hand on his shoulder.

His voice was dangerously calm, the tone he used for breaking up ugly fights. "Fun's over. Let me walk you out."

It was not a suggestion. Two security guards appeared out of nowhere and dragged the man away in less than a minute.

I leaned against the bar, two fingers pressed tight against my soaked shirt to keep it from sticking to my skin.

Danny came back to me, equal parts worn-out and genuinely spooked. "Cecilia. What on earth were you thinking?"

"I was trying to help Coco."

"Help Coco?" His gaze dropped to my dripping chest. "Look at what happened to you."

He shook his head and leaned in, lowering his voice so only I could hear.

"You little troublemaker. I still don't get why you insist on degrading yourself working here. You know what keeps me up at night? If something terrible happens to you, I'm not just in trouble."

He looked at me with that particular expression he reserved for situations he couldn't say out loud in a room like this.

I knew perfectly well what he meant. He meant Dante, my adoptive father. Names like that never got spoken out loud inside the Golden Cup.

"Nothing bad happened tonight," I said.

"Pure luck." Danny held my gaze for a second, then stepped back. "Go change. There is a spare slip dress in the second desk drawer in the back office. Once you are done, head home. You get off early tonight."

A tiny spark of relief flared inside me at the thought of leaving this chaotic club sooner. But when I pulled open the drawer, my faint good mood died right away.

It was a black satin slip dress, thin spaghetti straps held it up, and the fabric plunged low across the chest, with a loose cut that barely covered my thighs.

I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, my face hot with sharp, burning embarrassment.

I never wore anything this revealing, and I kept instinctively hunching my shoulders, trying in vain to tug the fabric higher to cover more skin.

Thankfully I still had my long puffer coat.

I pulled it on and zipped it all the way up to my collar. It covered everything that needed covering. That was good enough.

Even with the early leave, it was already past two in the morning.

I brushed snow off my scooter seat and rode toward my rental apartment on the east side.

I was deep into the stretch of empty road that ran along the edge of the old meatpacking district when something caught the front wheel of my scooter hard and the whole thing lurched sideways.

I hit the ground before I understood what had happened, my palms scraping through the snow and into the pavement underneath, the scooter clattering down across my leg.

I shoved it off and scrambled to my feet, and that was when I saw them.

Two men in dark hoods, one on each side of the road, knives out, the blades catching what little light the street had left.