He didn’t sleep that night.
He didn’t even go home.
After Aria disappeared into that car, Cole went back inside The Velvet Room, walked straight past the dancers and the polished wood bars, down into the lower wing—a place few members ever saw. It wasn’t part of the club. Not really. It was his sanctuary. His temple of control.
A locked room at the end of a private corridor.
Cold steel. Low lights. A chair bolted to the center of the floor. Shelves of implements lined with precision. And in the corner—his journal. A black leather notebook with only one name on the first page now:
Aria.
He sat for hours. Didn’t touch a damn thing. Just stared at the blank space beneath her name, the pen poised in his gloved hand.
She had let someone else touch her. That shouldn’t have mattered. The c
