OWNED BY THE DON: 100 Filthy Debts

Chapter 1b: Blood on the pole

Ava's POV

~

The Monarch Suite was at the back of Eclipse's upper floor, behind a door that required a keycard and Tony's personal escort. Yes, that man knew better than to let anyone roam around and compromise his business.

I'd been in it once before, for a bachelor party that had tipped well and kept their hands mostly to themselves.

It was a different category of room — black leather and low amber light, a private stage with a single pole, a bar along one wall, and the kind of quiet that felt expensive.

Tonight the suite held three men.

Immediately I stepped in, i glanced around to survey my environment. If I'd learnt anything since I started taking responsibility for myself, it was that observing my environment will always help me gain more advantage in a situation instead of being clueless and minding my business.

Two of them I didn't recognize — large and still in the way of men who were paid to be large and still, dark suits, eyes that moved constantly around the room. The third sat in the chair at the center with the particular stillness of someone who had never needed to be paid for it.

I noticed him the way you notice the weather changing. At least from his side view, someone with two functioning eyes could tell that he was handsome. In a cold, rugged way but yes. You get me.

He was looking at his phone when I walked in, one ankle crossed over his knee, jacket open to a white dress shirt. He had dark horse hair and a jaw that looked like it had been cut from something harder than ordinary bone.

He would probably be in his thirties, maybe mid. Definitely Italian — there was something in the architecture of his face, something in the rings on his fingers, that suggested old money and older blood.

And the authority, he had that aura that silenced rooms without even uttering a word.

But f**k, he was handsome. In a way that makes your breath hitch and steps falter.

He didn't look up when I entered, though a part of me felt like screaming at him to do so.

That was its own kind of power move, and I recognized it.

I introduced myself the way Tony had trained us, "Hello, I'm Ava, your dancer and I'll be taking care of you tonight", and then moved to the small stage and let the music find me.

This was the part I was good at.

Not because I loved it, not because some trauma had led me here the way people always assumed, but because my body understood performance. I'd done ballet for ten years as a kid, contemporary dance through high school. I knew how to move like I meant it.

I was three songs in when the door opened again and my eyes moved to the entrance to observe what was now happening, even as I was still immersed in the dance.

There were now two more men, having a quiet conversation near the bar. The seated, handsome man finally put his phone away.

And then something shifted in the room — some atmospheric change, the way a room changes when a window breaks — and one of the men near the bar made a sound that wasn't a word and the other one raised something and the world came apart in three seconds of violence so absolute and so ugly that my body responded before my brain did.

A piercing sound swooshed through the room, the sound cold in a way that seemed to pierce into my heart.

The gun was silenced but not silent. In a second, the man dropped with a thud.

A chill raced through me, my heart pounding so loud I could hear the sound through my ears. But I couldn't scream, there was no f*****g chance to be a diva. So my sixth sense, which had automatically recognized the danger, took over and I immediately huddled over to the other side of the room, far away from them.

The other man spoke in rapid Italian, and the seated, handsome man —that description doesn't matter right now though— stood and turned, and I was already pressed against the far wall with both hands over my mouth.

Somehow though, his eyes — ice-blue, the kind of blue that doesn't belong in a human face — found mine across the room.

The world stopped.

He looked at me the way you look at a problem you haven't decided how to solve yet.

I ran.

"Go go go!" I whisper yelled to myself, my legs feeling like jelly, my breath coming out in frantic pants as I made my way through.

I don't remember deciding to run.

But I definitely remember the door, the hallway, the back stairwell, my heels in my hand because heels are useless when you're running for your life. I remember the cold air of the alley hitting my face like a slap, the way the city noise roared back in after the terrible quiet of that room.

It was a good thing I was swearing something flexible, because it would be a hassle if I hadn't been dancing tonight and was wearing something longer or more complicated.

The entrance was close, and freedom was near. I should be there soon.

I made it through... maybe forty feet.

But stopped abruptly when two men stepped out of the shadows.

Because the word 'stop' wasn't a request at this moment, and my body mainly understood the situation even if my mind was still three steps behind.

I was out of runway.

Fuck me sideways!