Wrong Bar, Right Monster

CHAPTER 2

Sera’s POV

I didn't sit.

The bass still throbbed through the floor, vibrating up through my aching heels and into the locked muscles of my calves. Somewhere behind me, a glass was set down on wood, a small, careful sound, like even the act of drinking required permission now.

"I'm not a member," I said. "I'm not a rival. I'm a woman whose phone died after a job interview. I don't care about your patches or your faces or your club. I care about getting home."

Silence. The bearded man exchanged a glance with the bartender. Neither of them breathed.

He studied me. Not the way the others had, not with hunger or amusement or hostility. He studied me the way you'd study a chess piece that had appeared on the board uninvited.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"What's yours?"

Someone sucked air through their teeth. The bearded man actually closed his eyes, like he was bracing for impact.

But the man in front of me, the president, the one who made a room full of dangerous men go silent, did something I hadn't expected. He tilted his head. Just slightly. And something moved through those black eyes that was almost, almost warm.

"Everyone in this room would give me their name if I asked," he said.

"Everyone in this room chose to be here."

He took a step closer. Then another. The distance between us shrank from six feet to three, and I felt every inch of it collapse. This close, I could see the scar that bisected his left eyebrow. The tattoo creeping above his collar was a serpent, coiled and striking, its fangs inked against the tendon of his neck.

"Sera," I said. I didn't know why. The name left my mouth before my brain approved it. "Sera Voss."

He processed this. "Sera," he repeated, low and slow, like he was learning the weight of it on his tongue.

My stomach dropped.

"Dominic," he said. Nothing else. No last name.

A phone rang somewhere behind the bar. The bartender answered it in a murmur. After a moment, she looked up.

"Prez. It's Viper. He says they're at the docks."

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. I watched the shift happen in real time, Dominic's expression, already carved from granite, went utterly blank. Not angry. Not tense. Empty. Like he'd flipped a switch and the human part of him had stepped out.

"Gauge," he said, not looking away from me. "Take six. Tell Viper I want them breathing when I get there."

The bearded man, Gauge, was already moving. He pointed at men, they stood, and within thirty seconds, half the room had emptied through the back hallway. Boots and engines swelling, then fading into the night.

My window. Fewer bodies. The door right behind me. And the man in front of me distracted by whatever crisis waited at those docks.

I took a step backward.

His eyes snapped to me. "I said I'd decide when you leave."

"You're busy. I'm solving the problem for you."

"You're not a problem." He closed the distance I'd created, one step, fluid, predatory. "You're a complication. Those are different."

"I don't want to be either."

"Too late."

He was close enough now that I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze. Close enough that I could feel heat radiating off his body. Close enough that I could see the flecks of amber buried deep in those black irises, hidden, like everything else about him.

"Here's what happens," he said. His voice dropped to something meant only for me. "You walked into the wrong room on the wrong night. That means you've seen things that certain people would find very interesting. I can't let that become a problem."

"I told you, I don't care about your..."

"I know." He cut me off without raising his voice. "I believe you. But what you care about doesn't control what they'll do."

The way he said they'll sent ice down my spine. He wasn't talking about the men in this room.

"So what?" I whispered. "You're going to keep me here?"

Something moved behind his eyes, a calculation, a war, a decision being fought and won and lost.

Then he stepped back.

"Go," he said.

I blinked.

"Go," he repeated. "Walk out that door. Go home. Forget this bar exists. Forget my name. Forget every face you saw."

I didn't wait for him to change his mind. I turned, pushed through the steel door, and hit the cold night air like a swimmer breaking the surface. The wind found the sweat on my neck instantly, turning it to ice. My heels cracked against pavement, loud, too loud, and I walked fast enough that the distance between me and that red neon sign grew with every breath.

I was half a block away when my phone, dead, definitely dead, I'd checked it twice, lit up in my hand.

One notification. Unknown number. Four words.

Sleep well, Sera Voss.