Wrong Bar, Right Monster

CHAPTER 4

SERA

I almost said no.

After last night, every instinct told me to pack a bag and relocate to a different time zone. The dead phone that had somehow received a text. The man with eyes like black holes who'd known my full name before I'd left the building. I hadn't slept. I'd sat on my apartment floor with every lock engaged and a kitchen knife on the carpet beside me, watching shadows on my ceiling until dawn.

But Sera Voss didn't run. I'd been running for three years, from my mother's debts, from the creditors, from the slow-motion avalanche of a life built on someone else's lies. This job was the first solid ground I'd found.

So when the call came at seven a.m., the position was mine, start immediately, salary more than I'd made in two years; I got dressed like I was going to war.

The lobby of Caine Industries was a different universe. Marble floors reflecting morning light. A reception desk carved from black granite. The air was filtered, faintly scented with something botanical and expensive. My heels, different pair today, the blisters dressed with Band-Aids I could feel shifting with every step, clicked against the marble in a rhythm that echoed up through three stories of atrium.

A woman named Claire from HR met me at the elevator. Mid-forties, efficient smile, clipboard.

", and the executive suite is on forty-four," she was saying as we passed through a maze of glass-walled offices, "but you won't need to go up there often. Mr. Caine prefers to communicate through his COO for most divisional matters."

"Mr. Caine," I repeated. The name landed like a brick in my chest. "I don't think I've seen him. Is he..."

"Very private," Claire said, in a way that closed the topic. "Your desk is here. Your supervisor is Liam Park, he's in a meeting until ten. System login, project briefs, the usual. Any questions?"

A hundred. But I smiled and shook my head.

The onboarding packet was thick. I worked through it methodically, building my mental map. Caine Industries operated across four sectors: real estate development, logistics, private security, and, I paused, nightlife and hospitality. Bars. Clubs. Venues.

Something cold touched the base of my spine.

I pulled up the company's executive page on my monitor. Dominic Caine. CEO and sole majority shareholder.

The photograph showed a man in a charcoal suit. Clean-shaven. Hair combed with architectural precision. No visible tattoos. No scar through the eyebrow. No serpent coiling up the neck.

But the face was the same. The structure, the proportions, the way the bones sat beneath the skin, identical.

My hands were shaking. I flattened them on the desk.

Think. Think clearly.

The CEO of a multibillion-dollar corporation was the president of a biker gang. And I, stupid, desperate, blistered-feet me, had wandered into his underworld and then accepted a job in his skyworld.

My desk phone rang.

Three rings. Four. My hand moved on its own.

"Sera Voss."

"Forty-fourth floor." A woman's voice. Brisk. "Mr. Caine would like to welcome you personally. The elevator requires a key card, I've activated yours. Please come up now."

The line went dead.

I set the phone down. Looked at my reflection in the darkened monitor, pale, wide-eyed, jaw tight.

Then I picked up my key card and walked toward the elevator.