1
EVA
“I’m gonna kill this kid.”
I feel the bass pounding through the soles of my shoes before I even hear the song. My heels tap to the beat as I stride down the dark, smoky hallway. It’s hard not to stumble back. The music, the bright strobes, and the thrum of the crowd swamp my senses, and for a moment I almost run back the way I came.
Instead, I forge ahead, pushing through club-goers in short dresses and tacky suits, ties pulled loose or draped around their necks. It’s hard to tell one face from another in this place, much less spot the person I’m looking for.
“Where the hell is Jordan?” I ask, finally spotting Damon’s light hair, messy as always, like he rolled out of bed and didn’t bother with a mirror. He’s hunched over a drink at the bar, his eyes half-lidded.
“Well, look at you,” Damon says, his eyes raking over me in a way he wouldn’t dare if he were sober. “Is that what’s hiding under all those baggy sweatshirts?”
“Shut the fuck up before I do it for you, Damon.”
I’m out of patience tonight, and I’m not dealing with this asshole whose creepy stares I’ve put up with since he and my brother became friends in ninth grade.
“Don’t shoot the messenger.” He shrugs, sipping whatever clear liquid is in his glass. “Shouldn’t you be thanking me for getting you out of your basement lair?”
With its sharp angles, dark leather, exposed steel, and crystal chandeliers, this club is not my scene. I spend my days in a windowless basement by choice, away from other people, surrounded by my monitors and the soft hum of their towers.
“Just tell me where the fuck he is, Damon. And aren’t you a little, I don’t know, underage to be at the bar? Or in this club at all?”
My throat already hurts from yelling to be heard over the music.
His only answer is a shrug. “Like they care here as long as they have my money.”
“I’m pretty sure they’ll care if it’s all over the news that Club Empire is serving minors. You think they’ll appreciate that?” I put all the menace I can into the threat.
Damon shakes his head and drops the glass onto the marble counter with athud. “Whatever. I was going home anyway.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know where he is. Somewhere in the club. He went off with a few guys a while ago, and I haven’t seen him since.”
The club sprawls, with a busy dance floor past the bar. Never mind that there are surely private rooms I won’t be able to talk my way into, which means my idiot brother could be anywhere.
“Eva.”
I look back at my brother’s friend as he slides off the barstool. An edge of fear has replaced the bleariness in his eyes. “Be careful. Those guys looked like trouble, and you know what Jordan’s been into lately.”
I don’t know. Not exactly. But this club is rumored to have connections to the Kucherov Bratva, and that’s bad enough. They aren’t a bunch you want to cross. Kucherov.
“Fucking asshole,” I growl under my breath, but I’m not talking about the kid whose blonde head I see squeezing through the crowd to the exit, the guy I’m here to drag out of trouble. I couldn’t count on my fingers how many times I’ve had to save his ass.
Someone screams as the music changes, though it’s hard to hear the melody over the pounding club beat. Then more screams join the first, and the crowd, which pushed me one way, surges back like a riptide, pulling me with it. I’m too small to resist it, so all I can do is cover my head and try to stay on my feet so I don’t get trampled.
The crowd clears just in time for me to see a big man in a cheap suit lower his head and barrel into a tall kid with dark hair standing in the middle of the vacated dance floor.
“Jordan!”
The scream leaves my throat before I’m even aware of the impulse to yell my brother’s name. And then I’m running, heels be damned, launching myself at the guy who has the front of my brother’s shirt in one hand and is smashing his other fist repeatedly into my brother’s face.
I’m not even aware of what I’m doing as the thrumming of adrenaline and blood in my ears drowns out the music and any sense of what’s going on around me. All I know is I’m all flailing arms and legs, pounding on whatever I can reach to get the guy to let go of Jordan.
My brother stumbles away when the guy finally lets go, blood pouring from his now-crooked nose, an enormous bruise blossoming on one cheek.
“Jordan, run!”
