I kissed a man to stop him from murdering someone. Yeah. That’s a real sentence I have to live with now. Sounds like something out of a trashy Netflix thriller, right? But nope. That was my actual life last night.
How can I stop replaying it? Pierce’s hand locked around the governor’s throat. That wild fire in his eyes. And then that ice-cold, totally unbothered command: “Kiss me. Now.”
And I did. I actually dammit did it. Not because I wanted to. Not because I was into the whole murdery mafia possessive mystery guy thing. But because at that moment, it was the only thing standing between Pierce and a full-blown homicide charge.
Now? My skin still burns where his lips touched mine. My brain keeps yelling to move on, but my body? Yeah, it remembers. I tried to shake it off. Tried to get my head back in the game.
Pulling out my laptop, I opened my work files, y’know, the actual reason I’m risking my entire existence at this club: exposing Governor Renshaw and his little empire of tax fraud and dirty secrets.
I scrolled through spreadsheets of shell companies and offshore accounts, but everything blurred into white noise behind three simple words: ‘She’s mine’.
It wasn’t a threat. It was a statement. Like he was casually mentioning the weather. And no one, not even Renshaw, dared question it.
I slammed the laptop shut and leaned back on my couch, dragging both hands through my hair like that would somehow reboot my brain. “God. What the actual hell am I doing?”
This was never supposed to be about him. I came here to burn Renshaw’s whole kingdom to the ground, not to get entangled with a guy who could probably make half the city disappear with a single phone call.
But here I am, writing notes I’m not supposed to write in a file I’m not supposed to have.
> Pierce Leneghan.
May 18. 12:41 a.m. Three men down. The governor nearly strangled. Situation de-escalated via physical contact: Kiss.
Yeah. I typed that. And I hated how just reading it made my stomach flip.
I was losing focus. When I got to the club that night, the music was still loud, the drinks still flowing, girls still laughing too hard at things they didn’t find funny. But the air felt like the second time a storm waited.
The dancers were quiet, the bartenders were tense as hell. The security team? Doubled. And there were some new strange guys.
Yeah, they weren’t the usual muscle-heads in tight black shirts. These ones had government energy. Suits. Earpieces. Zero smiles.
They watched like they were waiting for something to explode. In the dressing room, I sat down at my station, swiping on highlighter like war paint, while the whispers circled behind me.
“You hear what happened near Room Three?” Sasha asked a girl near her in our dressing room like it was the juiciest rumor of all time.
“Yeah! Someone got slammed so hard into the wall, it cracked! How is that even possible?”
“I heard the governor almost passed out. Right in front of everyone. Did they really get into a fight ‘cause of some of our girls? What nasty freaks.”
Yep, that was me. Awesome. I kept my head down, focused on my lashes, pretending I didn’t hear any of it. They didn’t know it was me. Yet. But the ‘mystery’ was spreading like wildfire.
Nobody had names, just stories. And that’s always the most dangerous part, when the truth starts turning into legend. Even Jasmine pulled me aside, all serious, no usual sarcasm.
“Girl, you okay?” she asked, scanning my face like she was trying to read my soul.
I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
She didn’t buy it. “Look, I don’t know what the hell happened the other night, but whatever it was? It shook the whole building. You haven’t noticed the new guys? Half of them aren’t even club staff. They don’t talk. They just watch. Like… federal agents kinda watch.”
She wasn’t wrong. The new guards were by every exit, arms crossed, eyes dead, like they’d been trained by people who don’t blink for a living. They weren’t here for Renshaw. They were here for him.
Because here’s the truth: Pierce didn’t just walk into this place, he claimed it. And now everyone else was moving like they didn’t want to piss off the man with fire in his eyes.
He wasn’t here tonight. No icy stare from the corner, no heat crawling across my skin. Just hollow absence. Yet it didn’t feel like peace.
I did my set like usual–no frills, no flirty winks. I kept my moves sharp and detached.
Ghost mode: activated.
Afterward, I sat in the back hallway out of costume, sipping warm water, trying to convince my heart to stop acting like it ran on battery acid.
“You alright?” one of the floor managers asked as he passed by.
“Just tired,” I smiled. Lie. Total lie, but believable. He nodded and kept walking. No one asked questions anymore. Not when it came to me.
And that’s when it hit me, Pierce didn’t just rattled the club, he changed it. Everyone moved like the walls had eyes and the shadows might bite. He wasn’t just another VIP with too much money.
He was something bigger. And whether I liked it or not… I wasn’t outside the fire anymore.
I was in it.
