There’s a fine line between dedication and full-on insanity. And tonight? I pole-vaulted over that line in heels.
Pierce Leneghan was set to appear at a private cigar lounge uptown, a place where billionaires made problems disappear with one phone call and a sip of hundred-year-old scotch.
So naturally, I bribed my way in.
Bribed again, to be clear. The first time got me a staff badge. The second earned me the name Sierra and access to tonight’s guest list. I adjusted my collar in the mirror behind the bar.
Clean white button-down. Black slacks. Hair in a tight bun. I looked like someone who served whiskey, not chased warlords.
“Keep your tray level and your mouth shut,” the floor manager warned, pressing the earpiece into my palm. “You speak only if spoken to.”
“Got it,” I said, masking my nerves with a smile. “No eye contact. No opinions. No soul.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re new?”
I shrugged. “Aren’t we all?” He didn’t press. Just nodded and walked off.
I stepped out onto the lounge floor, heart hammering like a damn bass drum. The air was thick with cigar smoke and hush-money conversations. Everything reeked of leather and danger.
Then I saw him. Pierce.
He walked in like the room belonged to him, and maybe it did. Flanked by two men in suits, he moved with that quiet, coiled energy I was starting to recognize. Controlled chaos. They headed to a corner booth draped in shadows. No one else sat near it. No one even looked.
A nearby waiter leaned toward me, voice low. “See that? Booth Nine?” I nodded subtly.
“Yeah, don’t go there. He doesn’t like people in his space.”
“He?” I asked, feigning ignorance.
The guy smirked. “You’ll know when you hear him talk.”
And I actually did. About fifteen minutes in, I was restocking glasses at a nearby table when Pierce spoke. The whole room stilled like someone cut the audio.
“I don’t want excuses,” he said calmly. “I want the delivery moved by Thursday. Clean. Quiet. No blowback.”
“Yes, sir,” one of the suited men replied immediately.
He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t need to. His tone alone could freeze water. I kept my eyes down and walked away before anyone noticed me listening.
By the time they left, my palms were slick with sweat. I waited a beat, then slipped out the back door and into my car. His SUV was already rolling away, black and silent. I followed, two blocks behind, lights off, heart racing.
We cut through the city like ghosts, ducking past late-night clubs and closed-up storefronts until the SUV finally pulled into a gated lot in the industrial district. The building was glass, sleek, and terrifying in the way expensive, unmarked buildings always are.
Pierce had just left the cigar lounge with his usual two-man shadow squad, heading somewhere deep into the industrial district.
And like a total idiot with a death wish and a crap sense of self-preservation, I was following him. Again.
“This is fine,” I muttered, gripping the wheel. “You’re doing fine. Totally casual. Not a stalker. Not bait.”
The streets got quieter the further we drove. The glitter of downtown gave way to empty alleys, shuttered warehouses, and loading docks that hadn’t seen sunlight in decades. The SUV ahead of me didn’t speed. It cruised like it knew it was being watched, and didn’t care.
Then I noticed it. A car. Two lengths behind me. No headlights. Dark windows. Just… cruising. My fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
I checked my mirror again. Still there. I turned left, so did they. I turned right, and they were still behind me.
“Okay,” I whispered, pulse kicking into high gear. “Okay, no. It’s nothing. It’s fine. Maybe they just live here. Maybe they’re a DoorDash driver. Maybe it’s-” They got closer.
I could feel it now, that pressure in my gut, heavy and wrong. The kind of feeling that says danger’s coming, but you don’t know when it’ll hit. I turned one more time. They followed again.
That’s when I stopped breathing.
“Shit,” I hissed, reaching for my phone with one hand, still watching Pierce’s SUV in the distance, but now half my attention was locked on my own tail.
I glanced up, just in time to see the car behind me suddenly swerve into a side street and disappear. Gone. Just like that.
I blinked. “Wait… what?”
Slowing for a second, I half-expected it to circle back. To reappear in my rearview like some horror movie jump scare. But nothing. The street behind me was empty. I exhaled, slow, shaky.
“Okay. Maybe it wasn’t about me,” I said aloud. “Maybe they were just lost. Or maybe I am actually going insane.”
I forced a small laugh, trying to talk myself down. “Not everyone following you is out to get you, Lyra.”
But even as I said it, my stomach twisted. Because I didn’t believe it. The way the car moved. How it stayed with me through every turn.
How it peeled off the second I noticed it? Too clean. Too fast. Too practiced.
I glanced ahead, Pierce’s SUV had turned into a gated lot up ahead. Same one I’d clocked two nights ago. No signs. Just steel, glass, and armed guards with faces like concrete.
He stepped out, with the same cold grace as always. Didn’t even look around.
And maybe he didn’t have to. Because if my gut was right, and it usually is, he already knew I was watching.
Hell, maybe he’d always known.
