Page 46 of Dark Knight

I yanked my foot away. The sharp jerk of the movement tore my ankle free from his grip. A sharp whistle sounded over the din of the crowd and the music.

Dylan ordered the bartenders to keep an eye on me to make sure that I was safe and didn't have a panic attack in the cage like last time. Unfortunately, that was exactly what was happening this time too. I couldn't get far enough away, and I was being touched against my will.

Somebody was trying to take my shoes, of all things. Or maybe they were just trying to somehow get me closer to their level since I was wearing heels. Whatever the reason, it didn't matter. All I knew was that I needed to get away from them, and I had nowhere to go.

The door to the cage swung open on my left, and I almost lashed out at the person that was there. But it was the bar manager. Her busty corset was more modern than the last time I saw her, but it was becoming clear to me that she definitely had her own style.

"Come on, sweetie. Your shift's over." Her words made no sense. She nodded at me, as though willing me to follow her lead, so I did.

I hadn't been dancing that long, but I wasn't about to turn down a chance to escape this cage and the person who kept touching me.

She escorted me to the back. Once I was through the employee door, though, she went back into the crowd, blending seamlessly with the patrons. I scurried into the locker room, pressing the door shut behind myself and leaning against it, ready to brace in case somebody tried to push their way in.

When that didn't happen, I finally breathed a sigh of relief. My heart rate came down slowly, and I stood shakily, moving away from the door toward the lockers.

The flash of red in my peripheral vision caught me off guard. When I turned toward it, which also happened to be the direction of my locker, I froze in place. At first, I didn't understand what I was seeing, and then I wished I hadn't understood, better yet I wished I’d never even seen it.

A red, viscous substance covered the front of the locker I'd been using. I wasn’t here everyday. In fact, I'd only been here once before, so no one should have known that the locker was mine…unless they knew what I'd worn into the club and used that information to figure it out.

I desperately wanted my things, wanted real clothes, but for a long time, I couldn't bring myself to touch the locker. The blood that covered it had to come from somewhere, and I didn't want to think about where.

With one shakey step, I stood in front of my locker. The tang of metal coating my nose and tongue made me gag. I hooked a finger through the handle of the locker and lifted the latch, ready to grab my stuff and flee, but that was the last thing I could bring myself to do when I saw what was inside.

I staggered backward until I smacked into the counter. Then I dropped to the floor and covered my face with my hands, knowing that I couldn't force myself to look away from the bloody heart that was hanging in my locker.

This was more than a message on a mirror, and definitely more than my things being rearranged. This was a threat, plain and simple. One that terrified me.

24

Hudson

Of course shit hits the fan at the worst possible moment. When I came back inside after making a phone call, I could see that Evie was no longer in the cage she was dancing in. I made no bones about pushing through the crowd to get to the bar.

"Where is she?" I called out to the closest bartender, not bothering to specify who I was talking about. They should all know.

"Dina took her in the back," the guy responded, barely sparing me a glance.

I nodded and made a beeline for the employee door that would take me back to the locker rooms and other employee areas. A hand grabbed me as I made my way through the crowd, and I almost punched them. I turned in time to see that it was Dina.

"Your girl's not doing good. You should take her home." For her to say that meant that Evie was in bad shape, which only made me worry even more.

I scowled, wanting to ask her what happened, but the truth was that she might have no idea. "Locker room?" I asked. I wanted to get to Evie as quickly as possible so I could shake the bad feeling that had settled in my stomach.

"Probably."

I hoped like hell she hadn't come out of there. If Dina was just on her way back, I doubted it, but I couldn't rule it out until I found Evie. I pushed through more and more people until I got to the employee areas. I didn't hesitate to knock on the locker room door before I pushed it open.

What I didn't expect to find was Evie crumpled into a ball on the floor with blood smeared over her face, shaking violently. I started to move toward her, to figure out where the blood was coming from, but the locker door that was hanging open drew my attention as well.

To say the locker she’d likely used earlier had been vandalized was putting it lightly. With a quick glance, I tried to take in as much of it as I could without taking my eyes off of Evie for too long.

A sheet of paper hung from something in the locker. The word whore smeared across it in what looked like blood. Beneath that was a heart, blood dripping from it and onto the clothes she had worn to the club. The worst part was the dagger penetrating the heart.

It was clearly a threat. One that made my blood boil.

She had offended somebody somehow, and they were letting her know they planned on filling her future with pain. The only thing I could think of was that it was someone from the Ricci family, who originally purchased her at the auction. Did they think that this would be enough to scare her or for us to let her go?

They were mistaken, of course. At least about the part where they might force us to let her go. There wasn't a chance in hell of us doing that now, but it seems they had succeeded in scaring the shit out of her.

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