The bass from Club Nexus wasn't music; it was a physical assault. It punched up through the soles of my heels and vibrated in my molars. Happy eighteenth, a bitter voice whispered in my head, perfectly synced to the thump-thump-thump. My phone, clutched in a death grip, showed the last text from Liam, sent fifty-seven minutes ago.
Liam: VIP section. Get here. It's gonna be epic.
Epic. Not Can't wait to see you. Not Tonight's all about you, Nova. Just… epic.
I'd spent two hours preparing for a monument that didn't exist. The black dress he'd once said made me look "older." The delicate necklace he'd given me last Christmas. A curated performance for an audience of one who hadn't bothered to show up. Swallowing the lump of pathetic hope, I nodded at the bouncer and pushed past the velvet rope.
The VIP lounge was a zoo of flashing phone lights and shrieking laughter. And there, in the center of it all, was Liam. My boyfriend. King of the crumpled beer cans and spilled vodka. A game of Truth or Dare was in progress, a circus where he was the ringmaster.
"Nova! The birthday girl graces us!" Mark, Liam's perpetually leering friend, shouted. His voice cut through the noise like a knife.
Liam glanced over. His eyes, glazed and distant, skimmed over me. "Hey. You're late," he said, as if I'd missed a business meeting. His attention snapped back to the circle. "Your turn, Chloe! Truth or dare?"
Chloe Dawson—all blonde highlights and calculated innocence—giggled. "Dare, obviously."
Mark leaned in, his smile wicked. "I dare you… to kiss Liam. Through a single piece of tissue paper."
A roar of approval. My blood turned to ice. This wasn't a party for me. It was a stage for my humiliation.
Liam laughed, that loud, empty sound I used to find charming. "Easy." He took a cocktail napkin, tore a flimsy square, and held it up. Chloe pressed her glossed lips to one side. Liam, with a theatrical wink to his audience, met her on the other side.
The tissue paper crumpled between their mouths.
For three eternal seconds, the world narrowed to that translucent square, to the shape of their lips pressed together, separated by a barrier thinner than my dignity.
Something inside me didn't break. It detonated.
A silent, white-hot fury incinerated every leftover feeling I had for him. The disappointment, the hope, the love—all ash. What remained was a terrifying, crystalline calm.
"Aww, is Nova jealous?" Chloe simpered, pulling away, her eyes darting to me, shiny with victory.
"Relax, babe. It was a dare," Liam said, as if explaining something to a child. He patted the couch beside him. "Get over here. Your turn to play."
They pulled me into the circle. Their hands were like shackles. I sat, my spine rigid, as Liam's heavy arm draped around my shoulders—a claim, not a comfort. I was now part of the exhibit.
My gaze, desperate for an escape, swept the shadowy edges of the lounge. And found one.
In a deep, secluded booth, a man sat alone. He was a silhouette of stillness against the chaos. He wasn't drinking. Wasn't laughing. He was just… observing. His eyes, a stormy gray in the dim light, were fixed not on the game, but on me. He was older, maybe early thirties, with a sharp, austere handsomeness that seemed carved from a different reality than the boyish chaos around me. He wore a dark suit that probably cost more than my car.
Liam's uncle. Cassian Vale. The family ghost who appeared at holidays, spoke in paragraphs when everyone else used slang, and made the air feel thinner. Liam called him "the vault" – cold, impenetrable, and full of things you couldn't have.
Right now, he looked like the only adult in the room.
"Alright, birthday curse!" Mark yelled, spinning an empty bottle of premium vodka in the center of the table. It whirled, a glittering omen. It slowed… wobbled… and stopped.
The neck pointed directly at my heart.
"DARE!" the circle chanted in unison. "DARE! DARE! DARE!"
Mark's eyes gleamed with cruel inspiration. "Here it is, Nova. The birthday special. You have to pick a guy. Any guy here." He paused, letting the anticipation build. "And you get seven minutes in heaven with him. Storage room. Booth. We don't care. But we will be timing it."
The eruption was deafening. Liam grinned, squeezing me. "Lucky you," he smirked, already tilting his face toward mine, expecting my choice, my surrender.
Everyone was looking at me. Liam's smile was wide and assured. He'd won. He got the public kiss with Chloe, and now he got the private make-up with his girlfriend. The perfect narrative for him.
The crystalline calm within me held. Without a word, I shrugged off his arm. The fabric of his jacket slipped from my shoulders like a shed skin.
I stood up.
The noise dipped. Confusion flickered across Liam's face.
My heels clicked a deliberate, steady rhythm on the floor as I walked. Not toward the hall to the bathrooms. Not toward the bar.
I walked straight across the lounge, away from the light and the noise, into the shadows.
I stopped in front of the dark booth. I looked down at Cassian Vale. The ambient light caught the sharp line of his jaw, the cool, assessing calm in his eyes. He didn't speak. He just waited.
"They've dared me to find a man for seven minutes," I said, my voice clear and oddly flat, devoid of the tremor I felt inside. "Your nephew seems to think it'll be him."
Cassian's gaze didn't waver. A single, almost imperceptible eyebrow lifted.
I took a breath that felt like my first all night. "I'd like it to be you."
A beat of silence stretched between us, so profound it seemed to swallow the club's roar. Then, slowly, deliberately, he set down the heavy crystal glass he'd been turning in his hand. It made no sound on the velvet table.
He unfolded himself from the booth, rising to his full, imposing height. He loomed over me, not with threat, but with a potent, unnerving presence. He offered me his arm, his sleeve perfectly tailored, his posture erect.
"Then you should have a guide who knows where heaven is," he said, his voice a low, resonant vibration I felt in my chest. "Or at least a better class of closet."
I placed my fingers on his forearm. The wool was impossibly soft, the muscle beneath it solid as stone.
As I turned with him, I cast one last look back at the VIP circle. Liam was standing now, his face a grotesque mask of shock, anger, and utter, world-ending betrayal. The bottle lay forgotten on the table. No one was laughing.
Cassian led me not to a janitor's closet, but toward a sleek, unmarked door beside the DJ booth, where a serious-looking man in a black suit stood guard. The guard gave a curt nod and opened the door.
Cassian guided me through it.
The door clicked shut behind us.
The screaming bass vanished. We were in a hushed, carpeted hallway lit by soft sconces. The air was cool and still, smelling of sandalwood and silence.
He stopped, releasing my arm. The sudden quiet was louder than any music. He turned to face me, his storm-gray eyes capturing mine in the dim light.
"Seven minutes, Nova," he said, his tone unreadable. "What do you intend to do with them?"
The reality of what I'd just done crashed into me with the force of a truck. The calm shattered. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, trapped bird.
I was alone in a silent hallway with a man I didn't know, who was my boyfriend's terrifying uncle, and I had just lit a match to my entire life.
The fury that had propelled me here was gone. In its place was only a vast, echoing question.
What have I done?
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[End of Chapter 1]
Thank You for reading 😊