As predicted, things got weird the next night.

My shift got off to a good start when I scored a ten-dollar tip—that I shoved down my bra so I would get to keep it—but when the place filled up, it raised my anxiety levels.

It had always been a possibility certain people might find me, but I knew how to handle myself. Eighteen years growing up in a house full of men whose full-time jobs were illegal hardened you the fuck up pretty quick. Let’s just say, I knew how to make a shiv and use it if I had to.

Still, my gaze darted around the club, looking for threats where there were none. It was another bluff courtesy of dear old dad. His specialty was bribing and manipulating, so why was this time any different?

Seven years, I thought to myself. That’s what’s different.

The night wore on, and in the darkest and dingiest corner of Teasers, I spotted a familiar face.

Chaser.

“Who’s that you’re staring at?” Yvette asked, then gasped as she realized who it was. “Wasn’t he here last night?”

“Yeah,” I replied, glaring across the club. I could forgive her for forgetting about his appearance since her little girl was a handful and then some. One afternoon and a cup of strawberry milk down my top later, I was glad to get out of there. Kids and I didn’t mix.

“He’s a real hottie.” She licked her lips. She actually licked her lips like she wanted to eat him all up.

“I’d forget about him if I were you.”

“He’s not even looking at the girls,” she went on. “If he’s not here to get his rocks off, then…” She glanced at me.

Sure enough, he was nursing a bottle of beer, his gaze sweeping the room, but it wasn’t focused on the snatch waving around on stage. He was sizing up the patrons—the ‘gentlemen’—who were congregating around it. Every once in a while, he would glance toward the entrance, then over to the bar where Yvette and I were staring at him.

“Oh, shit,” Yvette said, turning around. “Do you think he saw us?”

“Yeah,” I drawled, giving Chaser the biggest stink eye I could muster. “He saw us all right.”

“He was your ex?”

“I kinda lied about that,” I replied sheepishly.

“What do you mean?”

“He works for my father. I want nothing to do with him, or whatever it is he wants.”

“Oh…” Yvette widened her eyes. “He touched you?”

“No!” I dumped the money from my last customer into the cash register and slammed it closed. “We just don’t get along… In a manner of speaking.”

“That guy is hot…” She’d resumed perving on him. “But he doesn’t look like the loving kind of guy, if you know what I mean.”

“He’s a hired thug.”

“Maybe he’d be good for a night pumping the springs, but I’d toss him back straight after.”

“Yvette!”

“You’re so tense, Slo,” she said, grasping my shoulders and massaging. “You’re one big knot. The quickest way to work it out is with no strings attached cock.”

“I’m not fucking that guy!”

“You can fuck me, sweetheart,” a man drawled from across the bar. “As long as you suck my cock a little first.”

“If you don’t pull back, you’ll be sucking Bobby’s cock,” I declared, pointing toward the bouncer at the door. He was the big, bald tank, who just loved tossing out slimy perverts and kicking the shit out of them in the alley around back.

The man held up his hands and backed away, muttering a halfhearted apology.

“Ugh,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You want me to have sex after that? This place is enough to turn any woman celibate.”

“Hot stuff is staring at us.” She pouted and nudged me with her shoulder. “Go for a ride…just a little one.”

“I’m not touching him.”

Even if he weren’t here to kidnap me ‘for my protection,’ getting mixed up with a guy who looked like an underwear model and hung out by himself in dark corners of strip clubs was not what I needed right now. What I needed was peace and quiet to study for my midterms. A cocky cock with the worst timing was the fastest way rile up my inner bitch.

Speaking of…

“I’ll be right back,” I said, waving Yvette off when she got excited on my behalf.

Rounding the end of the bar, I strode across the club, ignoring the sidelong glances, and stopped in front of a smug looking Chaser. He wanted a confrontation, so here it was.

Snatching the bottle of beer out of his hand, I glared.

“I wasn’t finished with that,” he complained.

“You’re hogging the table,” I declared. “And I can guarantee your beer is flat and tastes like shit at room temperature. You may as well be drinking old-man piss.”

“He warned me about this,” he said, lounging back in the booth, looking sexy as hell. All that was missing was me crawling up his body.

“Excuse me?” I felt my cheeks redden and thanked God we were in the club where it was dark, and he couldn’t see.

“You’re a handful. Can see it already.” He was undressing me with his eyes—which made me a little hot to my utter distress—and my flush deepened as his hand moved toward his crotch.

“Asshole.” Holding up the bottle, I tipped the beer into his lap. “How’s that for a wet patch?”

People around us snickered as Chaser held out his hands in mock defeat.

“There are worse things in the world than smelling like beer and having a wet cock.”

“Yeah? Like a turf war for men with little dicks?” I sneered and slammed my fist on top of the table and tossed the empty beer bottle at him.

He caught it against his chest and laughed. It was the wrong thing to do, but luckily for him, there was a table between us.

“Get out of my face, Chaser.” I snarled. “Go back to my father like the little bitch you are, and you tell him the same words I told him seven years ago when he sent another fucker like you after me. I’d rather asphyxiate on my own vomit than lay eyes on him ever again. He doesn’t exist to me. You got it?”

“So, was it immaculate conception?”

“Excuse me?” My mouth fell open.

“When people ask you about your father, do you tell them the stalk dropped you off on your mommy’s doorstep?”

“My mom is dead, you piece of shit. Why do you think I ran away?”

Turning on my heel, I stalked across the club, seething so hard I almost spontaneously combusted. When I calmed down enough to check if Chaser was still there or not, the booth was empty.

Good. He was bad for my health.

* * *

Stuffing a French fry into my mouth, I chewed and thumped out another sentence. My poor laptop.

My nights off went like this. Go to the local fast-food joint, order the cheapest meal they had, and commandeer a table for a minimum of two to three hours. Then pack as much course work in as I could before walking the five blocks home in the dark, looking as tough as I could so I wouldn’t be mugged. Hopefully. My computer was a piece of shit, but twenty bucks was twenty bucks around here.

After six months, I’d become a regular fixture, and management didn’t hassle me anymore. As long as I wasn’t running drugs to their customers or casing the joint to prepare for an armed robbery, they didn’t mind me hanging out. Once they twigged I was trying to study, they really didn’t mind.

Shanora worked the counter on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday nights when I came in to study. She was an eighteen-year-old African American girl, who’d served me my usual order of cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke for several weeks before something mysterious shifted in the air, and she started to sit with me on her breaks. One day, she’d just sat at the table across from me, and that was that. Two unlikely friends.

Tonight, she was watching me type and flip through my notes, her eyebrows in a constant state of interest.

“What do you do when you come in here?” she asked. “Are you writing a book or something?”

“Hardly,” I replied. “I’m writing a Poli Sci paper.”

“You go to college on your computer?” She stared at the lid of my laptop like it was the doorway to Narnia.

“Yeah. It will take a billion years and a billion dollars, but you can do it. At least the Wi-Fi here is free.”

“What do you want to be?”

“I’m not entirely sure yet, but right now, I’d settle for educated.”

Shanora snorted and took a fry from my tray.

“You don’t want to go to college?” I asked.

“Can’t afford it,” she replied, then took out her cell.

“What about a scholarship?”

“Too dumb.”

“Nah-ah,” I shot back.

She gave me a look and went back to scrolling on her cell.

I glanced to the side as a man walked past with a tray in his hands and narrowed my eyes. Ever since Chaser showed up at the club carrying the latest sob story from father dearest, I’d been jumpy. He wanted to protect me? From what?

Asshole, I thought to myself. This is probably Dad’s plan. Install a seed of doubt into his only daughter, and she’ll come back to the compound for protection. It would never happen.

Watching the man, I decided I didn’t like the look of him. He was wearing a black bomber jacket, dark shirt, and dark pants. He was rough around the edges, but who wasn’t in this neighborhood. Hell, they had an armed security guard at a family restaurant once the sun went down. There was an indicator of the clientele right there.

Still, I snapped the lid of my laptop closed and gathered my notes, shoving the lot into my battered backpack.

“You going?” Shanora asked.

“Yeah. You want the rest of these fries?”

She grabbed the edge of the tray and slid it toward her.

“Bye,” she said, shoving a fry into her mouth.

“See you later.”

There was no reply, and I rolled my eyes. Kids and their cell phones.

Sliding my backpack on, I pushed out of the restaurant and stepped onto the sidewalk. Damn Chaser and his mind games.

Glancing over my shoulder, I sank deeper into my denim jacket and lengthened my stride. Crossing the street, I threw another look at the golden arches behind me. The door opened, and bomber jacket man appeared.

My heart skipped a beat, and I fished around in my pocket for the keys to my apartment. Shoving a key through each finger, I fashioned myself a pointy set of brass knuckles just in case I had to stab and run.

I put my head down and hurried down the sidewalk, passing under orange street lamps and darting across side streets. I was a shadow in a shadowy world. Glancing back over my shoulder every so often, I saw the man walking at a distance. I couldn’t be sure he was following me, but I couldn’t be too careful. There was no innocent until proven guilty. Not in this neighborhood.

Ahead, my apartment building came into view. It was a mid-rise made from what felt like one continuous slab of concrete that was cast and set in the nineteen seventies. You know, the land that soundproofing forgot. The place was a complete dump, but the rent was cheap, and it had an entrance that gave the illusion of security with its coded fob system. All I had to do was press the tag against the sensor, and the lock would click open.

Throwing one last look back, the man was gone, but my heart didn’t stop thundering in my chest. Slamming the fob against the sensor, I was granted access. Pushing through the door, I closed it behind me and heaved a sigh of relief. Safe and sound for now.

Hightailing it up the stairwell, I reached the fifth floor and pushed out into the hallway. The sound of televisions turned up to a million and the odd bark of a dog echoed through the concrete as I made my way toward my apartment. Rounding the corner, I came to a screeching halt when I saw Mrs. Adelstein at her door.

She was wearing her usual getup comprised of a fluffy pink dressing gown and matching slippers. Tonight, she had purple rollers in her graying hair, and her wrinkly hand was clutching her dressing gown together over her chest.

Mrs. Adelstein was a selective agoraphobic. She didn’t like to go outside the apartment block but reveled in the business of everyone who lived in it. I was sure she had notebooks filled with surveillance on all her neighbors, including me. All that was missing was her tinfoil hat.

“It’s late,” she said when she saw me.

The only way was past her, so I sidled by her door and flashed her a fake smile.

“I was studying,” I said.

“Oh, that’s right. It’s Monday.”

She didn’t seem to be interested in chatting, so knowing what was good for me, I kept walking. Fishing out my keys, I let them fall from between my fingers and shoved the first one into the deadlock.

“Sloane,” she called out, signaling she’d had an afterthought.

Rolling my eyes, I plastered on a smile before I turned around. “Yes?”

“There was someone knocking at your door earlier.”

“Oh?” I froze, the smile twitching on my face. I didn’t want to move again, but if I had to…

“He was loud. Next time, tell him to knock a little softer.”

“Who was he?” I asked, a bad feeling crawling up and down my spine.

“A mean looking man,” she went on. “Leather jacket, boots. He knocked and knocked, and I told him to fuck off. You better not be mixed up in the drugs. A smart girl like you?” She clucked her tongue and shuffled back into her apartment. The door slammed closed, and I jumped as the sound echoed down the concrete hallway.

Leather jacket and big boots? Was it Chaser or someone else?

Undoing the second lock, I slipped into my apartment and made sure all the locks were in place before latching the chain. Turning on all the lights, I flipped the sofa back and reached inside the lining. My fingers brushed past springs and stuffing before they rubbed up against what I was looking for.

Taking out the nine-millimeter handgun and the box of matching bullets, I sat on the floor and loaded the magazine, listening to the sounds of the apartment block. A kid screamed, television noise roared through the wall, a door slammed, muffled voices were arguing, and a telephone rang.

If Chaser was right and someone was coming for me because of my asshat father, then I would be ready. And if Chaser came back… Well, I wasn’t sure what I would do if he turned up again. He hadn’t gotten the message last night if Mrs. Agoraphobic down the hall was handing in her report.

I just wanted to be alone.

I’d put all this shit behind me years ago. I was getting on with life, and even though things weren’t amazing, they were better than they ever could’ve been living in that shithole. Out here, in the real world, I was a human being. Back there, at the Fortitude MC compound, I was a commodity. A fucking bargaining chip with a bleak future as a trophy wife to a petty drug lord.

Yvette wanted me to take Chaser the hottie out for a ride? If she only knew.

If I kept refusing him and his crazy offer of protection, there was no doubt in my mind he would try to take me by force. When the moment came, I would have to be ready.

No one gained their freedom by hiding their head in the sand.

Slamming the full magazine into the handgrip of the gun, I made sure the safety was on and glanced at the door. I would put a bullet right in Chaser’s pretty boy face before he took me anywhere.

He could count on it.