Page 45 of Gatsby's Starlet
We pushed through bodies, noise, heat—until I saw them.
Drago sat like the King he thought he was, one arm stretched along the back of the couch, the other resting on the blonde straddling his lap, her mouth pressed to his neck like a vampire feeding. Kane sat nearby, a brunette grinding against him, his hand sliding up her thigh encouraging her to keep going.
My already upset stomach turned souring even more. These men were awful and maybe now Ruby would see it.
Beside me, Ruby went completely still.
“Please,” I said under my breath. “Can we just leave?”
She didn’t even look at me.
“Drago?” she called, stepping forward like she wasn’t watching him with another woman wrapped around him.
He didn’t rush, apologize, or hell even look guilty. He just gave the blonde a lazy pat on the thigh. “Get gone.”
Across from him, Kane grinned at me, slow and predatory. “Move on,” he told the brunette. “Somethin’ better just walked up.”
Both women slid off them, smirking as they passed, like we were just the next round.
Drago tapped his lap for Ruby, but she didn’t move.
“I think I’ll stand,” she said, her voice tight, pride barely holding. “I can see where your lap’s been.”
Something flickered in his eyes, annoyance, not regret. “Don’t be a jealous nag,” he said. “I don’t like it.”
That was it.
That was all she got.
Kane stood then, closing the distance between us before I could blink, his arm slipping around my shoulders before I could react. His mouth brushed my ear, voice low and amused. “I like jealous women,” he murmured. “They’re hotter in bed. You can be as territorial as you want with me, sweetheart.”
My skin crawled, and I stepped out from under his arm fast, putting space between us, my focus locking onto Drago. “You wanted to see me?”
He stood without answering, already moving, expecting us to follow.
Kane stayed close behind me—too close—his body brushing mine every step of the way as we pushed through the crowd, the noise fading the deeper we went until it was just the echo of it, distant and hollow.
The hallway stretched ahead of us in a suffocating kind of darkness, the quiet pressing in so thick it felt deliberate, like even the walls knew better than to make a sound, and Drago didn’t slow until he reached the last door, pulling out a key with a focus that made it clear whatever waited on the other side mattered more than anything behind us, more than anything I could still turn back toward, and that was when my pulse kicked up, hard and unsteady, because the second the door opened and I stepped inside, I knew this wasn’t a bedroom and it sure as hell wasn’t casual, it was a meeting room, set with a round table and heavy chairs, a safe tucked into the corner, and anothertable laid out with guns that weren’t there for show, weren’t decorative, weren’t anything but real and ready.
And on another table—drugs—lots of it.
This became more and more dangerous every second.
“Sit,” Drago ordered.
Kane moved before I could, dragging out a chair beside me and layering on that fake charm like it was supposed to mean something. “Here you go, my lady.”
I ignored him and sat anyway, slow and deliberate, my eyes already moving, tracking everything, the layout, the exits, the angles, anything that might matter if this went bad, while Ruby sat across from me, already watching Drago with something tangled in her expression, something hard and soft at the same time, like she hated him and loved him in equal measure and didn’t know how to separate the two anymore.
“You got inside their clubhouse?” Drago asked, getting straight to it.
“I was there for a few hours,” I said carefully. “What exactly do you think I’m going to find out?”
“I want everything,” he said, his tone shifting, colder now, more focused. “Members. Security. Weak points. Gatsby handles their systems, and I know damn well he’ll show you around eventually.”
My chest tightened at Gatsby’s name. “I didn’t see anything like that,” I said. “He just introduced me to people.”
“Did you meet that scarred bastard?” Drago snapped. “Big and Ugly.”
