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Six months ago, he found the rental listing on my phone. Read it all the way through, then handed it back. “Cute. You know what happens to girls like you who leave men like me? Nothing. Nobody even notices they’re gone.”

I left at four that morning. Three flights of stairs in my socks.

Kelsey slides in beside me at the bar, right where I told her to be. She follows my gaze to Luca, then looks back at me, and her hand finds mine below the edge of the bar and squeezes, hard.

“I’ve got a full tray and terrible aim. Just saying.”

Despite everything, I almost laugh. “Save it.”

When I look back, Luca is whispering in one of his guys’ ears. Then he glances at the stage and smiles. He used to wear that smile right before he made me pay for something.

The host taps the mic on the little stage. “Ladies and gentlemen of the Velvet Room, welcome to the Black Orchid. As tradition demands, before the first lot, the floor is open for a toast…”

He doesn’t finish.

Luca is already climbing the steps.

Shit.

“I’ve gotta say, the Velvet Room really upped the talent this year.” He lets his gaze linger on every server he can find. Then it lands on me. “Mostly.”

The whole room turns to look.

“So here’s to the help.” He tips his glass at me. “Especially the little bunny over there. Brave girl, wearing that dress tonight. I know I couldn’t have done it.” He gives the room a sympathetic little wince. “I’m not sure the dress can, either.”

The room laughs.

Heat crawls up my throat. My fingers tighten on the edge of the bar. Beside me, Kelsey’s face crumples behind her butterfly mask, and somehow that’s what makes my eyes sting.

Not everyone laughs.

If I open my mouth, I lose tonight’s pay. Maybe every job after it.

Kelsey’s crumpled face is right beside me.

I don’t look at the alcove. Not once. I don’t need a man to handle this for me.

So I step forward.

And I project all the way to the stage.

“Funny, Luca. You had two whole years with all of this,” I say, and run one hand down my own curves, slow, so every person in the room watches it go, “and you never once figured out what to do with it.”

The laughter changes shape. It swings, finds a new target, and sticks.

“Don’t blame the dress, sweetheart. Blame the man who couldn’t fill it.”

Someone near the front chokes on a champagne flute. Somebody else howls.

That one’s for every girl who was ever called “too much” by a man who was never enough.

Luca’s face goes red, then white.

My heart is beating so hard I’m sure he can see it in my throat.

I hold his stare anyway.

Then I feel it. That slow heat at the back of my neck, the one from the service bar. Only now it’s closer.