Chapter 1
The air in the underground club was thick—a heavy mix of expensive cologne, damp concrete, and the low-frequency thrum of the bass vibrating through the floorboards. Outside, Toronto was drowning in its usual relentless gray drizzle, but down here, the atmosphere was suffocating in a different way.
I gripped the edge of the vanity, my knuckles white against the wood. I looked good—the kind of “good” that felt like armor—but my pulse was erratic. This wasn’t just a gig; the faces in the crowd tonight belonged to the kind of elite that didn’t just have money; they had shadows.
I caught his reflection in the mirror before I heard him move.
Sebastian.
He hated these places. He hated the noise, the lack of control, and the way the strobe lights messed with his line of sight. He was a creature of clinical silence and calculated moves. But because it was me, he was here. He stood by the door, a sharp, dark silhouette in a tailored coat that cost more than the club’s entire sound system.
He didn’t need to say a word. Just his presence in the room shifted the oxygen. I wasn’t elite, but as long as he was standing five feet away, the monsters in the front row wouldn’t even dare to breathe in my direction.
The digital clock on the dressing room wall flickered to 8:55 PM. Five minutes. Five minutes until the stage lights went up and I had to face them.
Through the narrow slit in the backstage curtain, I could see the VIP section. It was crawling with them—the big monsters, the heavy hitters of the Toronto underworld who usually stayed buried in the shadows. Seeing them in the flesh, sitting right there in the dim light, made a cold wave of panic hit my chest. My breath caught in my throat. I was terrified.
Then, a warm, solid weight wrapped around my fingers.
Seb.
He pulled my hand into his, squeezing just enough to anchor me back to reality. He always knew exactly when the panic was about to swallow me whole.
“Amanda, be confident,” he murmured, his dark eyes locking onto mine, completely erasing the noise of the club. “I am here with you.”
The tension in my shoulders instantly melted, and a small smile finally broke through my nerves. He had this terrifying power to make everything better just by existing in my space.
“Thank you, Seb,” I whispered.
‘Seb’ was what I called him, and he usually called me ‘Amy.’ We were probably just too lazy to use our actual names, but hearing it from him always felt like a secret code between us.
Before I could turn toward the stage, his arm slid around my waist, pulling me flush against his chest. Standing there in the dim backstage light, with his sharp jawline and that dark, dangerous energy radiating off him, he was goddamn hot. He was a lethal wall of protection, and knowing he was watching gave me the exact armor I needed.
The stage coordinator gestured wildly from the wings. It was time.
“Next performer is AMANDA.”
The announcer’s voice boomed over the speakers, cutting through the low bass. I looked up at Seb, gave him a small, nervous shake of my head to clear the last of my panic, and stepped out from behind the curtain.
The stage lights hit me first—blinding, hot, and white. But as my eyes adjusted, the VIP section came into sharp focus. The drunk monsters were sitting front and center. They had tattoos crawling up their necks and over their hands like they were wearing the ink instead of clothes. I wasn’t scared of tattoos—Seb was covered in them, and I loved every single line on his skin—but these men were just disgusting. The heavy, transactional way their gazes tracked me as I walked to the mic made my skin crawl. They looked at me like I was a product on display.
I gripped the microphone stand, closing my eyes for a fraction of a second. I searched for the rhythm, let a long breath out, and let the music take over.
“You look at me like I’m a prize to hold, But there are dark things sleeping in the cold. You think you’re monsters ruling in the night, But you haven’t seen what happens when we lose the light...”
My voice echoed through the damp concrete room, steady and cutting right through the smoke. I opened my eyes, deliberately looking past the front row, looking for the only pair of eyes that actually mattered.
Four minutes. That’s all it took for the last note to fade out, and the moment it did, I could finally breathe again. I turned on my heel, desperate to get off that stage and back into the dark where it was safe.
I was just about to step down into the wings when a heavy, slurred voice barked from the front row.
“Hey, gorgeous. Get your ass over here.”
I froze, my stomach instantly turning. Before I could even process the words, the man sitting next to him let out a low, mocking laugh, his eyes scanning down my body. “I could fuck you all day.”
A sick, cold wave of humiliation hit me. These disgusting, vile pieces of shit. I gripped my microphone, my knuckles turning white, trapped under the weight of their filthy stares.
Then, the air in the room completely died.
The loud, arrogant laughter vanished in a split second as a towering shadow cut across the stage lights. Sebastian stepped into the VIP section. He didn’t yell. He didn’t even draw a weapon. He just stood there, his dark eyes locking onto the two men with a clinical, lethal coldness that made the entire room feel like a freezer.
Sebastian was in a completely different tier than these low-level street monsters. He held a rank so high in the Toronto underworld that his presence alone was a death sentence if you stepped out of line.
Instantly, the two idiots went pale, dropping their gazes to the floor, terrified to even draw oxygen. The whole club went dead silent.
Seb didn’t give them another syllable of his time. He reached up, his warm, solid hand wrapping firmly around mine, pulling me off the stage and completely shielding me from the crowd. He guided me straight out of the venue, his grip unyielding and protective as he cut a path through the silence and took me out into the cold rainy night.
The rain was coming down harder now, cold drops smacking against the freezing Toronto pavement, but I barely felt it. Seb’s grip on my hand was absolute, his long strides cutting through the damp alleyway behind the club. I had to jog a little just to keep up with him.
I stared at the rigid line of his jaw. He wasn’t just mad; he was more furious than I had ever seen him. The veins in his neck were tight, and the dark energy rolling off him was downright lethal.
“S-seb,” I breathed, my voice trembling slightly against the chill.
He stopped dead in his tracks. He turned around, his chest heaving as he stared down at me with those goddamn gorgeous, terrifying eyes. There was a storm raging behind them.
“Amy, I fucking won’t let you here,” he growled, the raw edge in his voice cutting through the sound of the downpour. “You can sign to other places. Anywhere else.”
My mouth opened, the automatic urge to defend my music and my gig rising up in my throat. But before a single syllable could leave my lips, Seb stepped closer, completely crowding my space and blocking out the rest of the world.
“And don’t argue with me,” he commanded, his tone dropping to a low, possessive snap that left absolutely zero room for negotiation.
He was done talking. He wasn’t asking for my permission to protect me; he was demanding it.
And then we got in his car and drove for 8 hours.
