Chapter 5 Recognition

• The night was thick with the perfume of whiskey, lust, and low-burning tension. Midnight Maidens pulsed under velvet lighting, the bassline of the club's soundtrack syncing with the throb of Brandy’s nerves. The air shimmered with heat, smoke curling through every beam of red and gold light that danced across the marble floor. Her heels clicked in rhythm, practiced and powerful, as she crossed from the dressing room to the stage, a storm building beneath her practiced smile.
• Konstantine watched from his usual booth beneath the crimson chandelier, the ice in his glass long since melted into the amber depths of his brandy. His stare burned hotter than the lights. He hadn't said much tonight—he rarely did—but she could feel him in her blood, in her bones. Like gravity.
• Brandy's dance started slow, deliberate. The music throbbed like a heartbeat. Her fingers slid around the polished gold pole, her body arching into practiced shapes—but tonight felt different. She could feel his eyes on her. Just his. The way he looked at her made her skin flush and her lungs tighten.
• It made her reckless.
• Her movements turned sinuous, slower. Every swing of her hips, every twist and drop, felt like a secret whispered directly to him. And he was listening. Rapt. His expression unreadable, but the way his knuckles tightened around his glass didn’t go unnoticed.
• She hated how much she cared.
• When the music faded and the lights dimmed, Brandy slipped off the stage and into the back hallway, trying to shake the intensity from her shoulders like sweat. But it clung to her—him—and followed her down the corridor like smoke in her lungs.
• In the dressing room, she pushed open the mirrored vanity drawer beneath her nameplate. Hidden beneath false lashes and half-used lipstick tubes was a folded newspaper clipping. She touched it with trembling fingers.
• Daughter of Senator McAllistor Missing, Presumed Runaway
• She didn’t need to read the rest. She knew every word. Every line. She had memorized it the same day she’d burned the rest of her past.
• Milady McAllistor was a ghost now.
• Except she wasn’t. Not really. Not when some drunk asshole outside the dressing room door had looked at her for just a second too long. Not when he’d called her by the name she hadn’t heard in five years.
• "Mil—Mila… No, wait. I know you. You're that senator's girl—"
• Panic bubbled up. Her heart seized.
• Brandy shoved the drawer closed and stood. Her reflection was pale, eyes wide and haunted. She reapplied her lipstick, but her hands trembled.
• She left the dressing room quickly, needing air, needing to move. Her heels clicked down the hallway faster than usual, the rhythm less confident now. Her breath came sharp and shallow.
• That’s when the hand wrapped around her wrist.
• She yelped, twisting.
• “Hey—hey, just listen—” the man slurred, reeking of vodka and bad cologne. He looked vaguely familiar, but Brandy couldn’t place him. He had the desperate eyes of a man with a memory on the edge of clarity.
• “Let go of me,” she hissed, voice razor-sharp. She tried to yank her arm free.
• Behind her, a shadow moved.
• Konstantine had seen the entire exchange from the far corner of the bar. The moment the man grabbed her, something in him snapped like dry bone under pressure.
• He stood, silent and swift, and stalked toward them.
• Brandy saw him seconds before the drunk man did. She saw the way Konstantine’s eyes locked on the hand around her wrist—the silent fury in the way his jaw clenched. She saw it and felt a strange rush of things she didn’t know how to name: fear, yes, but also something darker. Protective. Possessive. It made her throat dry.
• She ripped her hand away just as Konstantine reached them.
• “You have three seconds to disappear,” Konstantine growled, voice low and lethal.
• The man stumbled back. “I—I didn’t know she was yours, man—”
• “She’s not,” Brandy cut in, her voice shaking. “I’m not anyone’s.”
• But the damage was already done. The drunk man fled, and Konstantine was left staring at her, his expression unreadable.
• “Are you alright?” he asked.
• Brandy nodded, swallowing hard. “Yeah. I just—needed air.”
• “You shouldn’t have to defend yourself in your own workplace.”
• “No,” she said, voice tight. “I shouldn’t.”
• Konstantine watched her. “Who was he?”
• “I don’t know,” she lied.
• He didn’t believe her. But he didn’t push.
• They stood like that for a moment—still charged from the interruption, both shaken in different ways. She felt her pulse thudding in her throat, her wrist tingling where the man had gripped her. But it wasn’t that touch she felt now.
• It was his.
• His stare slid down her face, across her lips, lingering like the brush of a fingertip. Her breath caught.
• “I’m fine,” she repeated, though her voice cracked.
• He didn’t reply. Not right away. And when he finally turned to leave, she hated how empty it felt.
• Brandy walked back toward the dressing room slowly, her steps unsure, her legs unsteady. Everything inside her churned.
• She opened the dressing room door and leaned back against it, locking it behind her. Her chest rose and fell too quickly. Her reflection in the mirror looked too much like Milady and not enough like Brandy.
• She unrolled the clipping again.
• The ink smudged beneath her thumb.
• It didn’t matter. Because someone had seen. Someone knew.
• And Konstantine Volkova had seen, too.
• The look on his face when she was grabbed wasn’t something she’d forget. The ice in his expression. The fire in his silence. She could still feel the tension in his body like it had transferred to hers.
• And worse—she liked it. That look. That fury. That protection.
• She was in trouble.
• Deep, tangled, velvet-wrapped trouble.
• And she didn’t know how to get out.
• ---
• “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Chardonnay said, snapping her gum from her seat in front of the mirror. She was half in costume, glitter dusted over her chest, fishnets stretched like threadbare armor across her thighs.
• Brandy didn’t answer immediately. She walked over to her station and sank onto the padded stool like her bones had liquefied.
• “You okay, babe?”
• Brandy shook her head, staring at her reflection. “Someone grabbed me. A customer. Said he knew who I was.”
• Chardonnay’s glitter-painted brows shot up. “What the hell? Are you serious?”
• Brandy nodded.
• “Did you tell Dimitri? You know he doesn’t tolerate that kind of shit—”
• “Konstantine took care of it.”
• There was a pause.
• Chardonnay turned to face her fully, eyes narrowing with interest. “Took care of it how?”
• “He just... showed up. Said something, and the guy ran.”
• “And you’re still shaking,” Chardonnay said, her tone softer now. She reached over and squeezed Brandy’s hand. “That man’s got it bad for you, you know that?”
• Brandy exhaled sharply. “It’s not like that.”
• “Oh, honey. It never is—until it is.”
• Brandy didn’t respond. Instead, she glanced down at her drawer.
• The folded clipping waited in silence, a secret on thin newsprint.
• She’d come here to vanish. But maybe she’d only made herself easier to find.