**Rosalia**

Since my last encounter with Luca, I became the kind of paranoid that crawls under your skin and builds a home there.

I checked every corner of every street I walked. Every shop window became a mirror I used to scan behind me. Every reflection in a bus door, every shadow in the city's glass and steel my eyes flicked to them like a habit I couldn't unlearn. Sometimes just the sight of a man with black hair was enough to startle me so hard I had to pretend I'd tripped over a crack in the sidewalk.

Breathe, Rosa. Keep walking. Don't look back too often. Looking back means admitting you're afraid.

But fear had made a nest in me anyway. It hummed quietly even when the world was loud. I couldn't stop thinking about him how he'd somehow known where to find me at the bakery, how he'd looked at me like a hunter looks at a thing it's already decided belongs to him. The cold in his eyes wasn't empty. It was focused, deliberate, the kind that never misses.

From the moment I ran into him in the park, I knew what kind of man he was. Dangerous didn't need an introduction. It lived in the tilt of his mouth and the measured cadence of his steps and the way he never, ever looked away first. I didn't need to catalogue his sins to know there were enough of them to pave a road to hell.

I told myself I didn't have to stick around to find out how deep his ruin went.

So I tried to scrub him out of my head. I tried to excise him from the spaces between my thoughts pull him up by the roots whenever I caught myself remembering the exact shade of hazel in his eyes, the cool steel of his voice when he said amore, the way my pulse had betrayed me under his fingertips. I tried to outrun his shadow.

But at night, when the city softened at the edges and the noise turned into a distant hum, he still found me in my dreams, in the way my body remembered him without permission. I hated it. I hated him for it. I hated me for letting any part of me want more.

Stop it, Rosa. Get rid of him. Burn every thread that ties you to that man inside or out.

I repeated it so many times it frayed.

The club always felt like a bad song on repeat.

Tonight the same distressing music pounded through colored lights, bass thick and sticky like the floor after last call. The dancers' sequins caught the spinning beams and sent little shards of fake sun flittering around the room. Laughter, rough and too loud. Glasses clinking. Chairs scraping. The smell of whiskey and men who thought money made them gods.

I moved through all of it with my tray balanced on my palm and my shoulders set into the shape of service: chin down, eyes polite, smile stitched on. I took orders at one table, then another. I didn't let my mind wander, because wandering thoughts make mistakes. Mistakes make problems. Problems get you dragged into an office where the door locks from the inside.

Focus. Fill the glasses. Collect the cash. Stay small and fast.

A ripple went through the air near the entrance small at first, then growing like the hush that moves across a crowd when something important is about to happen. I glanced up because everyone else did. Heads turned. The bouncer straightened. The DJ missed a beat and pretended he hadn't.

And there he was.

Even from across the room, he read as inevitable. Luca walked through the club like a man who owned the ground as soon as his shoe touched it. Confidence wasn't something he wore; it was the air he carried with him. He was flanked by three men in black suits that fit like armor, each of them scanning the room with eyes that didn't miss.

My heart kicked hard against my ribs. For a second, I forgot to breathe. Instinct made me lower my face, like if I didn't give him my eyes, he couldn't take the rest. It was ridiculous. I had heavy makeup on tonight the kind that turns you into a different woman under blue light. I doubted he'd recognize me. I doubted he'd even see me.

Don't look. Don't look. Don't

I looked. Of course I did.

He moved like a mission. Like the room had nothing he needed that wasn't already on its way to him. People parted without touching him. Money buys that, sure. Power, too. But there was something else the kind of invisible force that makes even the arrogant step aside and not know why their feet obeyed.

Powerful. Rich. Admired. Protected. Men like him could point at anything in this city and have it brought to them: cars, flights, watches, apartments that looked out over water. Bodies. Attention. Silence.

Me? I had a life built out of what was left. Everything I'd ever been able to hold onto was something someone else had already tried to take.

The VIP booth by the main stage was cleared like a stage within a stage. Two waitresses hustled over with the best bottles the club owned. The kind kept behind the glass and only touched when the price was pre-agreed in a back office. Luca sat near the edge of the booth where the light hit enough to carve his jaw but not enough to soften anything else.

His men took places near him, not sitting, just being there. You only bring that many bodies into a room if you have a list of enemies who practice their handwriting every night.

Another man joined the booth, this one older late fifties, tailored blazer that tried too hard, smile that didn't reach his eyes. They shook hands the way men do when money is the only language either of them respects. A brief toast followed, glasses drawn together like a pact.

Then the dancers arrived three of them, red lipstick perfect, bodies oiled and prepared to be a mirror for whatever a man wanted to see in himself. One slid onto Luca's lap like she'd trained for this exact moment, like this was her apex. His hand moved to her hip to balance her, fingers loose. He looked past her at the stage, as if she were just a weight to adjust rather than a person climbing into his space.

She turned his face with two fingers under his jaw and pressed her mouth to his. He let her. Only then did his attention land fully in the moment, that mouth angled slightly, tasting her like he was already bored of the flavor but willing to swallow out of habit. His other hand slid into her hair, careful and not careful, tugging her a fraction closer.

I hated the heat that shot through me. It arrived uninvited and settled low and humming, treacherous. It disgusted me, and it scared me that it didn't disgust me enough. Watching him kiss someone else should have made me cold; instead, my skin felt too tight.

What is wrong with you, Rosa?

I dragged my gaze away so hard it felt like I'd pulled a muscle. I ducked behind the counter, heart punching, and let my tray clatter down a little too loudly.

Breathe. Reset. He's not here for you. He doesn't even know you're here.

I went to the changing room and shut the door with more force than I meant. The quiet back there was thin, flimsy. I leaned against the locker and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes until little stars burst.

You have to finish your shift. You have to get through this night like you've gotten through a hundred others. Do not throw your life away because one man with a beautiful face and a black heart knows how to make a room stop moving.

"Rosa!" Robert's voice cracked like a whip from the hallway. He filled doorways before he walked through them big, loud, breath smelling of whatever he drank when he wasn't counting money. "You hiding?"

I pasted on my neutral face and stepped out. "Everything okay?"

He didn't answer my question. He threw a tangle of fabric at me tiny, glittering, indecent. The kind of outfit that exists to make men forget your name and remember your body. "Put that on," he said.

I stared at the lingerie in my hands. "What?"

"The club is full. Bella didn't show," he snapped, like her absence was a personal affront. "I need you on stage."

"No," I heard myself say before I could stop it. "Robert, please don't make me"

"Get dressed and get your ass on stage," he roared, the vein in his temple jumping. "You think you're special? You think you can take my money and give me rules? I'm done with your bullshit."

There are backup girls My voice cracked. I cleared it. Use one of them. I'm not

He moved fast for a big man. His hand flashed out and cracked across my face. Stars went off behind my eyes. Pain bloomed hot and stupid.

"Shut up," he snarled. "You forget who you belong to?" His breath hit my cheek. "I own every hour you work, every step you take in my club. Don't make me remind you how many favors I'm owed."

I kept my head down because lifting it would have shown him my tears and I wouldn't give him that. I tasted blood. I swallowed it.

"Take your clothes off and change," he said, voice dropping to something low and worse. "Or I'll do it for you. Five minutes."

He left without waiting. He always left without waiting because he enjoyed the way fear fills a room after he walks out of it.

My hands shook when I loosened the buttons of my blouse. I told myself I'd done worse, survived worse, swallowed worse. I told myself I knew how to control my body even when I couldn't control anything else. I told myself if I got through the song and the second and the third, then I could go home and scrub my skin until it stung.

The outfit fit the way it was designed to the way shame fits, tight and unkind. I tied the glitter ribbon at my hip and didn't look in the mirror because I didn't want to see what this night would try to make of me.

The pole Robert chose was the one stage-right closest to the VIP booth. Of course it was. Of course he'd put me in a place where men who could buy a city block could watch me.

I could feel Luca without facing him. He was a temperature in the air, a change in pressure. My mouth dried. I told myself he hadn't seen me yet. I told myself he wouldn't look up.

I didn't know why the idea of him seeing me burned so much. Maybe because shame is a knife that cuts deeper when you hold it yourself.

I took my place. The other girls slid into theirs heels like weapons, hair like curtains, smiles like warnings disguised as invitations. The lights dimmed to a sultry blue, then bled red around the edges. The first notes hit slow, a little dirty, the kind of song that turns bodies into metronomes.

The trick to surviving a stage is simple: you become the performance. You climb inside the shape men want and make it serve you instead. You remember what your body can do that has nothing to do with anyone else's hands. You become art so you can forgive yourself for being decoration.

I curled one leg around the pole and let the metal take my weight for a breath. My hands slid up until my arms were long lines above my head. Hips first slow, a sway that looks like it's nothing until it makes someone forget how to swallow. I felt eyes move to me, curious because I wasn't the usual girl in this spot, hungrier because new is a drug.

I climbed two quick lifts and a hook of my knee until I was upside down, hair falling like a curtain below me. My thighs burned and my core held because I'd taught them to. I let gravity pull me down in a slow glide, the friction a sweet ache along my skin. When I reached the midpoint, I flipped my grip, slid into a suspended split, raised my legs high and parted them in a tease that earned a ripple of shouts and a few bills fluttering in the air like cheap birds.

Noise becomes a kind of weather when you're on stage. It recedes and then crashes. I let it wash past. I pressed my calves around the pole and bent, folding my body into something that looked like surrender but was actually nothing but muscle and math. I dropped into a split on the floor with the kind of control that reads like accident. Cheers. A fist slammed a table. A glass broke.

I stood, slow and sinuous, hands on the pole, and snaked my hips around in a circle that made a man in the front row forget his own name. Another climb, another slide, a controlled release that ended in an arch, chest up, throat bare.

I shouldn't have looked up. I did anyway.

He had looked up.

Our eyes locked the way magnets find each other even when they fight it. He didn't blink. He didn't move. The dancer on his lap shifted, tried to pull his attention back by turning his face to hers and claiming his mouth like a victory.

It didn't matter. He was looking at me.

Heat skittered over my skin and my hands slicked on the pole for a half second too long. My grip missed and I dropped to my knees hard, my body pitching forward, ass up in the air. Embarrassment is sharp; it makes time slow. For one endless heartbeat, I was a picture I never wanted to be.

I rolled and rose like I'd planned it, keeping the movement inside the choreography. Shame burned my cheeks. I kept my eyes down, breath steady.

Don't look. Don't

A shadow crossed the stage's edge, pooling at my feet. I looked up because I always look up when I'm told not to.

Luca stood there, just past the spill of light, close enough that his presence cut a clean hole in the noise of the room.

His mouth didn't move much. His voice didn't need to be loud to land exactly where it should. Somehow, in the chaos, it reached me as if the rest of the club had shut up for a second we didn't deserve.

"When life brings you down," he said, a single dark amusement threading the words, "you get back up and fight, amore." (Love)

It wasn't advice. It wasn't comfort. It was a command dressed in something almost kind.

I couldn't answer. I didn't have a mouth in that moment, just eyes and the feeling of my heartbeat pushing against my ribs like it wanted his hand there to count.

He stepped back before anyone could make meaning out of the shape we were making across that distance. He slid into the shadows like they were built for him. The song ended with a final note that felt like a sigh.

I didn't bow. I didn't need money dropped on the stage to tell me whether I'd kept my life for one more night. I just walked off, legs shaking hard enough that I was ashamed of them.

In the changing room, the quiet pressed close again. I kept thinking I'd hear my name shouted, that I'd be dragged into an office by my hair, that Robert would tell me I'd broken a rule I couldn't even see.

Instead, the door stayed closed and the music outside kept thudding like a pulse that didn't belong to anyone.

I had an hour left of my actual shift. An hour of bussing tables and pretending I wasn't crawling out of my skin. Then I could go home and lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling and try not to think about a man who had looked at me like it was a promise.

I checked the small window that looked out to the main room, scanning for the VIP booth. It was empty. No Luca. No men. No redhead with the lipstick that matched her heels. He was gone.

Ridiculous disappointment flared small and mean. I crushed it. What was I expecting? He wasn't here for me. I wasn't the thing on his schedule, no matter how much it had felt like he'd seen through everything else and straight into the part of me I hide from myself.

I peeled the stage outfit off with shaking hands and pulled my regular clothes back on as fast as I could black jeans, booty shorts white scoop-neck tank, something that felt like armor strictly because it had more fabric. I scrubbed my face until the glitter surrendered and my skin felt like it belonged to me again.

"Rosa wait up." Keysha's voice floated in as I tied my hair up. She skidded into the room in her silver heels, breathless and glowing from the stage, eyeliner perfect even at midnight. "Hey, girl! Good job out there. You killed it."

I pulled a quick smile onto my face. "Thanks. I guess."

She grimaced sympathetically, seeing through the lie and choosing kindness anyway. "You okay?"

"Fine," I said. The easiest lie in the world. "What's up?"

Oh, right She twisted the ring on her finger. "There's a guy in a private room asking for you. Robert wants you to... you know." She lowered her voice, eyes darting toward the hallway. "Be nice. He paid for a private dance. A lot."

My mouth went dry. "I've never done that." I kept my voice even, steady. I'm not

"I know," she sighed, squeezing my hand. "Rules are changing around here. We have to keep our heads down, okay? In and out. Keep it surface. You'll be fine."

"Do you know who it is?" The question fell out of me before I could stop it. I hated how hope sounded in my own voice. Maybe it was him. Maybe he wanted to talk where no one could hear. Maybe he wanted to apologize or explain

Keysha shook her head. "Didn't see. Just that Robert sent me to get you, and he's... in a mood." Her eyes softened. "You want me to come to the door and wait?"

I swallowed. "No. I've got it."

"Okay. Good luck, girl." She pressed my fingers one more time. "Yell loud if you need me."

I forced a laugh that didn't deserve the name. "I'll be fine."

She left. I slipped my heels off and shoved flats onto my feet because the last thing I needed was to be wobbling in front of some stranger who thought the extra zeroes on his tab meant I had to pretend he wasn't one. I took one long breath, then another. My hand went to my throat and came away with a tremble I didn't like.

Well, here goes nothing. Or everything.

The hallway to the private rooms was a little quieter. The walls here were fake expensive heavy wallpaper made to look like silk, sconces that tried to imitate old money. It smelled like cologne and the ghost of a thousand secrets. I walked past two closed doors, each with a small brushed steel number plate. The third door was half-open, as if someone inside wanted to save me the trouble. I put my hand on the handle anyway, because I don't like the feeling that I'm expected to enter a space without knocking.

"Rosa," Robert's voice came from behind me, making me flinch. He sauntered up, that grin that men like him mistake for charm curdling on his mouth. "Room three. Behave. He paid good money. Don't make me refund it. You know how I hate giving money back."

"Who is it?" I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral.

He cocked his head, pretending to consider telling the truth. "A friend," he said. "A very generous friend." Then he leaned in, too close. "Smile, baby."

He left with a laugh that scraped down my spine.

I pushed the door open.

The room was lit low amber lamps that turned everything a little golden and a little tired. A small couch. A table with a bucket and a bottle sweating inside it. Two glasses. Music filtered in from the club, softer here, like a heartbeat from another room.

The air was cooler than the hallway. I felt it on my skin and then I felt nothing at all for a second because my brain refused to put the picture together.

I froze.

He was there.

Not lounging like a cliché, not pretending this was some casual coincidence. Luca sat forward, elbows on his knees, hands loose and lethal. The suit from earlier had given way to something darker shirt sleeves rolled to the forearms, throat open at the collar. He wasn't trying to look like a sin. He didn't have to try.

The door clicked behind me like a lock even though I didn't hear it catch.

My heart tried to bolt and couldn't find a door.

Run, said the part of me that still thought survival is always fast.

Stay, said something else, something older and quieter and more dangerous.

He didn't stand. He didn't offer a smile. His eyes traveled from my face down to my hands restless, clenched then back up again. Not invasive. Just... claiming.

"Close the door," he said, voice low and even, as if we were in a church and he was the only person allowed to speak.

The part of me that listens to what's bad for me reached back and shut it.

Silence thickened, soft and heavy as velvet. The club's thump faded to a pulse under the floor.

"You," I said, because despite all the words in the world, I only had the one that mattered and the one that made me hate myself for choosing it.

He leaned back a fraction. The corner of his mouth moved, not a smile and not not a smile. "Me."

He wanted something. Of course he did. Men like him don't arrange private rooms for conversation.

I raised my chin. "If you paid for a dance, you're wasting your money."

"Am I?" he asked, without any visible interest in arguing.

"I'm not one of those girls."

"I know you're not," he said. The words were firm and unbothered, as if they were facts that didn't require my belief.

"Then what do you want?"

He considered me for a breath that lasted long enough to make me aware of every inch of my skin. "To talk," he said finally.

I huffed out a humorless laugh. "You don't seem like a man who pays to talk."

"I pay for privacy," he said. "Talking is... extra."

I should have left. I should have opened the door and walked out and let Robert throw whatever rage he had left at me because at least his rage was a thing I knew how to manage. Instead, I stood there like a moth deciding whether the flame was warm or fatal.

His gaze dropped to my cheek, to the place where Robert's hand had left a pink echo under my makeup. The muscle in his jaw ticked, once.

"You're hurt," he said.

"I'm fine." There it was again, that lie getting a workout tonight.

"Who?" he asked.

"Not your business."

He let the silence stretch until it almost snapped. "Everything that touches you is my business when it walks into my line of sight," he said, and there was nothing warm in it.

who the hell do you think you are I don't belong to you I said, and wanted the words to land like knives instead of like paper birds.

His eyes lifted to mine and something slow and sharp moved through them. "No," he said, very softly, like agreeing cost him. "You don't."

We stared at each other like liars resigned to their best lies.

He finally nodded toward the couch. "Sit."

"I'd rather stand."

"Suit yourself," he said, and poured water from the sweating bottle, not taking his eyes off me as he set the glass on the table within my reach and far enough that I'd have to step close to take it. A dare disguised as courtesy.

I moved anyway, because my throat felt like desert. The glass was cold. I took a sip and then another, pretending it didn't feel like accepting something I shouldn't.

He watched the line of my throat like he could read every swallow. "You dance," he said, not a question.

I laughed without humor. "Apparently."

"You don't like it."

"You think?"

"You're good at it."

I blinked at him. "Is that supposed to make it better?"

"No," he said quietly. "Just true."

I didn't want the strange flicker of pride that rose up. I pushed it down with both hands.

"What do you want?" I tried again.

His eyes held mine. "Your attention."

"You had it," I said before I could stop myself, heat hitting my face. "On the stage."

"That wasn't enough."

"And this will be?"

He was quiet for a beat. "No."

The honesty of it jolted me more than a lie would have. "Then why are we here?"

"Because I don't like asking questions in rooms where other men are listening," he said. "And I have questions."

"What kind of questions?"

"The kind you'll answer," he said simply. "Eventually."

I hated that the word felt less like a threat and more like a prediction I might allow to be true.

I set the glass down carefully so he wouldn't see my fingers tremble. "What if I don't?"

His eyes warmed a degree. "Then I'll wait."

"Do you wait often?"

"No."

"So I should feel what? Special?"

"No," he said again, so calm it almost soothed. "Safe."

I almost laughed, and the sound hurt in my throat. "With you."

"Yes."

Silence stretched. My heart ticked. He did not blink.

"I don't trust you," I said finally, because at least I could give that to myself.

"You shouldn't," he said.

The room was suddenly too small for both of us and the truth he refused to dress up. The music outside lifted and dropped like waves hitting something hollow.

I backed toward the door because physics says distance dilutes gravity. His gaze followed, not a step given, not a step taken.

"Open it," he said, nodding toward the handle without looking at it. "If you want to go."

I reached behind me. The metal was cool under my palm.

Was there a lock? Did I care if there was?

The door gave with a soft, traitorous click.

I didn't move.

For one long moment, neither did he.

Outside, the song changed.

Inside, something did too.

His voice when it came was different less steel, no more something I didn't want to name. "Don't make me your enemy because you're afraid of the shape of this," he said, low. "I will be a very good enemy, amore. (Love ) I would rather not be."

I swallowed the lump in my throat.

"I don't know what this is," I whispered.

His eyes didn't soften. They rarely do. But they changed, just a fraction. "Neither do I," he said. "That doesn't make it less real."

"Start with this," he said, and it was an order dressed like a request. "Who hurt you tonight?"

I tasted the lie I had ready. Then I tasted the truth and it tasted like blood again.

"Go home, Rosalia," he said when I didn't answer. The corner of his mouth moved, not a smile, not a threat. "I won't follow."

I stared at him like he was the first man who ever meant a promise that left me free.

He stood then, finally, and the room changed shape around him like it always did. He came close enough that my breath remembered how to trip and I hated it for that. He reached past me and closed the door himself with a soft click. Not to trap me. To show me it didn't have to be a trap.

"Tomorrow," he said, and his voice made the word sound like a place I'd be foolish to visit and a miracle for wanting to.

He left.

I stood in the middle of the room and pressed my fingers to the place under my collarbone where panic and relief were trying to make a treaty.

When I finally moved, my legs felt like someone else's a girl who learns too fast, a girl who learns too late. I opened the door and the hallway didn't swallow me. The club's noise burst back in like a flood, and it was almost a relief to let it carry me wherever it wanted.

In the staff bathroom, I braced my hands on the sink and stared at my face in the mirror. Glitter clung to my lashes I'd missed before. A faint pink bloomed under the makeup where a hand had set fire to my skin. My eyes looked like someone else's someone who wanted and hated wanting at the same time.

I washed the glitter away. I left the pink. It felt honest.

So Rosalia got some few tricks up her sleeves
Thanks loves for another 200 reads
And please comment your thoughts it gives me motivation on how to write the next chapter thanks
And don't forget to vote