The VIP Roster

Tessa's POV

I hooked a finger under the thin, scratching strip of lace sitting low on my hips and snapped it against my skin. The harsh neon light from the club's exterior sign bled through the cracked blinds of the dressing room, painting pink and purple stripes across the smudged mirror. I stared at my reflection, at the tiny rhinestone-encrusted bra that barely covered my chest, and let out a long, heavy breath.

How did things escalate to this point? Why was I even doing this?

I had options. Shitty options, but options. I could have taken the graveyard shift at the corner convenience store, mopping up spilled slushies and dealing with drunks for minimum wage. I could have kept pushing for a gig as a choreographer, which was my actual dream. The original plan didn't involve neon thongs and eight-inch clear heels.

Not that I cared about the stripping itself. I felt zero shame about the outfits or the work. Survival didn't leave room for modesty. People paid their rent in a hundred different, miserable ways, and this just happened to be the fastest route to cash. It kept a roof over my head and food in my fridge. But the reality staring back at me in the glass still felt disconnected from the life I wanted.

"Are you coming, Cricket, or are you just going to keep staring at your ass?"

Ruby pushed past me, bumping my shoulder. She tossed her makeup bag onto the cluttered vanity, sending a stray tube of lipstick rolling onto the floor. I hated that nickname. Cricket. I earned it back in kindergarten because I couldn't stop jumping around, and the damn name clung to me like a shadow all the way into adulthood.

I watched Ruby pop the cap off her lip gloss. She had been my anchor for years. We bounced through the same broken foster homes, sharing bedrooms that smelled like bleach and stale cigarette smoke, until the system finally spat us back out at the orphanage. I never knew my parents. The world never handed me a single silver spoon, so I made a promise to myself the day I aged out. I promised I would climb out of the dirt. I planned to finish high school, scrape through college, and book choreography jobs.

Life had a funny way of crushing plans. At twenty-one, I was twisting around a brass pole instead of running a dance studio.

"I heard the Marchese brothers will be at the private VIP lounge today," Ruby sang, dragging the wand of gloss over her plump lips. "Even Alessio will be here."

I shot her a sharp look. Her thick, dark braids cascaded in perfect symmetry over her bare shoulders. Ruby possessed the kind of effortless beauty that commanded attention the second she walked into a room. The club patrons knew it. The staff knew it. The Marchese brothers definitely knew it.

But the sound of that name—Alessio—sent a rush of heat straight to my face. My stomach hollowed out. I snapped my gaze away from Ruby and stared hard at a crack in the drywall.

Alessio Marchese. The mafia heir.

The same man who dragged me into his office two months ago and fucked me until I forgot my own name.

I was never the girl who did one-night stands. I kept my head down and my legs closed. But that night, the music was too loud, the liquor burned too hot, and we both drank too much. He didn't offer me romance or soft words. He led me upstairs, locked the heavy oak door of his office, and shoved me face-down over his mahogany desk. He swept my legs apart, pulled out his cock, and shoved it deep inside my pussy. He didn't hold back. He thrust hard and fast, slamming his hips against mine while I dug my nails into the polished wood and screamed out his name. The raw, primal heat of it consumed me.

But the illusion shattered the second he blew his load. The moment he pulled out and zipped his pants, the fire in his eyes died. He treated me like a used napkin. He grabbed my arm, led me back downstairs in dead silence, and tossed me to the side without a single backward glance. He was done with me.

*If only the other girls knew.*

*If only his father knew.*

Our boss, Carmine Marchese, ran a massive empire, and this strip club was just one tiny piece of the pie. Carmine and his three sons regularly held private business meetings in the locked VIP lounges upstairs with their associates. None of us were stupid. We smelled the gunpowder on their jackets. We saw the tattoos. We knew they ran blood, drugs, and extortion through the city's underground, but no one breathed a word of it. We played dumb, smiled, and poured the drinks.

Carmine played the role of the warm, generous patriarch. He hired me the day I walked in off the street, desperate and broke. He acted like a protective father figure to the dancers, commanding respect with a gentle smile that hid the monster underneath.

His sons were a different breed.

Tito, the eldest, carried the warmth of a frozen corpse. He walked through the club with his jaw clenched, refusing to make eye contact with the dancers. He viewed us as trash, and he made sure we felt it every time he passed by.

Nico, the middle brother, thrived in the spotlight. He smiled, he laughed, he tipped well. But beneath the cheerful, charismatic front lay a toxic, childish cruelty. Nico treated women like carnival games. He loved the chase, he viewed every interaction as a challenge, and he despised losing.

Then there was Alessio. The youngest, yet somehow colder than Tito. I didn't think a man could harbor that much ice in his veins until he fucked me and forgot me in the span of an hour. Despite his age, Alessio held the title of heir to the entire Marchese mafia syndicate. His terrifying, emotionless demeanor made him the perfect fit for the throne. He barely showed his face at the club, making his rare appearances pulse with an intimidating, heavy dread. The other dancers threw themselves at his feet, embarrassing themselves just to catch a second of his dead-eyed stare. I took the opposite route. I hid. The shame of being discarded like garbage burned too hot, even though I knew exactly who he was before I let him touch me.

"We are waiting for you guys!" Luna shoved her head through the doorway, breaking my spiral.

Luna was the only other dancer in this place I tolerated. Most of the girls in the locker room possessed sharp claws and zero loyalty. They viewed every other woman as a threat to their money and didn't hesitate to play dirty. Carmine ran a loose ship, rarely scolding us for being late, which only encouraged the chaos.

"We're coming!" I yelled back.

I grabbed Ruby's arm and dug my heels into the floor. She whined, trying to apply one last layer of gloss, but I pulled her with all my body weight, dragging her out of the dressing room and down the narrow, dimly lit hallway. The bass from the main floor thumped against the soles of my shoes.

We hurried toward Carmine's office, expecting the usual relaxed briefing. We merged with the line of girls standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the expensive Persian rug.

I looked up, ready to offer Carmine an apologetic smile.

The smile died in my throat.

Carmine wasn't there.

Leaning against the heavy oak desk, dressed in a sharp, tailored black suit that cost more than my life, was Nico Marchese.

My chest tightened. I tried to shrink, to blend into the dark wallpaper. Nico pushed off the edge of the desk. The room fell dead silent. He didn't look at the other girls. His gaze locked straight onto me.

He took a slow, deliberate step forward. Then another. He closed the distance between us until the scent of his expensive, spicy cologne suffocated the cheap perfume of the locker room. He stopped mere inches from my face.

Panic seized my lungs. I dropped my chin, fixing my eyes on the polished leather of his dress shoes. I heard the low, dangerous rumble of his chuckle.

"Do you always show up late?" Nico's voice wrapped around me, smooth and chilling.

A shiver wrecked my spine. It was my worst nightmare realized. Ruby and I both walked in late, but he ignored her. He aimed his crosshairs squarely at me.

"I'm s-sorry," I stuttered, my tongue feeling like lead. "W-we a-a-and, uhmm we—"

"Look at me when you talk to me," he commanded. The playful tone vanished, replaced by the hard edge of a mafia boss.

My head snapped up. My eyes collided with his dark, amused gaze. I braced myself for the yelling, for the verbal beatdown the brothers were famous for.

Instead, a bright, blinding smile stretched across his face. He tilted his head, studying my trembling lips and wide eyes like a predator inspecting a cornered rabbit.

Nico raised his hand. Before I could flinch, his fingers pinched my cheek. He squeezed the flesh, hard enough to sting, and let out a laugh of pure disbelief. The other girls in the lineup giggled, a chorus of desperate, sycophantic sounds.

My brow furrowed. I stood frozen in confusion.

"I was just kidding, Cricket," Nico said, dropping his hand and taking a casual step backward. "But I think I might make it my new hobby to bully you."

He turned away, pacing the front of the room.

"You're so lucky," Ruby whispered in my ear, her breath tickling my neck.

Lucky? I lifted a trembling hand and pressed it to my stinging cheek. I didn't see the luck. The other dancers craved his attention, viewing a single touch as a badge of honor. I wanted to be invisible. I wanted to dance in the shadows, collect my cash, and go home. Hearing a volatile, dangerous man declare he wanted to make a hobby out of tormenting me felt like a death sentence.

"As you all know," Nico projected his voice to the room, his hands shoved into the pockets of his slacks, "we have a very important business meeting today with one of our potential partners. The main goal for tonight is to make sure he and his entourage have a good time. We need his signature on the dotted line by the end of the evening. The meeting takes place in the private lounge."

He stopped pacing and let his gaze sweep over the lineup.

"I'll be needing a few of you. If I don't call your name, please make your way downstairs and continue your shift with our regular guests."

I let my shoulders drop, releasing a breath I didn't realize I was holding. I felt safe. I never worked the private lounges. These meetings required girls who knew how to schmooze, how to flirt, and how to handle aggressive, handsy men without losing their cool. Carmine knew my limits. He knew I lacked the social grace and the thick skin needed to navigate a room full of mobsters. Dancing for strangers on a stage was easy. Being trapped in a locked room, serving whiskey to killers, made me choke on my own tongue.

Carmine protected me from the VIP lists. He read me like an open book.

"The girls I want to join me are," Nico began, his eyes scanning the eager faces, "Luna. Piper. Gemma. Ruby..."

He dragged out the pause. The room held its collective breath. I waited for him to call Sasha's name. She was the standard pick for these high-stakes nights.

Nico's eyes shifted, cutting through the line until they landed on me. His lips curved upward.

"And Cricket."

The silence in the office turned suffocating. Every head snapped in my direction. I felt the burn of a dozen jealous glares piercing my skin, but I couldn't break eye contact with Nico.

What did I do? Why was he doing this?

"M-me?" I choked out, the word scratching my throat.

Nico gave a sharp nod. He waved his hand, dismissing the unselected dancers. The door clicked shut, leaving only the chosen few standing in the heavy silence.

My feet glued themselves to the rug. I stood trapped in a waking nightmare. Out of every stunning, confident woman in this building, he picked the one who couldn't even form a coherent sentence in his presence. He deliberately shattered my routine. I had zero desire to play waitress for a cartel of suited murderers.

But arguing with a Marchese wasn't an option. His smile was a mask. He held my livelihood, and possibly my life, in his hands.

"The men who will be here tonight are tough," Nico warned us, his million-dollar smile flashing against the dim lighting. "They are hard to handle. But I trust each and every single one of you to not mess this up."

His gaze pinned me down.

"Are you nervous, Cricket?" he asked.

My eyes widened. Was I nervous? My heart hammered against my ribcage so hard I thought it might crack bone. Luna and Ruby shuffled closer, pressing their shoulders against mine in a silent attempt to steady my shaking frame.

I had to know. I needed to know the parameters of this hell he just threw me into.

"Will you be there?" I blurted out, the panic overriding my filter. Nico sat at the very bottom of my comfort list. If I couldn't string two words together with him in an office, serving drinks around him in a locked room would be a disaster.

Nico laughed. He closed the gap between us and playfully shoved my shoulder. The casual contact sent a jolt of alarm through my nerves.

"No," Nico said, his grin widening into something sharp and vicious. "But don't worry. Alessio will be there."

The air left the room.

The blood in my veins turned to ice. The walls of the office seemed to warp and close in around me, pressing the oxygen out of my lungs.

Alessio.

The same Alessio who stripped me bare, used my body, and threw me away. The heir. The monster in the tailored suit.

A single, desperate thought screamed in my head on a violent loop, drowning out the sound of my own heartbeat.

*Why me?*