Thursday night. River North.
The rhythm inside the club moved like a heartbeat through the floor and into Olivia's body. Easier to let it carry her than to think.
She wasn't dancing for them, she was daring anyone watching to look away first.
Pulse, downtown Chicago. Loud, hot, the kind of place her father's friends pretended not to know existed, where perfume mixed with sweat and smoke that clung to skin and hair. The bass didn't just fill the room, it blurred thought. Which was exactly why she kept coming back.
The red dress held her together. Barely. The slit climbed high, the neckline dipped low, and there was nothing subtle about the way it clung. A warning, not an invitation.
She moved to her own rhythm, shoulders, hips, control that looked effortless but wasn't. The music swallowed faces and voices, but she slipped through it, cool, sharp, as if the floor belonged to her and everyone else was just noise.
She'd promised herself she wouldn't come back, and yet here she was, because promises meant very little after midnight, when the quiet at home pressed harder than the heat in the room.
Home wasn't quiet anymore. It was judgment in silk sheets and her father's voice in every corner. Here, at least, no one called her Pereira's daughter.
Then she felt it, that stare.
Not careless. Not drunk. Different.
It slid through the dark and caught on her like wire.
Her skin prickled. Her pulse kicked once, hard. She didn't know why her body went warm so fast, sweat under silk, a thrum under her ribs. It wasn't desire. Not yet. It was worse, being seen by someone who knew exactly what to look for.
She turned, hair sticking to her neck, eyes scanning the edges of the room. Two men drifted closer, one behind, one in front, moving as if they could claim a rhythm that was never theirs.
A hand reached for her waist. She shifted, slipped free, didn't even give him a glance. Forgettable. Just heat without teeth.
And then she found him.
He stood a few steps off the main floor, where the light broke and thinned.
Didn't move. Didn't drink. Didn't pretend to dance.
Just watched.
Dark suit. Cold eyes. Still as glass in a storm. Not a boy, a man, dangerous in the quiet way of someone who didn't need to prove anything.
He didn't look hungry. He looked curious. The kind of curious that measured, catalogued, like he wanted to know how she cracked.
Her mouth tilted, just slightly. Fine. Let him try.
She let the music carry her a half step closer, slow and deliberate, meeting his gaze, holding it, because she always held it.
Dark suit. Wrong place. He didn't belong here any more than she did.
She blinked once against the sting of light, and in that blink, he was gone.
She stopped. The room kept moving. Heat cooled along her arms. Had she imagined him? No. The look was still under her skin, a crawl she couldn't shake.
Typical. The clean suits, the sharp shoes, men who lasted only until they realized she didn't flinch.
It wasn't rejection that burned, it was not knowing.
And Olivia Pereira had never been good at living with questions she couldn't control.
She let the beat take her again because it was easier than chasing shadows. Her body kept moving. Her mind didn't.
Whoever he was, he was already in the back of her head.
She pushed damp hair off her neck, smudged mascara near her eye. Around her, strangers bought freedom with hands and drinks and noise.
She didn't feel free. She felt hunted. Maybe that was the point.
Maybe this was the only place where the pressure in her chest turned into something she could name.
Somewhere behind the haze, another heartbeat matched hers.
---
Simon stood near the bar, the bass beating through his ribs until his shirt trembled. This wasn't his world, every second reminded him.
The lights were too bright, the air too hot, the perfume too close to regret.
But he was here because he didn't have a choice, which sounded noble until he admitted he'd nodded when he should've said no.
Eduardo Pereira didn't make requests. He delivered instructions with a smile that meant contracts were already signed and consequences already priced.
There'd been an incident last month, something that almost made the papers. Pereira wanted insurance, not headlines.
Simon had defended the man's companies long enough to know what disobedience cost.
"I need someone reliable to keep her in line."
Translation, babysit my daughter or watch everything you've built fall apart.
"You don't want to risk your future, do you?"
He'd nodded, habit, cowardice, survival.
Now his cufflinks flashed each time his fingers found them, the same nervous tick he'd had since law school, when debt and ambition still lived in his bones.
He hated this place, the press of bodies, sweat under his suit, the bass shaking patience loose.
He reminded himself why he was here, and then he saw her and forgot the reason.
Olivia Pereira.
He knew the name from files, a photo once, flat, insufficient.
The living version moved like the center of the room, a red dress that said stay away and come closer in the same breath.
He told himself she was a job, a problem to manage for a man he couldn't afford to disappoint.
The words sounded responsible in his head and did nothing to steady his breathing.
She was chaos pretending to be control, and he couldn't look away.
Her hair stuck to her neck where the light hit, skin gleaming with sweat, mouth parted as if the music whispered secrets only she could hear.
For a second, her eyes caught his, sharp, assessing, and he looked away before he forgot why he'd come.
One of the men behind her reached for her waist.
Simon's shoulders locked. He didn't move.
Still, he told himself there were lines, professional, moral, necessary, and that he knew where they were.
She blurred every one.
He should've walked out the moment he saw her. Any decent man would've.
He didn't. He stayed. And the wanting tasted like guilt he hadn't felt in years.
He wasn't supposed to want her. He did anyway, and it burned through the careful part of him that had kept his life intact.
She tilted her head back, eyes closed, throat bare, and he thought about her mouth the way a man thinks about relief after too long without it.
The thought made his jaw tighten. That wasn't who he was supposed to be.
When she drifted closer to where he stood, he stepped sideways into the shadows, hoping the dark would make better choices for him than he was making for himself.
At the bar, he ordered a drink he wouldn't touch. The glass sweated against his palm while the ice surrendered to the room.
He didn't want alcohol. He wanted distance. The club gave him neither.
He recited the reason he was here, quietly, like a prayer said through teeth.
Simon Reed had come to keep her out of trouble.
Somewhere between the door and the bar, he'd started wanting the one woman he had no right to touch.
He watched the line of her back as she moved, the unapologetic curve of her hips, and imagined the sound of her breath near his ear.
His hand tightened on the rail until his knuckles went white.
This wasn't simple lust, not the kind he could file away and forget.
It felt like a curse with his name on it, the kind that didn't care how careful he'd been for how long.
He hated how easily she'd slipped under his skin, and the worst part was how little she'd given him to work with.
She hadn't even looked at him. Not really. Not yet.
Because when Olivia Pereira finally looked at him, he wouldn't just lose control.
He'd lose himself.
And with Pereira watching, that meant he could lose everything else that mattered with it.
The pulse didn't fade when she stopped dancing.
It only changed rhythm.