Page 146 of Blood & Throttle

We step inside.

The music’s still playing—somewhere in the bones of the place. A bassline low and primal, vibrating through cracked walls and shattered tile like the heartbeat of a body that forgot it died. The air tastes like sweat, smoke, and something sweeter, like syrup poured over rot.

The club’s half-dead, half-alive. Glitching dancers stutter on old poles, their holos catching mid-loop, torsos stretching into static before snapping back to form. Some aren’t holos. Some are real. Girls with smeared makeup and blank stares, moving like they forgot how to stop, hips swaying to a beat that never ends. They don’t look at us. Don’t acknowledge anything. Like the place swallowed them whole and refused to spit them back out.

Glitter dusts the floor like fallout. Dollar bills curl on the stage, sticky with dried booze. There’s an overturned table near the bar, a trail of broken glass leading to a cracked mirror that’s still catching light in violent bursts of color. Neon pink. Toxic green. A flickering ultraviolet strobe that strobes so fast it feels like it’s trying to erase time.

“Looks like they vanished mid-fuckin’ party,” Sin mutters, stepping around a puddle of something that might’ve been champagne, might’ve been piss.

She’s not wrong.

There are half-finished drinks still perched on the bar. Aheel snapped in two near the edge of the stage. Cigarette butts in lipstick-stained ashtrays. Bottles of booze—some full, but most empty—scattered across every surface like someone called last call and no one listened.

“You’ve been here before?” she asks, her voice low, sharp with curiosity as her eyes drag across the chaos.

“Once,” I mutter. “Years ago. Different crowd back then.”

She gives me a look. “Let me guess. Less glitchy tits, more bloody knuckles?”

“Something like that.”

We keep moving through the mess, past sagging couches with torn leather, through light beams that cut the dust into shifting diamonds. And beneath it all, the music pulses on an endless loop. Like it doesn’t know how to stop. Like it refuses. Like the building itself is still waiting for someone to finish the party.

We pass a table still sticky with someone’s drink or blood. Could be either. There’s a booth with torn leather and old graffiti etched into the wall behind it.

WE FUCKED HERE.

Sin snorts, brushing her fingertips across the faded lettering. “Romantic.”

“Wait ‘til you see the bathroom.”

She shoots me a look over her shoulder. “You say that like it’s a selling point.”

“It was, back in the day.” I shrug, flicking ash off the end of my cigarette. “Drugs, dancers, broken noses. Lotta bad decisions got made in this place.”

“You speaking from experience or observation?”

“Both.” I grin around the smoke, then tilt my head toward the hallway past the stage. “Back room’s that way. Used to be lockers. Might be something clean back there ifyou’re tired of walking around with brain matter on your skirt.”

She raises an eyebrow, arms crossing over her chest. “And you know this because…?”

“I used to work here.”

She stops walking. “Bullshit.”

“Nope. I used to work the door.”

“Riot fucking Carter worked security at a strip club.”

“Only job I could land back then where hurting people was part of the description,” I say flatly. “No fake smiles. No bullshit. Just bounce assholes, crack skulls, and mop up the blood after.”

She gives a slow, mock-impressed nod. “Adorable. A real Hallmark story. You getting misty-eyed on me?”

“Only if I see you looking like this for another five minutes,” I mutter, flicking my cigarette to the floor and grinding it under my boot.

She laughs and flips me off with both hands before heading toward the hallway.

I watch her go, hips swinging despite the exhaustion, braid hanging loose, blood crusted on her tank and dirt smudged across her cheek like warpaint. She doesn’t slow down. Not even after everything. Not even when she should, and yeah, she’s a fucking problem.