Page 3 of Chad's Chase

ONE

Amazing grace…

Nadia…

There was something different about the new girl.

The dancers at Empty Cage gentleman’s club surreptitiously eyed her with fairly concealed envy, or rather covetousness. They’d known without a flicker of doubt, the second she’d walked into the club, that she’d become club favorite.

She was too physically perfect—naturally so. And girls this naturally perfect weren’t usually found in exclusive gentleman’s clubs. They were found on runways and big screens. They were socialites and trophy wives. Millionaires’ arm candies, and billionaires’ spoilt mistresses.

If all a girl like her had to do was wink at a man and own him, it was beyond baffling why she was working at Empty Cage.

Her strides were so confident. Her shoulders perennially squared, her chin perpetually jutted up and out, as if working in such a place was an honor. Nothing short of peculiar.

The other girls whispered about her behind her back. Good things, incidentally—which was rare when it came to women who competed for attention in a four-walled work zone.

Have you seen those green eyes? She’s unbelievable! She looks high-born. What’s a girl as refined as her doing in a place like this? You think she’s a rich runaway? She doesn’t fit here.Ohmygod, I’d kill for those tits!

New Girl was like a diamond among broken shells. Customers gaped at her as she swayed by. Men and women alike.

At an estimated five feet seven inches, she had hair the color of midnight—jet black, and whenever the light bounced off the straight, long tresses from a certain angle, it glinted midnight blue. Covetously long, but always pulled up in a tight ponytail.

Unlike the other dancers, she wore little to no make-up, never trying to hide under thick layers of face concealer, fake lashes and eyeliner. No bright colored wigs or mysterious costumes.

She wore fearlessness like it was an expensive fur coat gifted from a powerful drug lord. And she moved as smooth and graceful as a legless snake slithering in a clear pond.

The weaponless killer was her body. Perfect C-cups, slim waistline ending where her hips began and shaped out into wide curves. Abs like no woman should have, and arms that needn’t be so toned. Runway models would slit throats for her legs, they were so long.

Whenever she was up on that stage, wrapped around the pole like a goddamn contortionist, she was magic. Pure magic.

She didn’t dance for money. She performed.

And during her sessions, the entire club would pause to watch. She was a spotlight all on her own, that girl. Shining brightly on herself. Glowing from the inside out.

A beautiful enigma.

But while she left the majority in a whirl of mesmerizing entrancement, a few of the honed, acute ones were left in suspicion.

The ones who took note that she didn’t drink alcohol or flirt with men. The ones who noticed her unnatural maturity for a girl estimated to be no older than twenty-three. The ones who took note that she didn’t work the floor like a stripper hunting the next dollar, but instead constantly eyed the club entrance. The ones who noted that her money purse was a little too big, and noticed the questionable bulge in her right boot. The ones who noticed she hadn’t the mannerisms of a normal new adult, but was always alert, poised, ready. But…for what?

The ones who knew, unequivocally, that she was no one innocent, no one to be trusted, no one to be underestimated.

New Girl was a beautiful disaster waiting to happen. Beautifully dangerous.

Dangerously beautiful.

One of those people was Nadia, a spy for the owner of Empty Cage, also covering as a stripper. Nadia wasn’t instructed to spy on the enigmatic new girl, but something had been so off about her since she arrived a week ago that Nadia’s natural instincts had her monitoring her every move.

And after a week of spying, Nadia was convinced New Girl was bad news.

Very bad news.

She was out for someone, and this stripper job was a cover.

Sitting on this conjecture, Nadia waited for her boss to show up on one of his guaranteed days: Monday, Wednesday or Friday. But when the entire week flew by and he didn’t show up, she figured he was out of state.

She couldn’t call him to ascertain. She wasn’t allowed to call. No spy was allowed to call. No matter how important. He called whenever he was ready.