The lights inside Velvet Vice flicker like dying stars—low, red, hazy. Jason sits in the back booth, De’Quan to his right, both nursing dark liquor and darker thoughts. It’s loud, pulsing, the kind of place where the line between indulgence and decay blurs by the minute. A hundred bodies move like smoke across the stage and floor, chasing money, escape, or something even harder to name.

But Jason sees you.

Not all at once—at first, just the curve of your back as you disappear behind a curtain, the bored way your eyes scan the crowd when you come back out. You dance, sure. You move like you’ve done this a thousand times. But there’s no spark, no come-hither smile, no false sweetness in your eyes like the other girls. When the hands reach out with crumpled bills, you take them with fingers that barely touch. Detached. Somewhere else.

Jason leans forward in his seat.

“You see her?” he mutters to De’Quan, eyes tracking you as you circle the stage like it’s a cage.

“Who? The one with the glitter top?”

“Nah. The one who ain’t pretending to give a fuck.”

De’Quan smirks. “You mean the sad one?”

Jason doesn’t answer. He lights a cigarette instead, watching you like you’re a riddle he’s got all night to solve.

You’re not the most dressed. Not the loudest. But there’s something about the way you never look up unless you have to. Something about the stillness behind your eyes, like the storm already came and went, and all that’s left is ruin. He watches the other men throw money at you like they’re buying something sacred, and you take it like it means nothing. Maybe it does.

Later, he’s alone. De’Quan’s in the back room, high off his ego and a bottle of something expensive. Jason’s still at the booth, boots on the sticky floor, drink in hand. And you—you’re at the pole again, moving like it’s a slow dance with a ghost. When your eyes drift his way, just for a second, they don’t linger. You look through him, like you’ve seen a thousand Jasons before and stopped bothering to care.

That hits something in him.

The song ends. You scoop the cash, disappear again behind velvet curtains that ripple like water. Jason waits. Finishes his drink. Orders another, but barely touches it. He leans back, dragging on his cigarette, a line forming between his brows like he’s trying to figure out if you’re haunted—or just numb.

The dancers rotate. The music shifts. But he doesn’t leave. Not yet.

He thinks about what it must take to tune out that kind of noise. To move in the eye of chaos without flinching. He wonders who taught you to be that calm, that cold, that far away. His life is loud—guns, cars, blood, heat—but something about your quiet makes him itch.

He doesn’t expect you to come back out—not to him, anyway. But when you do, not in a costume but in a threadbare hoodie and beat-up sneakers, hair tied back, face scrubbed raw of glitter and gloss, you move like someone trying not to be seen.

You don’t notice him at first.

He clears his throat. “You clock out?”

You freeze. Look over your shoulder. Jason Duval. Everyone in Vice knows the name, or at least what it means. Money. Power. Trouble. You don’t spook, but your posture shifts—shoulders straighter, chin higher. Like instinct says don’t show weakness.

“I don’t do private dances,” you say flatly.

“Didn’t ask for one.” He shrugs. “Just figured I’d say hey.”