The nightclub breathed—a living, pulsing beast of smoke and heat. Thick clouds of tobacco and cheap perfume hung heavy in the air, curling around bodies pressed tight against one another like desperate shadows seeking escape. The floor beneath Elena Cruz’s boots was slick with spilled whiskey and sweat, a sticky reminder of all the secrets and sins that had passed through here.

Her skin prickled beneath the cool leather of her jacket, the faint ache of bruises on her ribs pulsing with every breath. She was a ghost weaving through the chaos—eyes sharp, every muscle coiled like a spring ready to snap. Her heart hammered, not just from the music, but from the raw tension in the air—a tension she could taste, bitter and electric, like ozone before a storm.

The bass thudded through her bones, the strobe lights flashing, slicing the dark like broken glass. Faces blurred—laughing, shouting, shouting with desperate joy or hollow menace—but then the crowd parted, and she saw him.

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He wasn’t like the rest of this madness. He was still.

A black silhouette carved out of shadows and power.

His suit was the kind you only saw in magazines—sharp, flawless, tailored like a second skin that promised danger and dominance. The faint shimmer of a silver rosary bracelet wrapped twice around his wrist caught the light, a quiet whisper of faith or threat. His eyes—storm-gray and piercing—scanned the room before locking onto hers with such intensity it was as if the world around them ceased to exist.

The chaos faded.

The smoke, the noise, the desperate bodies—all vanished into silence, replaced by the crackling electricity stretched tight between their gazes.

Elena’s breath hitched, a raw edge of fear mixing with something fiercer—defiance, curiosity, maybe even hunger. The familiar ache in her ribs pulsed like a warning, but her eyes didn’t waver. She met him, gaze burning with a challenge only the desperate and the dangerous understood.

Neither moved.

Neither blinked.