Mira appeared at the entrance of the private booth.

She didn’t interrupt. She didn’t clear her throat or step into the light. She simply stood at the edge of the velvet curtain until Arianne looked up. That was all it took.

Arianne set down her glass of soda water. "What is it?"

Mira crossed to her, leaned close, spoke low enough that Sam and Audrey couldn’t hear. The three fans from earlier — the ones who’d followed her from Rochefort Group — were outside. They were in trouble. Angelika Sinclair was with them. A group of men — five of them — were trying to force her into a car. The fans had tried to intervene. One of them was on the ground. Another was screaming for help. The men had turned on them.

Arianne stood. She pulled her coat on. The motion was unhurried but final.

"Arianne?" Sam was already reaching for her own coat. "What’s going on?"

"Outside. Now."

Audrey grabbed her bag. Mira was already talking as they moved — the three women had been outside all night, the men appeared maybe ten minutes ago, one of the fans was hurt, Angelika was still fighting, the situation was getting worse. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

Arianne pushed through the back exit. The door swung open onto the street.

The scene was exactly as Mira had described.

Angelika Sinclair was on the pavement near a black car, her dress torn at the sleeve, her wrist twisted in a man’s grip. She was still pulling back, her heels scraping against the asphalt, her face wet with tears and fury. Two more men flanked the car, blocking her escape. The other two were dealing with the fans.

Rina was on the ground near the club wall, clutching her arm. Her face was tight with pain but she was trying to get up. Mari stood between her and the men, her body the only shield she had. Tess was on her knees, a broken camcorder clutched against her chest, her voice hoarse from screaming.

The men hadn’t seen Arianne yet.

"Angelika."

Her voice cut through the chaos. Not loud. Just sharp. Everyone froze.

Angelika looked up. Her eyes were wild, confused. The three fans turned. Rina stopped struggling. Mari’s mouth fell open. Tess stared like she was seeing something impossible — Noah Hart’s girlfriend, the woman they’d waited three hours to glimpse, walking toward them like she owned the street.

Arianne crossed the pavement. Her coat swept behind her. Her voice was calm. Conversational.

"You should have told me you were here. Why are you leaving with them?"

Angelika blinked. She and Arianne were not friends. They had never been friends. They had traded cold looks across hallways in high school and colder words at the anniversary banquet. Angelika had cornered the twins. What was Arianne doing?

Arianne held her gaze. The question hung in the air.

"Are you leaving with them?" she repeated.

And Angelika understood. The olive branch. The performance. Arianne was giving her a story — a reason to stay, a claim to protection.

"No!" Angelika’s voice cracked but held. "I wanted to see you. I came here to see you. But they wouldn’t let me leave. They wouldn’t let me go."

Arianne’s eyes drifted to the three fans. "And these are?"

The three women froze. If Arianne found out they’d been stalking her—

Mari recovered first. "We saw them forcing her into the car. We tried to help. They attacked us."

Arianne looked at Rina on the ground. At Tess and her broken camcorder. At Mari standing guard with nothing but her body and her shaking hands.

"I see."

The man holding Angelika’s wrist shoved her aside.

She stumbled, fell, hit the ground hard on her hip. Audrey rushed forward — pulled her up, guided her backward, away from the center of what was about to happen.

The man sauntered toward Arianne. He was tall. Expensive suit. Hair slicked back. The kind of face that had never been told no by anyone who mattered. His name was Brent. New money. New cruelty. He collected women the way other men collected cars — used them, displayed them, discarded them when they bored him.

He didn’t recognize Arianne. That was his first mistake.

He looked her over. Head to toe. Slow. Deliberate. Like she was already his.

"You’re much more beautiful than the discarded trophy wife." He jerked his chin toward Angelika, now pressed against the wall with Audrey’s arm around her. "Why waste your night on her? Come with us. We’ll show you a much better time."

Arianne didn’t speak. She raised one eyebrow.

The silence stretched. Brent’s smirk faltered.

"What’s the matter? Cat got your — "

He reached for her shoulder.

Arianne moved. Not backward. Forward. Her knee drove up into his groin with the full force of her body behind it. The sound that came out of his mouth was not a word. It was a howl — high and broken and utterly without dignity. He crumpled to the pavement, both hands clutched between his legs.

"You disgusting piece of trash," Arianne said. Her voice hadn’t risen. It didn’t need to.

Brent, writhing on the ground, managed to snarl at his companions. "Get her. Get her now. What are you waiting for?"

The four other men moved.

They were big. They were angry. They had no idea what they were walking into. They didn’t know that Arianne Summers and Samantha Pemberton had both been trained by the same self-defense instructor when they were sixteen — an heiress precaution, a family requirement, a skill their families had insisted on for exactly this kind of world.

The first man lunged at Arianne. She didn’t use her fists. She used her leg — a sharp kick to the side of his knee. The joint buckled. He went down with a grunt, grabbing at his leg, his weight collapsing onto the pavement.

The second tried to grab her from behind. She spun. Her other leg swept low, hooking his ankle, and he crashed backward into the side of the car with a sound like a sack of stones.

Sam stepped forward to meet the other two.

She was smaller than Arianne, but faster. The third man swung at her — a wild arc, all alcohol and arrogance. She ducked under it and drove her elbow deep into his stomach. He doubled over, wheezing, the air punched out of him. She brought her joined hands down on the back of his neck and he went flat, face-first into the asphalt.

The fourth man hesitated. His eyes darted from Sam to Arianne to Brent still curled on the ground. Then he lunged anyway. Sam caught him with a punch to the throat — not hard enough to crush, just hard enough to shock. He staggered backward, both hands flying to his neck, eyes bulging.

The three fans watched in stunned silence.

Mari’s phone was still in her hand, forgotten. Rina had stopped clutching her arm. Tess was kneeling on the pavement, her broken camcorder raised, the red light still blinking. She was catching everything. The men falling. Arianne’s leg sweeping. Sam’s elbow driving into stomachs and her fists finding throats. The way neither of them broke a sweat.

Noah Hart’s girlfriend and her friend had just put five men on the ground in under two minutes.

Mira stepped in. She grabbed Brent, still curled on the pavement, still moaning, and pressed him face-down into the asphalt. Her knee dug into his spine. She spoke into her radio, her voice calm and professional.

"Backup. South alley. Five detained."

The sirens were getting closer.

Arianne straightened her coat. Her hair was barely mussed. She looked down at the men on the ground — Brent pinned beneath Mira’s knee, one clutching his buckled knee, one nursing his ankle by the car, one still wheezing against the pavement, one still trying to catch his breath from Sam’s throat punch.

Then she turned to the three fans.

Mari spoke before she could stop herself. "We’re sorry. We didn’t mean — we just wanted to see — "

"I know what you wanted." Arianne’s voice was dry but not cruel. "You followed me from Rochefort Group. You’ve been outside the club for over an hour. You took pictures." She paused. Mari’s face went pale.

"Right now, you’re witnesses to an attempted abduction. That’s more important than whatever you came here for. The police will need your statements. All three of you."

Rina swallowed. "You’re not going to — "

"Press charges for stalking?" Arianne raised an eyebrow. "That depends on whether you follow me again."

"We won’t." The words came out in a rush. "We promise. We won’t."

Tess was still holding the camcorder. The red light was still blinking. She looked down at it, then up at Arianne. "I got everything. The men. The fight. Their faces."

Arianne met her eyes. "Good. That’s evidence."

Tess nodded. Her hands were shaking. But she didn’t lower the camera.

Angelika was sitting on the curb now, Audrey beside her. Her dress was ruined. Her wrist was already bruising purple where the man had gripped her. Her face was streaked with mascara and tears. But she was still there. Not in that car. Not dragged away by men who thought they could take whatever they wanted.

Arianne walked over to her. Stood looking down.

"Can you stand?"

Angelika looked up at her. The woman she’d resented since high school. The woman whose children she’d threatened at a banquet. The woman who had just offered her an olive branch in the middle of a nightmare and then knocked down five men without breaking a sweat.

"Yes."

"Good. The police will want your statement too."

Angelika nodded. Her voice, when it came, was barely a whisper. "Thank you."

Arianne didn’t answer. She turned back toward the club, where Mira’s backup was arriving, where the sirens were pulling up, where the night was far from over.

Sam fell into step beside her, shaking out her hand. Her knuckles were red and swelling. "I haven’t done that in years."

"You were good."

"I was rusty."

"You dropped two men in thirty seconds. You’re not rusty."

Sam grinned. It was tired but real. "Gil’s going to be furious he missed this."

"Gil’s going to be furious about a lot of things when he finds out what happened."

Behind them, the three fans were helping each other up. Rina’s arm was swelling. Mari was already giving her statement to the first officer on the scene. Tess was still recording, the red light still blinking, the footage still running.

Angelika Sinclair sat on the curb with Audrey’s coat draped over her shoulders, watching Arianne walk away.