The $400 bottle of Ace of Spades hit the floor like a grenade.
Glass shattered across black marble. Golden liquid pooled across the table and dripped onto leather seats. Every head in the VIP section turned toward the mess, then toward the person responsible.
Chad Sterling stood there with his hands raised, laughing like it was the funniest thing he’d ever done.
His letterman jacket stretched across broad shoulders. Perfect white teeth gleamed under amber lighting. Two of his boys flanked him, snickering like hyenas.
"Yo, barback!" Chad snapped his fingers toward the back of the bar. "Yeah, you. Get over here and clean this up."
Damien Black was already moving.
He set down the case of Bud Light he’d been hauling from the storeroom and grabbed the mop and bucket from the supply closet. His jaw tightened as he walked toward the VIP section, but his face stayed flat.
This was his life.
Twenty-two years old. Scholarship student at LA Crest University. Barback at The Vault, a West Hollywood cocktail bar where the same rich kids who bullied him during the day came to burn their parents’ money at night.
Fourteen dollars an hour to mop up their spills and haul their drinks while they sat in VIP booths he’d never be allowed to enter as a customer.
Damien dropped to his knees and began mopping. Glass shards pressed into his skin through cheap black pants, but he didn’t flinch. Flinching only made them laugh harder.
"My bad, my bad," Chad said, not sounding sorry at all. He turned to his boys. "You know how much this bottle costs? Like four hundred bucks. That’s probably two weeks of this guy’s rent."
More laughter.
Damien kept mopping. His hands gripped the handle so hard his knuckles turned white, but his face stayed blank. Inside his head, he was calculating exactly how hard he’d need to swing the mop handle to break Chad’s nose.
Probably about 45 degrees. Right at the bridge. One clean swing.
But he couldn’t do that. He needed this job. The scholarship covered tuition but not rent, not food, not the cracked iPhone in his pocket that barely held a charge. Every dollar from The Vault went straight into survival.
"Excuse me."
The voice cut through the laughter like a blade. Cold. Clipped. Expensive.
Damien looked up, and his breath caught in his throat.
Victoria Ashford stood at the edge of the VIP section, staring down at him with eyes so blue they looked photo-shopped. Platinum blonde hair fell straight past her shoulders. A black dress hugged a body that Damien had spent entire lectures trying not to stare at.
Twenty-two. Same age. Same year at LA Crest. Same literature class every Tuesday and Thursday morning. She sat three rows ahead of him and had never once looked back.
Until now.
But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking through him. Like he was a piece of furniture that happened to be kneeling on the floor.
"Chad, you’re being loud," Victoria said. No emotion. Just dry observation. "And you wasted good champagne."
"Baby, come on, it’s just champagne." Chad’s tone shifted instantly from cocky to pleading. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. "I’ll buy another bottle."
Victoria let him hold her, but her expression didn’t change. Her eyes drifted to the floor where Damien was still mopping, and for a fraction of a second, their eyes met.
Damien saw nothing in her gaze. No pity. No disgust. No recognition. Just emptiness. He was invisible to her. A mop-wielding ghost that existed only to clean up messes.
Then she looked away and sat down in the booth. Chad followed, kissing her neck. She let him, but her face remained flat, like she was enduring rather than enjoying.
Damien finished mopping, wrung the cloth into the bucket, and stood up. His knees ached from kneeling in champagne and glass. As he turned to leave, Chad stuck his foot out.
Damien stumbled but caught himself on the edge of the booth. The bucket tipped slightly but didn’t spill.
"Oops," Chad said, grinning. "Watch your step, bro."
Damien turned and looked at him. For one second, just one, he let his mask slip. Something dark flashed behind his eyes. Chad saw it, and his grin faltered for just a moment.
Then Damien smiled. "Sure thing, Chad. Watch your step too. That floor’s slippery."
He walked away before Chad could respond.
Behind the bar, Mia Chen was mixing a cosmopolitan with the kind of speed that came from three years of practice. Twenty-four. Asian-American. Dark hair pulled into a ponytail. A compact, curvy body that the bar’s uniform vest did nothing to hide.
She glanced at Damien as he stuffed the mop back into the closet.
"VIP section?" she asked, already knowing the answer.
"Chad. Spilled champagne. On purpose."
"Let me guess. He called you bro and laughed?"
"Actually, he called me barback first, then bro. So at least I got a promotion."
Mia snorted. She finished the cosmo and slid it across the bar to a waiting server. "You know, one day you’re going to snap and hit him with that mop. And I’m going to pretend I didn’t see it."
"If I hit him with the mop, I’d want you to film it. That’s content right there."
Mia laughed, and the tension in Damien’s shoulders eased just a fraction. She was the only person at The Vault who treated him like a human being. Eight months of working together had made her the closest thing he had to a work friend.
His phone buzzed. He pulled it out and checked the screen. A text from Chloe Vega.
Chloe: Bro. You alive?
Damien: Barely. Chad just made me mop up $400 worth of champagne.
Chloe: Lmao. Did you lick it off the floor at least? Get your money’s worth?
Damien: Considering it.
Chloe: Come over after your shift. I have pizza and Red Dead 2. You need to decompress before you commit a felony.
Damien: Bet.
He pocketed his phone and glanced at the clock. Two more hours until close. Two more hours of serving drinks to people who looked through him like glass.
The rest of the shift dragged.
Damien hauled cases, restocked ice, wiped down tables, and avoided the VIP section. Chad’s group stayed until last call, drinking and laughing and throwing money around like confetti. When they finally left, Chad slapped a crumpled twenty on the bar as a tip for Mia and didn’t even glance at Damien.
Mia split the tip. Ten bucks each.
"Big money," she said dryly.
"I’m retiring tomorrow," Damien replied.
He helped her close up, then walked out through the back door into the alley. Rain was coming down hard, turning Hollywood streets into rivers of reflected neon. His bike was chained to a pipe behind the dumpster. A rusty single-speed bought off Craigslist for fifty bucks.
He unlocked it and started pedaling toward South Central. Rain soaked through his jacket in seconds. His phone died halfway home, the screen flickering out as the battery gave up.
By the time he reached his apartment, he was drenched, shivering, and starving.
His studio was on the third floor of a building that should have been condemned a decade ago. The elevator hadn’t worked in months, so he took the stairs. The hallway smelled like mildew and cheap weed.
Inside, he peeled off wet clothes and stood under a shower that took four minutes to produce lukewarm water. He ate a bowl of plain rice with soy sauce because that was all he had left. Then he sat on the edge of his bed in his boxers, staring at the wall.
His body ached. His knees were bruised from kneeling in glass. His bank account had $43 in it. Rent was due in three days and he didn’t have it. His phone was dead. His bike was rusting. His life was a joke.
The worst part wasn’t Chad. The worst part wasn’t even the money.
The worst part was the look in Victoria Ashford’s eyes. Or rather, the absence of a look. She hadn’t seen him. Not really. He was a background character in her world. A prop. Something that existed below her line of sight.
Damien lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. Water dripped from a crack in the plaster, landing on the floor in a steady rhythm.
"I swear to God," he muttered to nobody. "If I had money, I’d burn this whole city down."
The dripping stopped.
Damien frowned and looked up. The crack was still there, but the dripping had ceased. The room went completely silent. No rain. No traffic. No noise from the neighbors.
Then a blue light filled his vision.
Not from the ceiling. Not from outside. From directly in front of his face. A floating screen, translucent and glowing, materialized in the air about two feet from his eyes.
[Host detected.]
[Eligibility confirmed.]
[Initiating binding sequence...]
Damien sat up so fast his head spun. The screen stayed floating in front of him, tracking his movement. He swiped at it with his hand. His fingers passed through it like smoke.
"What the fuck," he whispered.
[Binding complete.]
[Welcome to the Lust Rebate System.]
[Host: Damien Black]
[Age: 22]
[Level: 1]
[Analyzing host vitals...]
[Analysis complete. Host physical condition: Below average. Host financial condition: Critical. Host sexual experience: Minimal.]
[Generating first quest...]
Damien stared at the screen. His heart hammered so hard he could feel it in his throat. He tried to tell himself he was dreaming. He tried to tell himself the exhaustion and hunger had finally cracked his brain.
But the screen was still there. Glowing. Waiting.
[Daily Quest Generated:]
[Target: Mia Chen. Co-worker. Sexual frustration level: 87%.]
[Quest: Seduce Mia Chen before the next shift.]
[Reward: +50 EXP, +$500, Unlock Skill: Pheromone Release Level 1]
[Time limit: 48 hours.]
[Penalty for refusal: -2 Charm, -2 Stamina, System shutdown for 24 hours.]
[Accept quest? Y/N]
Damien’s mouth hung open. He read the text three times. Then he read it again.
Mia. The same Mia who split a ten-dollar tip with him thirty minutes ago. The same Mia who called him bro and laughed at his jokes. The same Mia with the ponytail and the curves that he’d been secretly staring at for eight months.
A timer appeared at the bottom of the screen.
[47:59:58]
It was already counting down.