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Dorian's POV
Manuel met up with me as I mounted the stairs to the mezzanine level. “I talked to the head of security as soon as I got here. Security cameras caught them coming in, but the cameras upstairs have been down,” he said. “They haven’t worked for over a month.”

Of course, they were down. Why should anything in my life have been simple? “But Vivian and Leonora went upstairs?” Manuel nodded. “And they were alone.”

Knowing they weren’t on the main floor narrowed the scope of our search, but not by much.

The mezzanine wrapped around the entire club. People were writhing and dancing in the strobing lights everywhere I looked. We made our way down one side without spotting them and were coming up the other when a woman in a see-through dress with stars over her nipples threw herself at me. “Buy me a drink?”

“No.”

She somehow managed to smile through a pout. “Buy me a drink and I’ll give you anything you want.”

A few weeks ago, I would have taken her up on her offer for no other reason than that I was bored. I would have fucked this woman’s face, tossed her a few bucks for a drink, and carried on with my night.

Now, she was repulsive.

I shoved her into the leather chair behind her, and she flipped me off. “Asshole!”

I elbowed my way through the crowd, earning glares and nasty looks from people until they realized who I was. Then they fell over themselves to jump out of my way.

Manuel and I worked our way down the other side of the mezzanine, but there was still no sign of them.

“Upstairs?” Manuel suggested.

“You’re the one who dies if we don’t find them, so what the fuck do you think?”

He ducked his head and got us through yet another velvet rope into the third-floor VIP lounge.

We passed rows of private rooms I didn’t even bother checking. Not yet. Because even the thought of my sister or Vivian behind one of those doors was enough to make my blood boil. If I found them in there, everyone inside would be dead.

I marched down the hall and turned into the large viewing area at the back. The lights from the dance floor below flickered dimly off the dark red walls and black leather couches.

For a second, I didn’t see anything. It wasn’t surprising. All the assholes who made it past the VIP rope preferred the anonymity that came with the private rooms. They couldn’t pay to fuck waitresses and blow their brains out on drugs while a sea of people with cellphones partied underneath them.

Then there was a shift in the shadows.

I saw a man standing in the corner, facing the wall. But there was another set of legs between his booted feet. The man shifted…

And I saw her.

Vivian’s face was pale white in the lights shining through the glass. Her eyes fluttered like she couldn’t keep them open. Then she tilted her head. There was a cut on her cheekbone, the beginnings of a bruise underneath it.

Manuel cursed behind me, but I didn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything beyond the rush of blood in my ears.

I crossed the room in three steps, grabbed the dead man by the back of his cheap collared shirt, and dragged him back. The sweaty material ripped in my fist, but I still managed to fling him to the floor.

“What the fuck?” the man slurred. “Who are—”

He looked up at me at the same time I finally saw his face.

“You,” I hissed.

The asshole from the night I met Vivian.

“Hey, man, I—” Brennan started to explain, rumbling through excuses I didn’t hear.

I was too busy watching Vivian slide down the glass as if her legs wouldn’t hold her. Her dress was shoved up around her waist, a scrap of pale lace visible between her legs.

I turned back to where he was still cowering on the floor. “What happens next will hurt you very, very badly.”

Brennan scrambled to his feet, but Manuel was there in a second. He pinned Brennan’s arms behind his back.

Rage I had never felt before coursed through my veins. I could have slammed my fist through his chest and ripped his heart out right there and then.

But I couldn’t stop myself from turning back to Vivian. I needed to know if she was okay. I needed to know exactly how painful a death Brennan deserved.

One problem at a time.

I slipped an arm behind her back and another behind her knees, carrying her over to the couch in the corner. Every inch of her, aside from the bruise on her cheek, was perfect. Fucking flawless.

“Dorian?”