Chapter 10

The kitchen door opened.

Isla stood there, face dark. “During work hours? What exactly is going on in here?”

The temperature changed at once. Everyone tucked their heads down and rushed back to their stations.

“I fell by myself,” Sophia said, expression blank.

She was not protecting Luna. She wanted peace. A job. A corner in which to survive without attracting more blades.

Isla saw straight through her.

She also had no intention of letting the matter slide. No one created chaos in her kitchen and walked away smiling.

She crooked a finger at Luna. “You. Come here.”

Luna went pale. She swallowed and shuffled forward, each step smaller than the last.

The slap cracked through the kitchen.

Isla caught Luna by the chin and forced her head up. Her voice dropped into something cold enough to cut. “Run your mouth again, and you won’t walk out of Scarlet alive.”

Then she took Sophia by the hand and led her out.

Behind them, Luna watched them leave. Resentment gathered in her eyes like stormwater in a gutter.

In a small staff room, Isla pushed a roll of bandage and a bottle of iodine into Sophia’s arms. “Clean the cuts first.”

Sophia’s eyes burned, then blurred. “Thank you.”

Isla studied her. “What exactly happened between you and Mr. Williams?”

Oliver was not a kind man. Isla had never mistaken him for one. But she had never seen him use such poisonous, deliberate methods against anyone, much less a woman who could barely stand.

Sophia smiled faintly. There was no life in it. “Three years ago, I pushed Oliver’s fiancée down the stairs with my own hands. She’ll spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair because of me.”

Isla tightened her grip around Sophia’s hand. Her answer came without hesitation. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

Sophia broke.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. Her eyes filled first, and that was somehow worse. After days of insults, after pain, after Oliver, after prison following her like a shadow, a woman who had known her for only a handful of days had done the impossible.

She had believed her.

Why could Isla see what she was? Why could this near-stranger offer faith so easily, when Oliver, who had known her half her life, had treated every explanation as trash beneath his shoes?

By sunset, the last of the light spilled across the staff room in warm, exhausted gold.

Sophia slid off the chair and knelt in front of Isla.

“Isla, I have nothing left.” Her voice shook, but the words came clear. “I only want to pay Oliver back as fast as possible. Can you help me?”

Isla’s expression changed. “Sophia...”

“I don’t care anymore,” Sophia said. “As long as I can earn the five million and pay off that debt, I’ll do anything. Even if I have to sell my body.”

In other people’s eyes, that meant selling dignity for money.

But dignity was a luxury for people who still owned their lives. Sophia wanted freedom. Compared with that, pride was a pretty thing already rotting in the ground.

Isla opened her mouth, then closed it.

In the end, she nodded silently.

After settling Sophia, Isla stepped into an empty hallway and called Oliver.

“Mr. Williams,” she said carefully, “Sophia wants to transfer to the hosting floor.”

The words tasted wrong. Scarlet called it public relations, but no one in the building mistook it for office work. It was the hosting floor, where women poured drinks, smiled on command, and kept wealthy clients happy in whatever way the night demanded. Everyone knew which parts of the term were polite fiction.

Isla held her breath, waiting.

The line remained so quiet she almost thought no one was there.

At last, a cold sound came through. “Mm.”

Then Oliver hung up.

In his office, the corner of his mouth lifted.

How long had it taken? Sophia had already lost patience and started revealing her true nature.

If she wanted to perform, then as an old acquaintance, how could he fail to attend and applaud?

Oliver made several calls in succession. “My treat tonight. Come have fun.”

Sophia did not know how much courage it had cost her to say those words to Isla until Isla brought her to a department manager and her panic came rushing back.

Isla’s hand rested lightly on her shoulder. “New employee. She doesn’t know anything yet. Start her on cleaning. Don’t overwork her.”

Sophia looked up, confused.

Isla only gave her a small nod.

Gratitude rose so sharply that Sophia had to smile before it spilled out as something weaker.

The manager looked at the thin, battered woman in front of him and assumed she was another connection hire. He had no fondness for that kind of employee, but no particular malice either. He gave Sophia a uniform, handed over basic instructions, and left her with a mop.

Sophia stood in the utility closet for a moment, staring at the mop handle in her hands.

It was not what she had asked for.

It was mercy wearing a disguise.

The door opened from outside. “Sophia. Sixth floor, room 60. Move faster.”

Private rooms were usually handled by bottle girls and room attendants. Cleaning those spaces was often easier than scrubbing hallways and bathrooms. Sophia did not understand why she had been called, but she did not dare argue.

She picked up her supplies and left.

At the elevator, she pressed the button and waited. When the doors opened, one of the hostesses she had once worked with stood inside.

Sophia had only taken half a step in when the girl shoved her back out.

The hostess swept her with a disgusted look. “What are you doing taking the elevator? You’re a cleaner. You’ll make it filthy.”

The cruelty was so deliberate it barely bothered to pretend otherwise. If cleaners made elevators dirty, then who exactly cleaned the elevators?

Sophia said nothing. She turned toward the stairwell.

The stairwell was dim and warm, lit by yellowish emergency lights that made every landing look half-hidden. People came to Scarlet to drink, flirt, forget themselves, and misbehave. Few guests used the stairs for actual escape. The quiet gave the stairwell a second purpose.

Sophia had climbed only to the second floor when a woman’s soft, breathy moan drifted down.

She stopped.

Around the corner, a man had a woman pinned against the wall, kissing her under the dim light with a carelessness that made the air feel too intimate to breathe.

From Sophia’s angle, the man looked strangely familiar.

She did not want to know why.

She lowered her gaze, tried to move past them without making a sound, and prayed the building would swallow her before anyone noticed.

The man’s eyes opened.

Across the narrow air, his gaze locked on her.

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