By day, I make sure my father is up and about, eating, showering, working his part time job at the hardware store.
By night, I belong to an exclusive member’s club.
Vivienne has been assigning me host duties every shift, which is one source of relief. I’m not a natural service provider, so it’s taken me a while to pick it up. Everything I’ve learned since high school has equipped me to assess a person’s physical and mental form before inserting a needle into their skin, not to carry out dark web background checks before offering champagne.
The other source of relief comes from having not seen Il Diavolo since that first night.
Hallie said it’s normal to not see him for days at a time, but that doesn’t completely sedate the butterflies fluttering deep in my stomach at the prospect of him walking through the curtain.Especially since they’re not the kind of butterflies I like—they’re borne of fear, not excitement.
Unfortunately, I still feel as though I’m being watched—every second of every shift. The gazes trail after me, weighing heavily when my back is turned.
Some look away quickly, but others don’t try to hide the fact they’re staring. They don’t seem to care that it makes the hairs on my arms rise and my stomach turn. It’s like they all know who I am, and their curiosity has zapped them of common decency.
While I’ve taken over the hosting duties this past week, Hallie has been serving customers elsewhere in the club. I don’t know exactly where ‘elsewhere’ is but it sounds even more exclusive than the main lounge, and now that I’ve gotten over my initial nerves, I’m curious.
Two more couples enter and I sit them at tables then arrange drinks before returning to the podium, just as Hallie emerges from a heavy curtain with a tray of empty glasses. She sees me smile and heads over after setting the tray down on the bar.
“Where are you working tonight?” I ask.
She glances side to side discreetly then leans in. “I’m serving drinks in the VIP lounge out back.”
“There’s a VIP lounge? I thought this whole place was one giant VIP lounge.”
“Well…” she says, quietly. “It’s for a different kind of VIP.”
I reduce my words to a whisper. “What kind of VIP?”
Hallie lifts her mouth toward my ear. “Remember when I told you the brothers have other…jobs?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well… The VIP lounge is forbusinessmeetings.”
I draw back slowly, a small frown dipping my brow. By ‘business,’ I’m guessing she means ‘criminal.’
“What else goes on here?” I ask, slightly afraid of the answer. “Masked rendezvous,businessmeetings… What is this place? Really?”
“All kinds of stuff,” she says with a shrug. “It’s a mafia-owned club, Fi, you knew that. This room…” she gestures toward the lounge we’re standing in,” is probably the mostconventionalpart of Velvet.”
My eyes widen as I take in the scant outfits and masks again. “Really?”
“Yeah,” she says, breezily. “This is just a small part of the club. There’s the VIP lounge, another floor above this where private shows take place…”
“Private shows?” My voice climbs a little higher with each new revelation.
“Yeah, dancing, burlesque, sex shows, peep shows, voyeurism stuff.”
She lists them off as though she’s checking items off a grocery list while I’m pretty sure my appetite has taken a leave of absence.
“There’s a basement where the gambling takes place, there’s a whole ton of suites on the eighteenth floor where guests go, to… well, enjoy each other.”
She winks conspiratorially while I focus on not choking.
“And Il Diavolo and Remo live on the twentieth floor—the penthouses.”
“Right.” I file the information away in a mental box labelled ‘None Of My Business,’ which, judging by the way my pulse jumps, is exactly where my brain stores the things it's most interested in.
“What about the other two brothers?”