Chapter 8 ; The Coffee Between Wars
1520 Words
The world outside Rhea’s café was always loud — sirens, tires screeching, whispers of who died last night and who might tomorrow.
But inside, it was warm.
Low jazz. Cinnamon steam. Soft light through tinted glass.
Luca came in bleeding one night. Nothing dramatic — just a split lip, bruised knuckles, the usual story in a city like theirs.
Rhea didn’t flinch. She didn’t even ask his name. Just handed him a towel and said,
“Bathroom’s at the back. Don’t drip on my floor.”
He smirked. “You’re not scared?”
“I serve people scarier than you every night,” she replied, wiping the counter.
When he came back, the towel stained with red, she poured coffee into a chipped mug and slid it across.
“No charge,” she said. “You look like someone who needs something real.”
That became the start of something wordless.
Luca came back — never the same hour twice. Sometimes with bruises, sometimes with silence.
He never told her who he worked for, and she never asked.
But sometimes, when he thought she wasn’t looking, he’d watch the way she wiped down the tables as if trying to erase the city’s sins.
And sometimes, when he left, she’d lock the door and breathe out a prayer for a man she didn’t know.
Weeks turned into something softer.
He’d bring her supplies when the delivery trucks didn’t come — sugar, coffee beans, even flowers once.
And one night, after a gunfight broke out just outside, she found him shielding her behind the counter, whispering,
“You shouldn’t be in a place like this.”
Her answer came quiet, trembling, but true:
“Maybe I was waiting for someone who wouldn’t run.”
---
The café clock ticked too loud that morning.
Outside, the street was half-asleep — just early truck engines and the smell of cheap fuel mixing with rain. Rhea liked those hours before the world remembered what it was. Before men with guns started their day.
Luca hadn’t been in for three nights. Not that she counted.
She poured two cups instead of one anyway.
Old habit. Hope was a stupid kind of muscle.
The bell above the door finally rang around 6 a.m.
He walked in, wearing black again — always black — but the jacket was cleaner, heavier. Expensive.
And when she looked close enough, she saw the small glint of a company emblem at his collar: Volvo Industries Security Division.
Rhea frowned. “That’s new.”
Luca gave her the ghost of a smile. “Work found me. Easier than I expected.”
“You sure it’s not the other way around?”
He didn’t answer.
She set down his coffee — the chipped mug, always the same one — and leaned on the counter.
“You left here with bruises. You come back wearing a uniform. You’re either lucky or lying.”
Luca’s eyes softened. “Maybe both.”
He told her it was private security. Data centers. Simple stuff.
She didn’t believe him, but she didn’t press. Not yet.
Sometimes it was safer not to know the name of the building that paid for your coffee.
But later that day, when she went to the back door to take out the trash, a black car was parked across the street.
Two men inside. No coffee cups. No laughter. Just waiting.
When she came back in, Luca’s empty cup was still steaming.
He’d left quietly, like always — but this time, she saw a folded napkin under his mug.
“If I don’t show for a while, keep the lights off at closing.”
---
That night, Rhea locked up early. She wiped the counters until the scent of bleach stung her eyes.
And for the first time, she turned the sign to Closed before midnight.
Because somewhere out there, between Aston Volvo’s empire and the city’s shadowed streets, a man she barely knew had started working for a devil —
and she could already feel the hell it would bring to her door.
---
The sun in Johannesburg had a cruel way of shining — too bright, too clean, as if it tried to bleach away every secret.
But not all things could be washed with light.
Margot Volvo sat in her garden, trimming white roses she never let bloom fully. The thorns reminded her of her son — beautiful, sharp, impossible to hold without bleeding.
When the gate opened, the maid hurried forward, whispering something in Zulu.
Margot didn’t look up. “If it’s another journalist, tell them I’m dead.”
But it wasn’t.
The heels came first — slow, deliberate.
Then the perfume. Familiar. Expensive. Poisonous.
Evelyn.
Aston’s ex-fiancée. The woman who’d once built him an empire from stolen codes and quiet betrayal.
“Mrs. Volvo,” Evelyn greeted softly, her voice the kind that smiled while cutting. “You look… alive. I almost thought grief had taken you for good.”
Margot’s shears stopped mid-air.
“I see South Africa hasn’t changed your manners,” she murmured. “What do you want?”
Evelyn didn’t sit when offered.
“I want your son ruined,” she said simply. “Completely. Publicly. You owe me that much.”
Margot’s eyes flickered — a mother’s instinct clashing with a sinner’s shame.
“You think threatening me will bring him back to you?”
Evelyn smiled. “I don’t want him back. I want him undone. You hid in this country because you know the answers to way too many questions and you thought no one would find you. But I did. If you don’t make Aston cooperate when the time comes… I’ll tell Aanya Darlington everything.”
Margot’s face went still. Then, slowly, she set her shears down.
“You don’t understand, child,” she said quietly. “My son doesn’t need my protection. He is the danger. You come here thinking you can wound him with truth — but truth is his favorite weapon.”
Evelyn’s voice shook, just slightly. “Then you’ll protect him?”
Margot’s tone hardened. “No. I’ll protect what’s left of him. There’s a difference.”
She rose, smoothing her white dress, her eyes glinting with something that wasn’t mercy.
“If you ever bring Aanya’s name into this again, I will end you before my son has the chance to.”
And for the first time, Evelyn realized — Aston might have inherited his ruthlessness, but his mother was where it was born.
As Evelyn left the estate, the gardener paused his work and glanced up. The white roses Margot had been trimming were bleeding red where her shears had slipped.
---
The silence after Evelyn left was heavier than her words.
Even the birds seemed to know better than to sing near Margot’s garden.
The sun had begun to fall, painting long, thin shadows across the marble floors. Margot sat where she always did at this hour — on the veranda, one hand wrapped around a porcelain teacup, the other shaking slightly as she reached for the letters.
There were hundreds of them.
All unopened.
Each addressed in the same handwriting: Aston L. Volvo.
Her son hadn’t written in years, not since he found out she’d known about Yvette Simpson’s death — Aanya’s mother. He didn’t know how much she’d known, or how far she’d gone to keep it buried.
But someone else did.
A door creaked softly from the west wing — the one she kept locked, the one the staff pretended didn’t exist.
Margot rose, her movements brittle but deliberate. She slipped her keys from around her neck and unlocked the door.
The air inside was stale, thick with dust and old perfume.
And there, in the center of the room, stood a portrait.
Two women.
Younger. Smiling.
One was Margot. The other — unmistakably — Yvette Simpson.
Her throat closed.
She hadn’t looked at the painting in over twenty years.
“You were always the brave one,” she whispered to the painted face. “You wanted power, I wanted peace. And somehow… we both destroyed everything.”
The wind shifted through the open balcony, brushing against the white curtains. For a moment, Margot could almost hear Yvette’s voice — that sharp, laughing tone that used to fill the corridors before greed swallowed them both.
Then came a knock at the door.
Soft. Hesitant.
It was her housekeeper. “Madam,” the woman said in a thick accent, eyes averted. “A call. From Europe. They said it’s… urgent.”
Margot steadied herself, gripping the edge of the frame.
“Who is it?”
“They said didn't leave a name.”
Margot’s pulse faltered. She didn't need a name, the lack of a name screamed who was behind it. She set down the keys, straightened her spine, and whispered to the portrait,
“It seems the devil’s found me again.”
Then she walked out to answer the call — knowing full well this was how the past begins to burn its way back into the present.
---
- Writer
