LILY SHOULD HAVE WARNED ME
1010 Words
CHAPTER FOUR
The hotel was the kind that didn't ask questions.
Small. Cheap. Cash only. The woman at the front desk took my money without looking up from her magazine and handed me a key attached to a plastic tag with the number six written on it in permanent marker.
Perfect.
The room smelled like old carpet and somebody else's memories. The window looked out over a dumpster. The mattress had opinions.
Lily sat on the edge of it and looked at me.
"Are you going to tell me what is happening?"
"No."
"Sylvia…"
"A man wants something from me. I said no. We stay here two days then go to yours and stay low." I took her hand. "That is all you need to know right now."
She looked at me for a long moment with those quiet eyes that always saw more than they were supposed to.
"It's not going to blow over," she said softly.
I said nothing.
Which was answer enough.
We moved to Lily's house three days later. Small and warm and on the other side of the city. Plants on every windowsill. Mismatched curtains. A kitchen that smelled like her candles.
It felt safe.
I almost believed it.
One week passed.
Daniel Conti's name was everywhere without him being anywhere. Men asking questions all over Florence. Expensive questions…the kind backed by money that made people's memories suddenly very sharp. Every street. Every neighbourhood.
Every corner of the city turned over like a man with infinite resources and infinite patience.
I stayed inside.
Stared at the ceiling at night.
Thought about two things pressing on my chest like stones I couldn't move.
The first was the food. Lily's cupboards were getting quieter by the day. We were stretching everything, pretending neither of us noticed, eating less than we should.
The second was my mother's hospital bill. Due in four days. I had checked the portal three times that morning and the number hadn't changed and it wasn't going to change.
My mother didn't know I was hiding. She just knew her treatment needed paying for and her daughter had always…always…found a way.
I thought about two million euros sitting untouched on a kitchen table.
I thought about it for a very long time.
Then I got up and made tea and told myself I needed a different plan.
"I'm coming with you tonight," I told Lily the next morning.
She stopped with her mascara halfway to her face and looked at me in the mirror. "No."
"Lily the bill is due in four days…"
"No."
"I need money. You need money. Let me come and help…"
"You don't understand what you're asking." She turned around. Something in her face I hadn't seen before. Uncomfortable.
Guilty. "The place I work is not a regular bar Sylvia."
"Then what is it?"
She looked at me for a long moment.
"Lily."
"It's a gentlemen's club," she said quietly. "I dance. For money.
Eight months. I was never going to tell you because I knew exactly the face you would make…"
"I'm not making a face."
"You're making a face."
"That is just my face." I sat down at her table. "Take me with you. I'll serve drinks. Anything. Please."
She closed her eyes.
"Fine," she said like a woman who already knew she would regret it. "But you stay in the back. You do not go near the main floor."
Lily's boss was a small man with large opinions and eyes that moved over people the way a butcher's eyes moved over a display case.
He saw me the moment we walked in.
Stopped mid sentence.
Looked at me. Looked at Lily. Looked back at me.
"Who is this?"
"My friend. She's here to help with…"
"She's not helping with drinks." He was already moving toward us. "What's your name?"
"Sylvia."
"Sylvia." Like he was trying it on. "You ever performed before?"
"I'm here to…"
"Three times the standard rate. Tonight only." His eyes moved over me once. Decided. "I have an open slot and you are exactly what it needs."
I looked at Lily.
Lily looked at the floor.
"What exactly would I be doing?" I asked.
"Dancing," he said simply. "Outfit's in the back."
I thought about the hospital bill. My mother's voice on the phone last night… tired, trying to hide it. The cupboards. The four days.
"Okay," I said.
Lily made a sound that wasn't quite a word.
The outfit was the smallest thing I had ever worn in my life.
I stood in the back room mirror and understood…fully, finally, completely…what Lily had been trying to tell me all morning.
I came out slowly.
The noise hit me first. Music low and heavy. And underneath it the roar of a crowd that had been drinking for hours and had money in their hands and very loud opinions about everything.
Then they saw me.
The roar got louder.
Bills appeared. Hands raised. Numbers being called out that made my ears ring and my brain short circuit completely.
I stood at the edge of that stage in that tiny outfit feeling more exposed than I had ever felt in my life and tried to remember how to make my legs work.
In the corner…dark, private, a glass of something expensive untouched in front of him…a man sat alone.
He had heard the crowd getting louder. Heard the money being called. Had stood slowly…the particular restlessness of a man who hadn't slept properly in a week…and turned toward the stage and stopped.
Everything about him stopped.
I saw it from where I was standing.
The glass frozen halfway to his mouth.
The moment his eyes found me and what happened in them immediately after shock.
Pure. Unguarded. Absolute.
On the face of a man who had clearly never been shocked by anything in his entire life.
Daniel Conti.
Staring at me from across a crowded room with every piece of his composure completely and utterly gone.
And me on that stage in almost nothing.
Staring back.
- Writer
