“Love you too. Don’t make out with that bartender for longer than necessary.”
“Define necessary.”
“Alex.”
“Kidding. Mostly.” She squeezes my hand one more time. “Five minutes. Then we’re getting drunk and going home and never doing this again.”
“Lies.”
“Total lies.” She grins, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Go. I’ll be right here.”
Five minutes. It’s nothing.
It’s forever. It’s the time it takes to strangle someone, according to the true crime podcasts.
It’s two hundred heartbeats, if your heart beats normally, which mine hasn’t in weeks.
Alex takes her post and I’m alone in a way that feels different from regular alone.
This is Dahlia-alone.
This is last-woman-standing alone.
This is wearing-evidence-while-hunting-a-killer alone.
The ring throbs against my chest and I wonder if this is how she felt. Right before.
So I step through.
Into the VIP lounge.
Sixteen
Quiet settlesaround me the moment I walk through those VIP doors.
Not the comfortable kind of quiet. The kind that presses against your eardrums after hours of bass-heavy club music. The kind that makes you hyperaware of your own breathing.
I definitely don’t belong here.
It isn’t that I’m not dressed the part—Alex made sure of that. Black dress, heels that could kill a man, enough makeup to look like I have my shit together.
It’s the way I’m standing. The way my shoulders are too tight. The way my hand keeps drifting toward my throat before I force it back down.
The air feels thick. Just inhaling causes my lungs to squeeze. Or maybe that’s the smoke that hangs up here like a cloud—cigar smoke, expensive and heavy, the kind that coats your throat and reminds you exactly how much money is in this room.
Ever so slowly, I make my way toward the bar on the right side of the open space.
Along the left wall are cubicles—booth seating, but make it rich. Deep leather couches instead of chairs, small tables in the center, and thick green curtains hanging from the tall ceiling.Velvet, probably. The kind you want to touch and also know you shouldn’t.
Some curtains are open. Some are closed.
I try not to think about what’s happening behind the closed ones.
What strikes me most is the soundproof glass to the right—floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the dance floor below. Down there, bodies pulse to EDM that I can feel vibrating through the floor even up here.
Up here? Jazz. Soft, sultry, the kind that makes you feel like you’re in a 1940s noir film except with better lighting and worse decisions.
It’s a paradox. A jazz lounge floating above a nightclub. Old money pretending it doesn’t hear the chaos it profits from.
