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That may be what everyone knows it to be, but underneath all the luxuries and exclusivity?

Any property or business owned by a billionaire with ties to the mafia…

It can either be the safest place in the world.

Or a gilded prison that one can only escape through death.

Chapter 8

Not A Chance

"You know, you're the only person I've ever seen mop like the floor did something to you personally."

I stop mid-swipe, and I start to laugh, thinking that he’s joking⁠—

Oh.

Okay.

He’s serious.

Oops.

“Can you show me what I’m doing wrong?”

I look at him expectantly, which causes Patrick’s cheeks to turn red for some reason.

Oh no.

Am I being too demanding?

Or is he turning red with irritation because he can’t believe how much I still suck at my job, considering how I’ve already been working at the club for three weeks?

“It was a joke,” he says in a strangely strangled tone. “You’re actually doing great.”

“Are you sure?”

I honestly want to know because Patrick—like me—also works as a floater at the country club. But unlike me, he’s extremely good at what he does, and I don’t think it has anything to do with the length of his employment.

He’s just a lot more skilled and less clumsy while I always feel like a giraffe on stilettos wherever I go, and my hands always seem to turn into jelly every time I’m asked to take something from Point A to Point B. Things just keep slipping from my hands, and that’s why⁠—

“You can give it to me straight,” I tell him earnestly, “if there’s really something I’m doing wrong⁠—”

“I really was joking,” Patrick insists. “You’re doing everything right.”

“You promise⁠—”

He’s already wincing before I’m done speaking. “Only if you don’t make me say ‘hope to die’.”

I can’t help laughing at this, and more so when Patrick stresses how he’s being serious this time. There was apparently this local urban legend about a man who said those three words, and he ended up dying in less than twenty-four hours. Since I’ve never been the superstitious type, stories like that don’t scare me at all⁠—

“Uh, Karyna?”

But since Patrick is, as he says, serious about it⁠—

“You have my word,” I say solemnly. “I’m not going to make you say those words again.”

And I mean it, too, of course.