Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Cassandra
Inever really believed in true love—not in the way the movies tried to spoon-feed it to me, not in the way the books made it sound like this holy revelation that cracked people open and stitched them back together again, as if love itself was some celestial surgeon that could mend wounds simply because it felt poetic to imagine it doing so.
I watched all of it; I read all of it, but it always seemed like a fairy tale women built as a coping mechanism, something soft and glittery to cling to, so girls like me wouldn’t give up entirely, wouldn’t allow the weight of real life to crush us before we’d even had a chance to live it.
It was hope, I suppose—thin, pretty hope—hope that one day I would stumble into something that would break me open and make sense of every love song I’d rolled my eyes at since I was old enough to understand that heartbreak existed long before the breaking ever actually happened, long before you even realised you were standing in the blast radius.
“Hey, Cass, you coming out tonight?” Lola calls from the kitchen, her voice bright enough to scrape at the edges of my mood while she fixes up my go-to comfort drink.
Hot chocolate loaded with whipped cream, marshmallows and grated chocolate, because she knows exactly how to weaponise sweetness against me and use it as ammunition when I least expect it.
“Lo, I don’t know. I have to work.”
“Have to?” She leans around the doorway, brow raised, already wearing that look she gets when she’s about to dismantle my excuses one by one, like she’s preparing to pull me apart with a grin.
“Or are you just making bullshit excuses about why you can’t let that gorgeous blonde hair down and have fun for one fucking night? ”
I stare into the mug she’s stirring, pretending the steam is suddenly fascinating, pretending the swirl of chocolate is an answer to my problems.
“I have to work,” I repeat, even though my voice betrays me with a tiny giggle when she presses the mug into my hands and the deep cocoa scent invades every sense I have left intact, curling itself around me like a warm, sugary trap.
“Have to?” she echoes, smirking like she’s been waiting for this moment all damn week.
“Come on, Cass, when have you ever played by the rules?”
“Hey, I’m a good girl.”
The words leave my mouth in a tone even I don’t believe, thin and unconvincing, like a lie dressed in a school uniform.
“Sure you are, babe,” Lola says, stepping closer, eyes glinting with the kind of mischief that has dragged me into trouble more times than I’ll ever admit.
“So…” she trails off, tilting her head at me like she’s watching me crumble in real time, like she knows exactly which part will crack first. “You know you want to.”
“Do I though?” I laugh, mostly because the alternative is admitting she’s right and I’m not emotionally prepared for that level of honesty today.
“Sure, you’re right,” she says with the fakest seriousness I’ve ever heard. “Why would you want a fun night out with your best friend—by the way, that’s me, if you didn’t get the hint—when you could spend a seedy night waiting on men who—”
“Okay, okay, enough. I get it.”
I roll my eyes hard enough to see galaxies.
“Seriously, Cass,” she says, dropping the theatrics for the briefest, most sincere second, “why don’t you quit that fucking hellhole?”
“It pays well.”
“Yeah,” she mutters, grabbing a spoon like it personally offended her, “and one day I’m going to get a call saying they found your body in a ditch.”
I sigh, long and tired, the kind that comes from somewhere deep. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
The worst part is—she wasn’t dramatic, not really.
That thought had crept into my mind more times than I’d admit to anyone.
But bills were bills, and survival didn’t care about comfort or safety, didn’t ask whether you were coping or crumbling. The risk was worth the payoff. It had to be. “If I say yes,” I add, lifting a brow, “will you drop it?”
She makes an exaggerated cross over her heart. “I swear.”
“Okay, I’ll come,” I say, nudging her hip with mine, “no need to get all religious on me.”
“Oh, babe, that was an upside-down cross,” she says with a sinful wink. “We sinners have our ways too.”
“You’re impossible,” I mutter, shaking my head as I bring the cup to my mouth and let the hot, sugary liquid trail down my throat.
A melted marshmallow clings to my lip, syrupy and soft, and I suck it in slowly, wondering—just for a fleeting heartbeat—whether maybe she’s right, whether maybe I need one night that doesn’t feel like survival, one night where I choose something simply because I want it and not because life demands it.
Once my feet hit the wet asphalt, I didn’t regret calling The Starlight Club and telling them I couldn’t make it due to ‘womanly problems’.
I know I could have said I had explosive diarrhoea or the common cold, but if you mention ‘woman problems’ to a man, they shut down instantly.
It’s like even a conversation about blood seeping out of you makes them malfunction, so not inventive, but a sure winner every damn time.
The street around me glistened beneath the amber glow of street lamps, rainwater gathering in fractured puddles that mirrored the city’s chaotic beauty.
Cars hissed past on slick tarmac, their lights stretching into blurred streaks of colour as if the world itself were exhaling in neon.
The night had a pulse — a thrumming, electric heartbeat that vibrated up from the pavement and into my bones — reminding me that out here, everything felt a little more alive, a little more dangerous, and a little less forgiving.
The glittering lights of the night swallowed me as I stepped across the road, my eyes locked on the sign above the doors in neon: ‘Seventh Sin’.
The sign flickered in shades of devilish red and sinful gold, casting the pavement in an otherworldly glow, and I shook my head as I heard Lola’s voice in my mind, “Us sinners have our ways too.”
Sinners, of course. I roll my eyes. That cheeky little minx.
“Well, are you planning on standing on the sidewalk all night?”
I look near the entrance, where Lola stands like she belongs under spotlights, not streetlights — in a glittering pink dress that hugs her body, her auburn hair swaying around her shoulders in soft waves that catch the neon glow as though she’s shimmering from the inside out.
A twinkle burns bright in those sky-blue eyes, mischievous and impossible to ignore. “Get your cute butt in here.”
The moment I walk through the doors, the world shifts, tilting into something darker, thicker, richer. She grips my wrist, dragging me through the coat check, and then I’m swallowed whole.
The air hits me like sex and smoke and bass — low, pulsing beats that rattle the floorboards and settle between my ribs like a second heartbeat. The scent is intoxicating: warm bodies, expensive perfume, sweat, ambition, and sin blending into something that feels more like a spell than air.
Everything is dim, golden, red — like the inside of a mouth about to swallow you whole, a decadent cavern of temptation where shadows bend and throb in time with the music.
Bodies writhe under chandeliers shaped like broken halos, glass shards dangling overhead like celestial debris caught in a perpetual fall.
Some are dancing.
Some are grinding.
Some aren’t even pretending to behave.
Velvet drapes cascade down the walls like rivers of midnight, absorbing sound and giving back nothing but secrecy. The floor is a mosaic of spilled drinks, shimmering heels, and footprints printed in light.
Perfume clings to the air — sickly sweet, sinful, thick with things I can’t name but I can feel.
Hands brush past my hip.
Someone whispers something dark near my ear, and I don’t catch it, but I feel it slither down my spine anyway, leaving goosebumps in its wake.
Velvet ropes section off hidden alcoves where shadows kiss and sinners drink from each other’s mouths. Laughter — low, wicked — ripples from behind curtains, the kind that promises someone is about to make a very bad decision and enjoy every second of it.
A woman in stilettos with red-tipped fingers drags a man by his tie through a curtain that closes too quickly, as if the room itself is greedy for secrets.
The bar glows like temptation itself — a long sweep of polished black stone reflecting crystal glasses lined up like a promise. Bartenders with jawlines sharp enough to hurt move with rehearsed precision, dressed in all black, pouring sins into highball glasses like it’s holy water.
Lola turns to grin at me, backlit by firelight and strobes, and all I can think is — I should not be here.
But then — God, I want to be.
“Isn’t it something?” She smiles, her voice half-lost to the bass.
“It definitely is… something, but Lo?”
“Yeah, babe?”
“This doesn’t seem like your usual hangout spot.”
“Oh, it isn’t, but I’m here for the experience and well… something else.”
“Something else?”
“You’ll see.”
Oh, I did not like the sound of this. I knew it. I fucking knew it — fuck, I should have just taken my chances at The Starlight.
“Cass, don’t look at me like that. I just need to find someone, and then I’m all yours.”
“Someone?”
“I promise I won’t be long.”
“Lola, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me, you’re leaving me.”
“You’re a big girl. I’m sure you can handle being alone for five minutes.”
She winks.
She fucking winks — and then disappears into the sea of bodies, swallowed whole by the rhythm and the heat.
Fucking perfect. My eyes scan the area. A sea of bodies eager to get their next drink cram the bar, and I’m standing here near the bar, stiff, looking like a spare part, when the sea parts and — fuck.
At first, it’s just a shape in the haze — tall, broad, cut from stone — a shadow at the edge of the bar like he doesn’t belong to this world, like the room wasn’t built to hold someone like him.
But then he turns.
And holy fuck.