Chapter 2
Lidiya
The sun hits the computer screen in the local library as I stare at the application form.
I’ve already filled it out, deleted it and filled it out again.
Chewing the inside of my lip, I sigh. It’s five hundred pounds handed out just for participating.
Even if no one bids on me, I still get the five hundred pounds.
It covers the rent on my crappy bedsit for another month.
It gives me breathing room. It gives me a chance to keep looking for a second job to top my waitress wage.
Tears prick my eyes. Since my parents died and left me with a debt in the high five figures with one of London’s most feared Bratva loan sharks, I started hoarding tiny decisions like they’re gold. Take the shift no one wants. Eat toast for dinner. Say yes to things that make my stomach drop.
I hover over the submit button like it’s wired to an explosive.
Five hundred pounds. For standing on a stage and letting strangers decide what I’m worth for one night.
It’s not sex, the application form says.
It’s a “companion experience.” The contract is clear: no obligation beyond the date.
I’ve read it three times. Alisha from my café job put me onto this. She is doing it. If she can, I can.
I close my eyes and wonder how, at twenty-eight years old, I ended up in this position.
But I am. There is no turning back. I can’t make waves with the Bratva, and I can’t not have a roof over my head.
Food, I can do without. Or I can scavenge from the skip behind the café.
My bedsit, a place to be safe at night, even if I’m starving and cold, is non-negotiable.
Opening my eyes, I press submit.
The page refreshes. My breath catches. Success. A chirp in my inbox follows it like an echo—confirmation, details, instructions. My finger hesitates over the mouse before I open it.
Date: Tomorrow.
Venue: Disclosed on the day.
Payment: Cash, envelope, after you step off the stage.
Dress code: Black. Minimal jewellery.
I snort softly at that last part. Jewellery. My five-pound fake gold studs are about as much jewellery as I own. I tap my nails on the desk and sign out of the computer.
The library is quiet enough to hear each turn of a page, each muffled cough.
A poster about mindfulness curls at the edge, held by old Blu Tack.
Outside the wide windows, traffic flows like blood through capillaries.
People do normal things. Buy coffee. Complain about the weather that can’t decide if it’s drizzle or abject misery.
Glancing at the clock, I see my shift starts in twenty minutes. Standing, I nod to the librarian. She gives me that small sympathetic smile I’ve been collecting all my life—the one people hand you when they can tell you’re trying.
After a five-minute walk, the café looms into view.
It smells like heaven when I arrive. Fresh-baked pastries, bread and coffee make my stomach growl.
My manager raises an eyebrow at the time, knowing I won’t get paid overtime, even ten minutes’ worth, and flicks her chin at the espresso machine.
I pin on my name badge and start pulling shots.
The hissing steam drowns out my thoughts, which is a mercy.
“Hey,” Alisha says, bustling like a ray of sunshine.
I give her a weak smile and step aside as she takes over the espresso machine, and I move to table service.
“Did you fill it out? Deadline is noon.”
“Yes,” I say quietly. “Bit hard not to.”
“Right?” she agrees, although her five hundred will probably be spent on a new outfit, nails and hair, whereas mine will go towards shelter.
We are not the same.
We aren’t even friends. I find nothing likeable about her. We work together, and that’s about it.
She chatters about a guy who tipped her with a crisp twenty and a wink. I nod, smile where appropriate, cleaning a table left in a disgusting state by the patrons. Some people just have no respect. I move like a metronome—menus, orders, plates, receipts. It makes the minutes disappear.
The bell over the door gives one bright, stupid chirp—and the air seems to thin around him. Black coat. No tie. A face that looks like it was carved by God himself.
Not flashy. Not local.
My lungs compress.
He chooses a table in my section, the one with a clear line of sight to the door and the counter, like he’s done this in a hundred rooms. When I reach him, he tilts his head, eyes skimming my name badge, then my face.
“Miss Kareva,” he says, crisp and polite, like the words cost him nothing.
“Tea?” I offer, my smile stiff in place.
“Black coffee.”
He doesn’t ask how I am. Men like him never do.
My voice comes out thin. “I pay on Fridays.”
“Today,” he says. The corners of his mouth lift in what passes for a smile, but his blue eyes stay on mine, unblinking. Like waiting is a skill he’s been rewarded for. “Not this week.”
“Excuse me?” I stammer.
“Your schedule changed.”
My blood turns to ice, and my head swims.
“I don’t have it,” I say. My tongue feels like cotton.
He doesn’t blink. “That is not my problem.”
“I get paid on Friday.” The words scrape out. “You know that. You always know that.”
“Voronov wants it today.”
“How much extra to make it tomorrow?” I hate that I ask, but it slides out, survival wearing my mouth like a mask.
A patient silence sits between us while the espresso machine hisses and someone laughs too loudly near the door. He studies my face like he’s memorising it for later.
“Twenty per cent,” he says. “And you’ll cover the inconvenience.”
Ice crackles up my spine. “How much of a fee?”
“I’ll decide tomorrow how much of an inconvenience it is.”
“I don’t have twenty per cent,” I say. My teeth ache from clenching. “I don’t have ten.”
His gaze drops to my hands on the tray. He lifts his eyes back to mine, and the corners tilt again. “Then you’ll improvise.”
“I’ll have it Saturday.” I keep my voice low. I don’t want Alisha swooping in with her syrupy pity, loud mouth and extravagant tips.
“Saturday is a day late. Or two days late this week.”
“I know, but you came here today looking for something I don’t have.”
“Saturday. Eight,” he says.
I swallow. “Yes.”
He nods. He’s bored now, the kind of bored that ends with something broken if I push. “If you don’t have cash, I’ll take value.”
“What?”
“Whatever balances the account.” He flicks his fingers at the tray as if granting me permission to fetch his coffee. Conversation over.
I go through the motions. Grind. Tamp. Pull.
The dark liquid pours, and the bitterness hits my nose.
I bring it back on a saucer that clinks more than it should because my hands won’t behave.
I place it down. He doesn’t thank me. He takes a sip and grimaces anyway, because he isn’t here for pleasure. He’s a reminder with a pulse.
“Receipt?” I ask, and the professional tone scrapes my tongue raw.
He smiles without warmth. “Always keep receipts.”
He stays for ten minutes, long enough for my body to memorise his presence and the way the room tightens around him. Then he stands. His coat flares, then settles back into that perfect black line.
The bell over the door chirps when he leaves, cheerful and idiotic.
“Who was that?” Alisha asks, already halfway invested in a story she can tell later. “He was hot.”
Hot is not a word I would use. Scary as fuck is more of an adjective.
I don’t know what this was. I don’t know why he came a day early. I don’t know why he gave me an extra day to pay the full amount.
Alisha is still staring at the door like he might come back for seconds. I wipe my palms on my apron and pretend my pulse isn’t trying to punch out of my throat.
“Just a customer,” I say. It’s flimsy, and she knows it.
“Looks like money,” she chirps. “The kind that tips big.”
“He didn’t tip at all.”
“Ugh,” she says and loses interest immediately.
Good. The less she knows about the monsters that lurk in the dark corners of London, the better for everyone.
She reaches for the chocolate powder like life is a cocoa-dusted miracle.
I return to the tables. I move until the ache in my feet overrides the ache in my chest. My brain tries to do sums it already knows: amount due, tips expected, rent, electric on the emergency credit, toothpaste squeezed from the crimped end.
Saturday feels like a cliff edge in fog.
Twenty per cent of a hundred pounds is extortionate.
Plus, whatever fee he wants on top. That five hundred pounds will be eaten into well before my rent is due, and I feel sick.
Tears prick my eyes again, and I look away as a customer stares at me with sympathy.
Alisha giggles behind the counter, flirting with the cute guy, and he tells her to “Keep the change, love.”
I’m missing a trick here. I’m miserable, a mess—not even a hot one—and I get a few quid a day in tips. Alisha rakes it in.
Depression, fierce and real, sets in when I know standing up on that stage tomorrow night is going to be a humiliating disaster if I don’t put in a bit of effort.
I have one black dress from my parents’ funeral, but it looks like misery personified.
Maybe I could shorten it and add a belt to cinch my waist. Something quick and easy by tomorrow night that won’t leave me standing in silence with everyone avoiding looking at me because they don’t want to spend their hard-earned money for even a minute with me.
Sneaking a look at Alisha as she straightens her shoulders and smiles at the next customer as if they are the only person on the planet, I take in her hairstyle: a high ponytail pulled tight, her straight dark hair glossy and beautiful.
Her eyes are bright, her lips a lovely shade of dark pink.
She laughs at something the old woman says as she pours out her drink, and again, the tip that slides her way is the change from a tenner.
Determined, I grit my teeth and turn to the two women who have come in out of the rain, laughing and chatting. I give them a bright smile and hope it doesn’t look too creepy.
They smile back, friendly and grateful when I show them to a table. “Two lattes, please, hun,” the blonde one says.
“Of course,” I say with an air of someone without a care in the world. “Anything else? Can I tempt you with a fresh pastry?”
The redhead bites her lip and looks over her shoulder at the counter. “Oh, I shouldn’t. I’m watching my weight.”
“You’re always watching your weight,” the blonde snickers.
“For what it’s worth, you look amazing,” I say with a genuine smile now.
Her eyes light up as she looks back at me. “Oh, go on then. I’ll take the hazelnut chocolate croissant.”
“Make it two,” her friend says.
“Coming right up,” I say and turn on my heel, realising that wasn’t so hard. I have just become so drowned in my own problems that I forgot how to be happy.
Twenty minutes later, the two women tip me big and clatter out into the rain, and I take a moment to compose myself before I cry for real this time.