The Bratva’s Triplet Babies

Chapter 1

KATIE

The padlock on the café door is new, its brass body bright against the scratched chain. Beyond the glass, chairs stand upside down on tables scattered with yesterday’s sugar packets. The notice at eye level has begun to curl in the evening heat.

I read it twice, although the first line tells me everything. The café closed without warning, employees must stay out, and payroll may be delayed. The email rejects my message as I try the manager again.

For nine months, I opened this place in the predawn dark, when the windows reflected an empty street and coffee smelled stronger than the sanitizer on my hands.

I learned which crews tipped and washed pitchers until steam dampened my hair.

Yesterday the manager promised late checks would clear, but today her phone goes to voicemail with eleven days’ wages locked inside.

Under the awning, my banking app shines too brightly against the dark screen. Checking holds sixty-three dollars, with four more in savings. Rent is overdue, and my landlord has already mentioned eviction.

Please advise when full payment can be expected.

Advice is free, so at least one of us can afford it.

I know how to stretch food until hunger becomes a dull pressure I can sleep through; losing the apartment frightens me more. Cherry has built a life there, and I refuse to make her dismantle it because the café owner stole my wages.

A bus exhales at the curb, but the route number isn’t mine, so I start walking.

Atlanta has kept the day’s heat trapped in brick and pavement. By the time I cut through the pharmacy lot forty minutes later, sweat has gathered under my bra, and exhaust lies bitter on the back of my tongue.

By the time our building appears, dusk has turned its brick the color of old rust. A twenty-four-hour laundromat glows at street level beside a diner whose broken sign keeps one pink letter burning for no one but the moths.

Our apartment occupies the back corner, where warm detergent air from a laundry vent softens the sour smell of the dumpsters and the fire escape lays a crooked ladder of shadow across our windows.

An envelope is wedged into the apartment frame, cream paper against peeling blue paint.

Inside, the rooms hold the warm, mismatched clutter of two women building a home from whatever survived another life: a thrift-store lamp with a crooked shade, our chipped mugs beside the sink, Cherry’s cosmetics bright across the scarred table we call a desk.

Nothing matches except the effort. The place is small enough for her perfume to reach my bedroom and the laundromat’s machinery to tremble faintly through the floor, but after four years, every imperfect object knows where it belongs.

Cherry sits cross-legged on the floor with one eye finished in black liner, the other still bare, her mirror balanced on a milk crate amid brushes.

She dances at Velvet Fortune five nights a week, using her afternoons for online cosmetics classes at that scarred table.

She sees the envelope through the mirror. “How bad?”

I hold it up as I close the door. “Decorative eviction threat. Heavy paper. Very tasteful.”

I lower myself beside her and open the envelope, although I worked out the total during every block home. With a late fee sitting below the rent, emptying both accounts wouldn’t cover half.

After four years with me, Cherry can distinguish my silence from surrender.

She caps her eyeliner. “What happened to payroll?”

“The café closed, and the owner locked everyone out.” I slide the notice beneath my thigh, then show her the rejected email. “Management has chosen death or witness protection. Either would explain the phone situation.”

Cherry takes my phone, reads the message, and sets it facedown. “I can cover part of the rent.”

“You covered the power bill,” I say.

“I also bought groceries because electricity and food are two of my spoiled little habits.” Cherry reaches for the envelope, but I keep my leg on it. “Katie, I’ve got cash coming in tonight. Let me help.”

“You need the money for your certification.”

She sits back on her heels. “Then come earn some with me.”

I glance at the rhinestone case near her knee. “At the club?”

“George needs another dancer tonight,” she says. “You’d do one private dance at a time, keep whatever you refuse to remove, then come home with cash.”

I can be naked with someone I choose, but a room full of paying strangers is different. Under those lights, their attention would catch every hesitation, and I can’t tell whether directing all those eyes would feel powerful or leave me peeled open.

“No,” I say.

Cherry picks up a brush, turning it between her fingers. “You’ve trained most of your life. The women at Velvet Fortune dance too, even if the costumes weren’t designed with fabric in mind.”

“With their tits out,” I add.

“Tits don’t cancel technique.”

I laugh, and Cherry reaches across the makeup spread between us to take my hand.

“You choose what comes off,” she says. “Nobody touches without permission. George throws men out for arguing, even the rich ones. On an ordinary night, you’ll make enough to get the landlord off your back.”

“What happens on a bad night?” I ask.

“You still make more than sixty-three dollars.”

My black duffel waits under the coffee table, with my identification in the outer pocket. The photographs I care about lie flat inside a zippered compartment.

At fourteen, I came home from school to find garbage bags beside the front door because my placement had ended during algebra. A caseworker drove me to another house in time for dinner, leaving one bag behind with my winter coat inside it, and after that, everything important traveled together.

Leaving foster care didn’t cure the habit; I unpack what I use during the week, but the rest stays zipped within reach in case another home turns temporary.

Cherry squeezes my fingers, and she knows the story, so she doesn’t promise safety with the landlord’s envelope trapped under my leg.

“I’d need an audition,” I say.

“You need identification,” Cherry says. “I sent George last month’s video, when you fixed my floor routine.”

“You recorded that?”

“I record everything when I rehearse.” Cherry retrieves her lipstick. “He saw your turns. I told him about the scholarship program too.”

The state arts scholarship covered ballet through my last year in care, until aging out ended the tuition. Work replaced the studio because rent couldn’t wait for talent to become useful. Seven years later, my body remembers combinations I have nowhere to perform.

I pull the notice from under my thigh. A damp half-moon darkens one corner, proof that I’ve been sweating against the paper as I pretend another answer might appear. The fear stays, but the decision gives me somewhere to put it. “One shift,” I say.

Cherry sets down the lipstick. “One shift. Keep your bottoms on, and I’ll stay close. If you hate it, I’ll bring you home.”

I fold the notice along its existing crease. “If anyone calls me sweetheart, I’m charging extra.”

“Now you understand the industry.”

As Cherry finishes her makeup, I shower in hot water that loosens the smell of coffee from my hair while I shave my legs, scrub café grease from under my nails, then use her lotion wherever the costume might expose skin.

Steam clears slowly from the mirror, revealing puffy eyelids above tired brown eyes and wet hair hanging below my shoulders.

Across my right knee, a pale line marks where a broken bathroom tile cut me during my final foster placement.

I was seventeen when the wound went deep enough for butterfly bandages, though nobody considered the injury worth a clinic visit.

My breasts are full above a waist narrowed by dance. The muscles above both knees tighten when I rise onto my toes. Low-paying work changed what I did with my body, but it never taught my legs to forget.

Cherry works curls into my dry hair with a hot iron, then blends makeup over the shadows under my eyes.

“Too much?” she asks.

Black liner lengthens my eyes as deep red lipstick makes my mouth fuller. Warm powder erases the shadows left by a sleepless week, leaving a face that belongs under club lights rather than behind a café counter at dawn.

I like being made this visible because Cherry hasn’t hidden me; she has chosen what the room notices first, and I like that control.

“Enough,” I tell her.

Two hours later, the club’s bass reaches George’s office through the floor. Under a brass lamp, he checks my license as the steel door behind him seals with an electronic lock. “Katie Alba, twenty-five.”

“Still true as of this morning.”

George places the license beside a short contract. “Cherry says you’ve got stage training.”

“Ballet and contemporary.” I glance at the brass pole near his filing cabinets. “Enough pole work to know gravity holds grudges.”

His mouth lifts at one corner. “Keep your phone locked up. Drinks come from our bar or stay sealed. A client touches only where you place his hand. If anyone ignores you, signal security.”

George waits while I read; under the club’s rules, I can refuse a dance or keep any costume piece on, and ending a private session won’t cost me the base pay.

On a second page, the Diamond Draw is explained: every available dancer reaches blindly into a velvet bag of fake gems ahead of the premium-room assignments.

The colors represent spending tiers, with the single clear diamond assigning the wealthiest man and guaranteeing the dancer’s fee regardless of seniority.

I initial both pages, and George taps the blank line near the bottom. “What stage name do you want?”

I look at Cherry, whose dark hair falls to the middle of her back above a short red dress. Club makeup sharpens her eyes, but her smile is the one she wears when stealing my cereal.

“Kitty,” she says.

I stare at her. “You want me to call myself Kitty?”

“Men tip women named Kitty,” Cherry says. “Nobody tips a woman named Municipal Debt.”

George removes his glasses. “Kitty works.”