Chapter 35

He has yet to appear. He never followed me out of the apartment when I fled, and he hasn’t summoned me back upstairs either. Even hours after coming down here and welcoming the first flow of Alexi’s clientele, I still feel shaken, and I cannot shift the feeling of foreboding and anxiety gnawing at my bones. I would be happy if he stayed upstairs for the rest of the night and sobered up, but I know he needs to be down here for his club’s first night.

I don’t like the side of him I met, and I have no desire to see it again so soon. The confidence in the opinion I formed of him over these last weeks has been shattered, and I am back to feeling like I don’t know him at all. That sinister man from my hospital room and how in awe I was. I should have realised then that he had more layers than an onion, and I had barely taken the top one off.

Alexi aside, everything is going smoothly. We have drunk men molesting half-dressed women as they all sit and smoke, getting high in the