Chapter 7
Sophia touched the gauze on her forehead. “I know. Isla, could you put me in the kitchen for now? Once my head heals, I can return to the entrance.”
The girl was injured this badly and still insisting on work. Isla studied her a second longer than necessary.
“Fine,” she said at last. “But kitchen work isn’t easier than hostessing. Prepare yourself.”
Sophia thanked her and limped back toward the staff residence.
She was not afraid of exhaustion.
Compared with exhaustion, she was far more afraid of meeting certain people again.
Only after Sophia had limped out of sight did Isla step into a quiet corner and take out her phone.
There were numbers people memorized because they loved the person on the other end. There were numbers people memorized because their livelihood depended on them. Oliver’s number lived in Isla’s phone with the second kind of permanence.
The call connected after two rings.
A cold male voice came through. “What is it?”
“Mr. Williams, Ms. Watson left the hospital early. I’ve assigned her to the kitchen, as instructed.”
On the other end, Oliver was reviewing documents at his desk. The pen in his hand paused for half a second before he said, “Mm. I know.”
A page turned. His tone remained indifferent. “Give her more work. Don’t let her wander around.”
“Yes, sir.” Isla hesitated. She had worked under Oliver long enough to know that hesitation was usually a waste of breath and occasionally a professional hazard. Still, she said, “Mr. Williams, Ms. Watson’s legs are injured. She doesn’t seem able to stand for long. Kitchen work is heavy. On busy nights, staff can be on their feet until morning. She may not last.”
Silence answered her.
It stretched so long that Isla began to wonder if she had overstepped.
Then Oliver said, flatly, “That doesn’t matter. If she can’t keep going, she’ll come to you herself. Until then, pretend you don’t know.”
Isla lowered her eyes though he could not see her. “And if she does come to me?”
“Use your judgment.”
The line went dead.
Isla stared at the black screen, worry tightening between her brows.
She had managed Scarlet for years. She had seen men generous because they wanted worship, cruel because they wanted obedience, tender because it flattered them to be needed, and vicious because someone had once made them feel small. She could usually read a man within ten minutes and be right nine times out of ten.
Oliver remained unreadable.
If he hated Sophia, it did not make sense that he had rushed her to the hospital after she collapsed, placed her in the best private room, and kept people watching her condition.
If he did not hate her, it made even less sense that three years ago he had broken her legs, sent her to prison, and now seemed determined to grind whatever was left of her into dust.
Isla did not know what kind of history lay between them. But she had known Sophia only a few days and already found herself admiring the girl.
Thrown into a pit and still not calling it the end. If Sophia could survive this, she would not just recover. She would split open the dark and crawl out with wings.
Scarlet opened at five in the evening and did not close until seven the next morning.
Sophia had never cooked a meal in her life. She could barely identify half the ingredients stacked in the kitchen. The only work they could safely give her was dishwashing.
So she stood at the sink.
At first the plates arrived in small batches. A server dropped them beside her and barked, “Wash them properly.”
Then the small batches became a stream. Bowls, glasses, plates slick with sauce, trays smelling of grease and alcohol. No matter how quickly Sophia scrubbed, the dirty dishes multiplied faster than her hands could move. Before long, they rose around her in a crooked little mountain.
“This slow? Where did management find garbage like you?”
The voice came from behind her.
Sophia turned. Sweat had gathered in a fine layer across her forehead. A heavyset middle-aged woman stood there with the authority of someone who had learned to weaponize a staff badge. A blue supervisor badge was clipped to her shirt, marking her as the kitchen floor supervisor.
Sophia glanced at the pin, then lowered her eyes. “I’ll work faster.”
The supervisor knew Sophia had come in through connections, so she did not push much further. A person could bully the weak only as far as the weak were safe to bully. Sophia’s exact place in Oliver’s game was unclear, and unclear things at Scarlet were best handled with a little caution.
But the dishes did not show caution.
Scarlet was too famous and too busy for one damaged woman to keep up with an entire night’s worth of glassware. After less than an hour, Sophia’s injured legs began to ache. After two, the ache sharpened. After three, every minute of standing became a private negotiation with pain.
Isla came through the kitchen during the rush and saw her there, sweat beading at her hairline, jaw clenched, hands moving mechanically through the sink water.
Sophia had been on her feet for more than three hours. Isla could tell at a glance that the old injuries were tearing through her body. The girl was close to the edge.
Isla admired that stubbornness. She also knew stubborn things broke if no one bent first.
She lifted a hand and called over one of the staff. With a small tilt of her chin toward Sophia, she said, “Keep an eye on her. If anything happens, come tell me.”
The staffer looked once toward the sink and nodded before hurrying back to work.
Isla swept the kitchen with one last glance. Nothing else seemed wrong, so she returned to the front hall.
Sophia did not see her go.
Pain had narrowed the world to the sink, the water, the stack of plates, and the stubborn instruction she kept repeating inside her skull: Keep going.
Especially because Oliver was the one waiting for her to quit.
She would rather swallow broken glass than hand him the satisfaction.
When the pain grew too sharp, she braced both hands on the edge of the sink and let one leg rest for a few seconds. Then she pulled herself upright and started again.
The prickling came next. Tiny needles under the skin, spreading through both legs until sensation turned unreliable. Her knees buckled without warning.
Sophia crashed to the floor.
Her elbow struck a stack of plates on the way down. They toppled, shattered, and scattered across the tiles. Splinters of porcelain skipped against her bare arms and calves, opening thin red cuts along her skin.
She grabbed the lip of the sink and tried to stand.
Her legs refused.
The instant she put weight on them, pain drilled through the bones, white-hot and absolute. She fell again, harder this time.
The helplessness was worse than the pain. Worse than the blood. Worse than the humiliation of lying on a kitchen floor while people stepped around her because dinner service mattered more than the broken woman beside the dish pit.
The crash had drawn attention. Workers glanced over, startled. Then the rush swallowed them again. A famous club did not pause because one dishwasher had hit the ground.
Only one shadow lingered.
The staffer Isla had assigned took one look at Sophia, then ran out of the kitchen toward the front hall.
Oliver was still at Williams Group when his phone rang.
He answered without checking the caller ID.
“Mr. Williams, Ms. Watson...” Isla began, then stopped.
