Dance Of Devils

Six - Nadia

"That's because it's all horribly true," he conceded, rolling his eyes as if it was the most obvious claim ever made, "but that doesn't mean he gets to use it against me."

"As you're boss," Lorenzo retorted, "it one hundred per cent does."

Piero scoffed in shock. "The audacity of this man."

Nadia smiled, looping her arm through Lorenzo's despite Piero's glare. "So this Oracle can just exist within your territory," She asked Lorenzo, changing the subject entirely as they worked their way deeper into the labyrinth of tables and grinding bodies and spilt beers. "And no one bats an eye?" It had struck her as odd that she had never heard about the oracle before, or the strip of neutral ground they lived in, but then when she remembered just how much her old mentor Victor kept from her, it didn't seem bizarre in the slightest. It did piss her off. But that was nothing knew where Victor was concerned.

"Technically this has always been the Oracle's territory," Lorenzo explained, walking them through a door marked private beside one of the bars, nodding to the bartender as they passed, handing her a hundred-dollar bill like it was simply loose change. Nadia held back a laugh at the girl's shocked face and shook her head, rolling her eyes at his casual display of wealth. Lorenzo shrugged, genuinely unbothered, continuing his explanation. "It's unfortunately an odd square of neutral ground that existed before my father took over and expanded into the area about fifty years ago. He made a deal with the Oracle which has been standing ever since."

Nadia frowned up at him. "What kind of deal?" Lorenzo only shook his head once. Not here, it told her, another time, it promised.

There was no time for her to ponder it when they turned a corner and descended a set of stairs into the basement, closer and closer to the lair of the mythical beast with all the answers. Another set of doors awaited them, this time with a keypad and code that Lorenzo typed in all too casually, which opened to more thumping drums, a thicker smoke with a sweeter taste and a pink haze.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the lowlights and the thick haze but, once they did, the space transformed into one of the fanciest looking bar lounges Nadia had seen. At the back wall was a large pink couch with several people lounging on it, smoking, drinking, laughing, and soaking up each other in a way of pure decadence and excess.

Nadia took it all in a swift and calculated way, assessing all of the risks, entrances and exits, useable weapons within reach and potential threats, but she couldn't help the pang of jealously as she took in the bodies bunched together enjoying every moment of their lives in a way Nadia knew she would never be able to.

In the centre of it all, the assassin could only assume lay the Oracle, Sam. Lay with their eyes closed, hair loose and wild, a handsome man sprawled in their lap as they leaned against a beautiful woman, several others surrounding the three of them. All of them smiled and laughed together, sipping champagne and passing around a shisha pipe.

A hand, that Nadia couldn't figure out whom it belonged to, played with the dark curls around the Oracle's face, while another hand traced along their deep tan abs tucked under an open neon pink fur coat. Draped in people and fur and soaked in the club light, a lazy smile on their face, Sam Anderson looked every bit the mythical beast Lorenzo and Piero had described.

As if sensing the arrival of new guests, Sam opened a single eye that stopped Nadia dead. The clearest crystal blue she had ever seen, even in the dim light, greeted her, dancing with amusement as it scanned her little party approaching, the shimmer around their eyes only highlighting how crisp that blue was. The beauty mark on their cheek lifted with their lips as a smile emerged on their face.