She held my gaze a second too long. A test. A negotiation.
Then, with a quiet sigh, she pushed back from the desk and gestured toward the hallway behind her.
"Come with me."
I followed her through a dimly lit corridor, the walls stained with the ghosts of past lives. The air was thick—cigarette smoke, cheap perfume, and something beneath it, something heavier. Regret.
She stopped at a door, knocked twice, and stepped inside. I followed.
The office was small, cluttered. A wooden desk, a couch littered with cigarette burns, a single lamp casting a sickly yellow glow. She shut the door behind us and turned, arms crossed.
I sat across from her, my palms rubbing absently against my trousers. The weight of the room pressed down on me.
Because if my instincts were right—if the whispers and descriptions held even a thread of truth—then Kitty wasn't just another woman wrapped in secrecy.
She was Cassandra Cottingham.
The luxury. The mask. The way no one had actually seen her clearly.
It all fit.
The old woman studied me, reading the shift in my posture, the flicker of realization. Her lips curled slightly.
"No one has actually seen Kitty," she said.
I already knew that. Heard it from one of the girls—Cola. Another codename, another nameless whisper in this place of hidden lives.
"I've heard." I kept my voice neutral, revealing nothing.
"She was famous among men here." The woman leaned back, a knowing gleam in her eye. "But you know… some of her customers never came back."
"I'm aware."
She exhaled, as if humoring a private joke. "She was always masked. Always in demand. The highest income, the highest clientele. The kind of men who could have anyone but still begged for a glimpse of her. That's why we called her Catwoman."
I folded my legs, leaning in slightly. "And yet, no one has seen her."
Her smirk deepened. "No one except me."
A silence stretched between us.
I let it linger. Let her feel it.
Then, I leaned forward, my voice low.
"Tell me everything you know about Kitty."
Her expression darkened, a teasing glint in her eyes, as if she already knew what I wanted—what I suspected.
"Her real name is Katherine Smith," she said, leaning back.
Katherine Smith.
Not Cassandra?
The name alone shifted the entire landscape of this case. What I thought was a simple, calculated plan now unraveled into something far more layered. This wasn't just a puzzle—it was a labyrinth, endless doors leading to rooms that led to more doors, each revelation pushing me further into the unknown.
"She was a beautiful woman," the old woman continued, watching me. "Green eyes. But sometimes, they looked almost black. Could've been contacts. Could've been something else."
I absorbed the detail, filing it away. "Go on."
"Hmm?" She tilted her head, then grabbed a blank sheet of paper and started sketching. A crude doodle of a woman. The proportions were off, the lines shaky.
I took the paper anyway, folding it and slipping it into my pocket. Useless, but still evidence of something.
"She sometimes looked taller," she muttered, frowning at her own work. "Could've been the heels. I don't judge."
"Did she ever tell you anything about herself?"
"She did." The old woman exhaled, as if sifting through memories. "Said she was struggling financially. But the designer bags said otherwise."
"It could've been a copy," I suggested. Even I had owned a few fakes in my time.
She smirked. "It wasn't."
That caught my attention.
"She said she worked as a receptionist at some hotel—Cove, I think? Something like that. Claimed her partner, or maybe her husband, was a gambling addict. Drank himself half to death and left her drowning in debt. Some broker was supposedly chasing her."
"Sounds like a textbook sob story."
"Every woman in this place has one." Her voice was indifferent, but her gaze lingered on me, weighing my reaction. "She did say something interesting, though."
I raised a brow.
"She said something else, too," the woman added, voice quieter now. "She had an angel."
I stilled. "An angel?"
"That's what she called it."
It?
A lover? A protector? A client?
I glanced down as she slid something across the desk—a piece of paper, a rough sketch of a woman. The proportions were off, the details crude, but I pocketed it anyway.
"Last thing," I said. "Did she ever mention… numbers? Anything out of place?"
The woman frowned, considering.
Then, slowly, she reached into a drawer and pulled something out. A ring.
I took it carefully. On the inside, etched into the metal, was a string of numbers.
Coordinates.
I looked up. She was watching me closely now, her amusement finally replaced with something else.
Caution.
"Curiosity's a dangerous thing," she repeated softly.
I slipped the ring into my pocket, nodded once, and pushed away from the desk.
"Thanks for your time."
As I stepped back into the dim hallway, one thing was certain—whatever I was walking into, it wasn't going to be clean.