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CHAPTER ONE
VALENTINA
Rain battered down onto my head as I punched the code into the door. Smiling as it opened beneath my hands and Muhammed, the doorman, ushered me inside.
‘Evening, Miss,’ he said, the crinkles surrounding his eyes deepening as he set me with a grin.
‘I’ve lived here for four years. You can call me Valentina.’ We had the same conversation periodically, but he was ever the professional.
‘Yes, Miss Valentina.’
I shook my head and smiled as I stood dripping rain all over the entryway.
‘Busy night?’ I asked, taking off my raincoat and folding it over my arm.
‘Nothing crazy happening so far. Plenty of time to catch up on my reading.’
‘Oh, that reminds me!’ I said, pushing my coat under one arm as I rooted through my bag. ‘I saw this one in the bookshop earlier and thought you might like it.’
I held out the brown paper package containing the book I picked up for him. He lowered his eyes to the package as we completed our usual dance around it.
‘You shouldn’t have...’ he started.
‘It’s nothing much, it was in the second hand pile.’
‘Well, if it needs a good home.’
‘Precisely!’
I smiled as he took the book, eagerly peeping into the package.
‘You haven’t read it, have you?’ I shifted on my feet, my heels making my arches ache after a long day of shopping and doing life admin.
‘I haven’t! And it’s by Greene too. You’re a wee star, Miss. Thank you.’
A thread of satisfaction flowed through me at his pleasure. Gifting him a book was a simple thing, but even though he was my doorman with a family of his own, I was a sucker for making people happy, especially older men. Classic case of missing my father growing up, I supposed. I’d never even had the chance to meet him. He put a baby in my mother, then a drunk driver removed him from existence before he even knew I existed.
It’s why people thought I cammed. Classic Daddy issues. Maybe it was a part of it, but mostly it was because I loved sex and all things smutty, but didn’t want to invite a string of guys into my life who only ever disappointed me. Cam girl me was a fantasy, and I could play with the dangerous without it ever really being harmful to me.
‘Right, off you go upstairs and get yourself dry. You’ll catch your death if you stand here soaked.’ Muhammed walked me to the lift, pressing the button to call it down before ushering me inside.
‘You just want me to leave so you can get back to your books,’ I said with a false pout.
‘Can’t blame me. He’s about to confront the killer.’
‘Well, in that case, I’ll leave you to it.’ I stepped into the lift and gave him a wave.
A few moments later, the lift pinged on the 5th floor, and the doors opened out onto the small corridor which held four flats. Mine with my roommate Lara, old Mrs Graham’s with her rowdy Jack Russell, Ivor, the one owned by an American who had never visited it as far as we knew, that sat at the end of the corridor, and our neighbour, Tim’s.
Tim had a knack for needing to put the bins out or collect mail right as I came home. I swore he must spend as much time in the corridor as he did in his flat.
He was sweet, but intense.
Sure enough, he was watering the plants that he kept outside his door as I exited the lift.
‘Evening, M’lady.’
Honestly, who says M’lady? What was he, a knight?
