The club was called Vesper, tucked under a nondescript office building in the old warehouse district. No sign outside. Just a black door with a brass knocker shaped like a coiled snake. You knocked, someone looked through the slit, and if you belonged—or if someone vouched—you got in. Diana had been pouring drinks there for two years. She liked the shadows, the low bass that vibrated through the floor, the way people paid in cash and left their real names at the door.
Tuesday nights were dead. A handful of regulars nursing single malts, a couple making out in the corner booth, the DJ spinning slow, moody tracks to no one. Diana wiped down the bar top for the third time, black tank clinging to her skin from the heat of too many bodies earlier. Her long dark hair was pulled into a messy kno
