It had been a few hours since she had heard the news, and to be honest, Zoe was still shaken. Though, she wasn’t sure what was more shocking, the fact that he was dead or that he had named her of all people as his next of kin.

It didn’t really matter, not at the moment at least. She needed a drink. Or a bunch of them. She didn't even bother changing or doing her hair, she just stayed in the same pair of jeans and blue blouse she had been wearing earlier in the day, her hair up loosely.

In a way it was weird, she thought as she made her way into the Inferno Club. She had never before set foot into the building wearing pants, never mind in jeans. But then again, she had never been there as herself, as Zoe before that evening, she had only been there to work, as Isabella.

Glancing around just inside the entrance, Zoe decided to continue this day of firsts. First time someone chose her as family; first time she went out like this by herself; first time to go up and drink at the bar. Sitting on an empty stool, Zoe waved over a bartender. ”Appletini,” she ordered simply. ”And keep them coming tonight.”

It was important as a mother, a professional, and a conwoman, for Stephanie to wear many faces over the course of a day. She had to be inconspicuous as a business owner, distant and private as the Syndicate’s thief, and a happy mother who had her life together for Malia. There were very few instances where Stephanie could take off her masks and be what she felt like: a spiraling mess.

More and more, Steph gave up on the hope of getting out from underneath Poseidon’s thumb. With Malia’s life on the line, she could not go against his orders. If he asked her to kill again, it did not matter how she felt; it was a task she would get done. She was no longer the lady-like cat burglar with some code of ethics, and the cost of what she might become was ebbing away at her soul.

Thankfully, she had rare moments of respite. She had basically cased the Inferno club before entering. There would always be security to monitor, but she did not want anyone around who might recognize her and report back to her big boss.

Stephanie arrived at the club in her forest green dress with a plunging neckline and a hem just above her knee; not innocent, but it might as well be a habit after some of the outfits Poseidon bought for her.

Approaching the bar, Stephanie spotted a regular she usually saw in passing at the club, but she did not recognize her right away. Generally, the woman would be wearing something evocative and eye-catching-- hence why Stephanie recognized her. Today, she was surprisingly casual. They had not shared real conversations before, but curiosity guided the thief to a stool next to the woman.

She caught the order and the tone it was requested in. Now closer, something about the woman just seemed less… put together. ”I think she’s got the right idea tonight. Same.” Steph was not big on Appletinis, but she was keen on drinking to excess to drown out her own thoughts.

She turned her slate-grey eyes upon the woman and asked simply, ”Rough night?”

Zoe wasn't planning on really talking to anyone that night, or if she did, not until she had gotten a number of drinks into her. As such, she didn't pay much attention to the person who sat beside her until she heard the woman speak. A rather attractive woman, Zoe could admit, wearing a dress more akin to what she herself would typically wear while here. While working.

”Rough is a bit of an understatement,” Zoe said as the bartender turned to make the two women their appletinis. ”I know I’m going to have to deal with it all starting tomorrow, and I don’t even know where to start, but for tonight I just want to forget about it all.”

Thankfully the bartenders in this place were good, they had to be or they didn’t last long, and about then Zoe had a glass set down in front of her. Picking it up, she took a sip before turning back to the woman beside her. ”I’m Zoe. And you are?”

Stephanie let the woman give her a once over, not shying away from the attention. What was the worst thing a cursory glance could do? Besides, she was there for some kind of anonymous camaraderie, right? Drinking alone was well and good, but it felt less pathetic to drink alone with someone else; misery loving company and all that.

Her new drinking partner had a clear weight pressing on her. Plenty of people drank to process their problems. Alcohol was great for venting and getting emotional. It was the soul-crushing problems that made someone drink to get numb and ignore their pain. Steph could respect that.

Zoe shared her name, and for a moment, Steph wished she didn’t. Names made things so personal. Stephanie thought back to the old days and her old life; being a con woman was easier because she could detach and hide behind fictional people. The idea was so appealing, she decided it might be easier to return to the old practice, if just for one night. ”Madison. You can call me Madi, though.” Maybe it was perverse, hiding behind the name of the woman she killed, but Madison Potts deserved to live on, and at least now they could drink together about the night they both lost themselves.

”I get it, Zoe,” she assured, punctuating her sentence with a sip of her appletini. ”I had one of those things I didn’t know how to deal with, too. Sadly, I never figured out how… so why don’t we forget together tonight? Here, I’ll start.”

Like she was flipping a switch, Steph let out one last depressive sigh and her expression perked up. She went from a woman wearing her sins and pain on her face to one who was out for a fun night of engaging strangers. ”Hey there, cutie! I’ve seen you around here before, right? You’re hard not to notice,” she teased playfully, wondering if Zoe would be able to play along and act like it was just a typical night at the bar and they weren’t both broken.

The woman introduced herself as Madison, or Madi for short. Zoe nodded. It’s not like she would actually remember the name if she were to ever see the woman again, not with as much as Zoe was planning on drinking that night. Though it would be nice to know what to call the woman until she did forget. Even if Zoe wasn’t feeling particularly social.

And Madi had never figured out how to deal with the huge problem she had had. ”Well isn’t that reassuring,” she said with a glance sideways at the brunette. Though Zoe knew that she would be able to do the tangible things, even if she didn’t know where to start right now; funerals were planned all the time, that would be doable, she knew. And though it would be more difficult, Zoe also knew that she’d be able to tell his parents. He may not have talked to them in over a decade, but Zoe felt that they deserved to knew their son was dead.

But then Madi was changing gears, slipping into flirt mode in an attempt to forget. Zoe didn’t normally swing that way, but as she looked at Madi over the rim of her glass as she took a sip, Zoe couldn’t help but think why not? The few times that she had allowed a client to have another woman there, and he’d paid extra for the privilege, she’d always found the woman to be much more satisfying.

Maybe if she did something completely different, specifically to distract herself, it might work. And if not, there was always the alcohol.

”You may have seen me here before,” Zoe replied with a slight smile as she lowered her glass. ”Does that mean you come here often?”

Zoe did not bat an eyelash at the alias, which was expected: she had no reason to question Stephanie’s name. With the mood she was in, she probably did not care about her name. If she tossed the name at the end of the night, that would be all the better; it was disposable anyway.

Madi, as she would now go by for the rest of the night, had not reassured Zoe of her situation, but that was her way of being fair and honest. Life was terrible sometimes, and evidently, you had to be ready for it not to get better. That was a crying shame, but it was life.

When you could acknowledge that life and reality could be terrible and cruel and unfair, it became easier to embrace fiction. Acting like a new person and playing the role of someone unbroken did not fix Madi, but it did allow her to escape. Escapism was a noble goal people had been pursuing at bars and clubs for centuries, and Madi just committed to her abandonment of the real world while she could.

Madi laid the flirtatious tone on thicker than normal, but Zoe’s small smile made it worth it. Zoe probably did not live her life putting on masks and playing pretend, so Madi would try, come hell or high water, to pull her into her escapist fantasy.

”Oh, I’ve been here a handful of times, sugar, but I’m pretty sure I would have remembered you if this was just my second trip. You’re good at catching eyes,” she teased. ”So good, you always seemed to have a new guy on your arm each time I spotted you. Quite the popular woman, I take it?”

Madi’s tone was light and playful. Flirty. It was a tone that Zoe recognized well because it was a tone she had used every other night she had been in this club. But it seemed that she really had caught Madi’s eye before that evening because it was true that she had been there with a different man each night for the last...Well, it’d been a while since she had had a repeat date here at the Inferno.

”A girl’s gotta be able to have fun,” Zoe replied with a shrug before taking another sip of her drink. ”With all the guys here to pick from, why stop at only one?” That was one way of looking at it. The other was that each and every one of those men had paid a pretty penny to spend that time with her. But that wasn’t something Zoe was going to say aloud.

Taking another sip of her drink, Zoe looked over the rim of the glass at Madi for a moment before setting it back down on the bar, almost empty. ”Tonight, though, I think calls for something a little different.”

Stephanie made a habit of drinking alone with the occasional flirting when she was approached by some brave soul at the bar. Recently, she had stopped making proactive moves on people when she visited the bar. There were people that caught her eye, but they were just expecting different things. They were looking for someone to have fun with, while Stephanie was looking for someone to numb herself with. It never seemed fair to drag someone else into that.

With Zoe, at least Stephanie knew they were both hurting. There was a sense of camaraderie; they were two broken women, so maybe they could be good company for one another.

>> ”A girl’s gotta be able to have fun. With all the guys here to pick from, why stop at only one?”

As she expected, Zoe was not a shy woman. Timid women rarely allowed themselves to leave the same bar with different men on different nights. Prudishness, honestly. ”Well, when you look the way you do, I’m sure you’ll never want for suitors,” she teased.

It sounded like men were Zoe’s go-to preference, but she was not shying away from Madison’s advances in the least. It might have warded Stephanie away on another night, but she was okay with being someone’s something different. ”Well, I’m wonderful for that, I can promise you that now,” she assured Zoe, her lips hovering over the rim of the glass.

”So when you’re not being gorgeous at bars and charming the masses, what do you do, Zoe?”

Madi didn’t know how right she was when she made the comment that Zoe would never want for suitors. At the moment, she had dates booked for the next two months. She wasn’t booked full for the next two months, but Zoe was not worried about filling up those open days, they never really stayed free for long.

When Madi continued speaking, Zoe looked over at her with a smile. ”I’m sure you are wonderful for that,” she replied after a moment as the bartender came over with a refill for her. At least the bartenders here were damn good, Zoe thought as she picked the full glass up to take a sip.

Then Madi asked what she did. Taking another sip, Zoe thought about how to answer that. She never really told anyone what she actually did for a living. The men she saw knew, that’s why she was seeing them in the first place, but they didn’t actually talk about it. That would likely be awkward.

Before she came up with something to say, Zoe heard a man’s voice behind her. ”Isabella? What on earth are you doing? You stood me up and now you’re here?”

Zoe blinked but didn’t turn to look at the man. She’d had a date that night? Well, yeah, she probably did, but it had been wiped completely from her mind earlier. ”You must have me mistaken for someone else,” Zoe replied before taking a sip of her appletini. ”I’m not this Isabella.”

Stephanie was happy to see her drink being refilled quickly and without her having to ask. Actually, no—she was Madison. She was here to get away from Stephanie’s problems, so why would she think of herself like that? Madison was just an exotic dancer enjoying her night off and looking to get a little crazy in her off time. On the older side for her profession, but she just loved living her uninhibited, carefree life. Not a mother. Not a thief. Not under the thumb of a sociopath. Just a dancer.

Madi listened intently to the woman she was flirting with, curious about what kind of life she led. Unfortunately, her time with Zoe was interrupted by a man. She was used to this; guys at the bar had no qualms approaching the women she talked to, because they thought she was likely a gal pal that came to the bar with her attractive friend. Madi was confident in herself and her ability to deal with competition.

She was surprised by the man’s frustration. Zoe stood him up? She was called Isabella? Well, deep in her thoughts, Madison was not going to be a hypocrite by dwelling on that. If anything, Zoe was unfazed by the man’s intrusion, dismissing him. Maybe it was an honest mistake? Did she care?

Of course not. Madi was her company tonight, so she was going to have her back. Specifically, she wrapped her arm around Zoe’s back, her fingers wrapping delicately around the woman’s waist. ”I can vouch for her. She’s definitely not an Isabella. When we left the house, I’m pretty sure she was still Zoe.” With her free hand, Madi sipped her drink and smiled. ”Honest mistake, but I wish you luck finding your date!”

Zoe was a little surprised when she felt an arm wrapping around her waist. But unlike most of her nights, it was not a man doing it, and Zoe could definitely feel a difference with the light touch that Madi had. But more than that, Madi was backing her up, telling a lie to get the guy to leave them alone. Thomas, she now remembered his name was.

Zoe smiled over at Madi. This was a woman who was able to think quickly and was not against trying to help out. ”That’s right, hon,” Zoe replied, looking at Madi as she spoke. ”I was definitely Zoe when we left the house.” Was it a lie? Yes, but that didn’t bother Zoe one bit; Isabella was essentially a lie when you thought about it, so what was one more little one to keep the two lives separate?

Then Zoe looked back over at Thomas. ”Try and have a good night, but you’re kind of interrupting us doing just that…” Not waiting for a response, Zoe turned back to Madi as she took a sip of her drink.

Some people were not good at rolling with punches. Those people, with their deer-caught-in-headlights act, were terrible partners if you lied a lot in your day-to-day life. Things could have been awkward if Zoe froze and looked at her dumbfounded.

Fortunately, Zoe was quick to fall into the story, letting Madi’s arm comfortably remain at her waist. Zoe dismissed the man’s accusation, and she did it confidently enough that he seemed almost as confused as he was frustrated. ”Best of luck finding your Isabella,” she added, returning her smile and eyes to Zoe. In the corner of her vision, she watched the man stomp off.

With that out of the way, Madi sighed in relief, glad the night did not take a messy turn. She could have asked about Zoe’s possible alternate identity, but why bother? Whatever the truth was, it was overrated. They were there to escape, right?

”So, we came here together,” she affirmed, looking to flesh out this new narrative for a life she did not lead. ”It was a long week for both of us, so we decided to go out for a much needed date night.”

She pressed her glass to her painted lips and took a sip, smirking. ”Anything I’m forgetting, honey?” It was, after all, presumptuous of Madi to be the only tailoring a world they could both lose themselves in for a night. They were partners after all, probably. That seemed to be the story now, at least.