Serena grabbed her specialized cart and went to the private service elevator. Her mind was torn: on one hand, the brutal job; on the other, her little daughter hidden four floors below. She had to work quickly, be invisible, and return with Lily. She had no idea that her carefully constructed plan was about to shatter into a million irreversible pieces.
Three hours later, the pettouse gleamed. Serena had polished the Italian marble until it looked like a mirror, dusted the gigantic mahogany bookcases in the private office, and fluffed the imported silk cushions in the lounge. The opulence was suffocating. Each piece of furniture cost more than she would earn in her entire life.
But downstairs, on the fourth floor, things weren’t going as planned.
Lily had finished her juice, colored three rather abstract drawings of a “dog”… and then came the final tragedy for any five-year-old: the iPad ran out of battery. The screen went black, and the duvet cover remained silent and bored.
Lily waited what felt like ten whole years. She peeked her head out from behind the sheets. The room was quiet and a little gloomy. She felt like going to the bathroom, and she wanted to show her mom the drawing she had made of Barnaby.
Remembering her promise to be silent, Lily left the fort. She stretched, grabbed the cold knob, and turned it.
Click.
The door opened.
Serepa, in her haste, had locked it from the outside, but that did not prevent it from opening from the inside.
Lily stepped out into the bustling service corridor. Huge laundry carts whizzed past her, pushed by people who were moving too fast to hit a short pineapple clutching a sheet of paper. Lily walked toward the shiny silver doors at the end of the corridor: the elevators.
