Sore back from the wrong reasons, again

This is how it came to Cecilia, Ilya and Alex, all three sitting in the restaurant's VIP area on the second floor. Cecilia began to think that every facility on this ship had a VIP area.

"So," Ilya motioned to the attentive waiter to pour water into Cecilia's glass. "I saw you and Vlad became close, how did that happen?"

Word spreads fast in the wizarding world, huh? Cecilia thought it best not to elaborate too much on the incident at the casino.

"You know, he's a nice person and..."

"Oh, Mr. I'm-going-to-sell-your-organs-if-you-don't-pay-me is a nice man? Please. Alex spent every summer with that jerk, isn't that right, Alex?"

"Yeah." Alex looked at her with such a cold gaze that Cecilia felt the air around her freeze. She wondered how he managed to contort his innocent black eyes into such a penetrating gaze. "Hey, Cecilia, don't you think you have something to do now?"

"I don't think so?"

"Think better."

"Are you trying to drive Cecilia away? Rude" Even if Ilya said it, her laid-back aura and the fact that she, like everyone else so far, interrupted Cecilia mid-sentence without consideration time and time again showed that Cecilia was taken really lightly in this exclusive community.

Cecilia decided to open a new topic. maybe if a new atmosphere flows between them, things will change for the better.

"You and Alex are friends, right? How long do you know each other?"

"Too long to count." Alex, surprisingly, started to actively participate in the conversation: "We've been together ever since we were born."

"My dad cheated with his mom." Ilya added a very personal and unnecessary detail: "So I was at their house all the time when I was little when they fucked each other."

"Ily!"

"What? It's not like she knows anyone who isn't aware of all of this, and it's not like she can exactly leak it to the media from here."

She turned to Cecilia and explained, "Alex's mom is in politics, so he's a bit oversensitive about personal information."

Cecilia said in her heart that she would have called it 'normal' rather than 'oversensitive', but it wasn't her place to interfere.

"Let's stop the chatter for a moment." Ilya's expression became serious. "Cecilia, the truth is that I called you here for a certain reason."

Cecilia had the illusion that she had been summoned to the principal's office, which was odd considering she had never spent time at the school.

"Vlad forces you to do all sorts of ridiculous things, right?" She gazed at her clown outfit. "Vlad is an extremely ridiculous and petty person. I'm telling you this as one who has known him for many years: it will not be good for you to stay around him for long. We can help you."

"I wouldn't have a place to stay without him." While Vlad did seem like a capricious and scary man at times, Cecilia didn't think he was evil deep down. 

Definitely better than the couple with those unclear intentions in front of her.

Ilya kicked Alex under the table and he began to repeat his well-practiced speech, "We can take care of housing and pocket money for you, just like Vlad. Only with us you won't have to work. All we want is for you not to work for him."

"What do you think, Cecilia? We can save you from him." She held her arm affectionately on the table, looking intently into her eyes.

Cecilia couldn't point to it, but there was definitely something fishy about their words.

"Why would you help me? What's in it for you?"

"We care about you; even though we haven't known you for a long time, we wouldn't want to see you die quickly because of some stupid mistakes."

"You didn't sign anything with Vlad, did you?" Even when he tried, it was impossible to hide the arrogance in Alex's gaze.

Something was definitely strange here—too strange.

"Why did you want me to leave before? You don't like me."

"What are you going on about? Of course he likes you." Ilya tried settling the mood.

"You didn't like me either!"

Alex was embarrassed by the commotion she had caused. "Shhh! This is a restaurant, not the zoo, little girl." 

"Listen now very carefully." She slowly got up from the table and leaned towards the couple. "Maybe I don't have much experience in your world, but I do know when people try to fool me." She jabbed her finger into Alex's chest, trying to look as menacing as her clown costume and childlike body would allow her to. "And you two? suck at it."

"I'm leaving."

"Wait just a moment." Ilya grabbed her arm in her grand exit. "What will we gain from this? We sincerely want to warn you."

"You treated me like a lower version of a human right up to this meal, and you," she turned to Alex, "clearly hate my guts right up to this moment; do you even want to scam me?"

"I'm a fucking nice and a fucking stupid person, but not that stupid. In your next scam, make sure you're nice to the victim from the start."

Cecilia finally managed to free herself from Ilya's grip and quickly turned back, just in time to bump into the three waiters coming towards them with appetizers, making all kinds of food dirty her already very colorful costume.

This time, Alex couldn't even hide his disgusted look, while Illya had slightly more emotional intelligence. "Are you okay?" She reached for her hand.

"Save it." Cecilia slapped the helping hand and got up herself, rubbing her sore butt.

Ilya looked at her head towards the exit and wanted to give more persuasion when Alex stopped her advance. "Maybe you should really save it."

Ilya smirked at him. "You want to give the sickly dick the upper hand?" Her speech changed 180° now that Cecilia was not within earshot.

"There will be other opportunities," Alex comforted her. "I don't want to carry the little junkie on our back anyway; more... Interesting ways would come around, trust your little Alec." If Cecilia heared him calling himself 'Little Alec' she would probably puke a little in her mouth.

Ilya rubbed his hair affectionately and sat back down, eating with 'her little Alec' the new appetizers served to them and watching the waiters quickly clean up on their knees the food mixed with shreds of sharp glass all over the floor.