Lottie's Ship Wish

CHAPTER 16

Another day came, but the sun was still sleeping in its rightful place, all the children working under Cosimo were summoned to his gambling den. It was clear how sleep-deprived they were, but there was one more sleep-deprived than the others. Lance was with his friend, Lottie, all night thinking how to escape but halted when a signal call from their boss appeared.

Cosimo looked at each one of them with his haughty expression. Not an ounce of care could be seen in his face. He never did care for them after all.

"Pick up the brooms and start cleaning this place up. We have important guest showing up here, so you better do a dang good job!"

The children looked at each other, hesitant to do what he wanted because of fatigue.

"What are you all waiting for!? MOVE! MOVE!"

All the kids moved immediately when Cosimo pushed some children to the cleaning supplies with force.

'Important guest?' Lance asked himself as he picked up a rag and a bucket of water.

'Now, of all times?' He contemplated, starting to stand on a stool and clean the glass of windows.

However, he stopped his contemplation on the topic with a head shake.

'That's not what I should be focusing on. I need to save Lottie!'

Lance swiped the windows back and forth. 'Getting the key will be a good start, right?'

"But w-where will I f-find it?" He mumbled to himself.

'I don't know where it is...!' The moment Lance realized his goal was a difficult one to achieve and just getting the key was basically out of his reach, he became dejected.

'I cannot believe I am too confident I even promised! Ahhhh!' He held on to his head and tears spilled from his eyes in despair.

Out of nowhere, in the middle of his self-pity, his eyes saw a black hole appearing on the wall opposite to the building he was now.

'Eh what...' Lance blinked his eyes multiple times, even rubbed it to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

"Wha--Huh?"

And from that whole two men came out and Lance recognized the man with tattoos all over his body. They walked into Cosimo's gambling den and were nervously accepted by their fat boss to enter the premises.

'This is bad...' Lance looked around to survey his surroundings and after making sure no eyes were watching him; he acted as if he was cleaning the floor yet slowly, moving towards the direction of Cosimo and the two men.

Closer and closer.

When he was ten paces away from Cosimo's office, he stopped. Not too far away but near enough for him to hear the conversation and hide himself at the same time.

Lance swiped the floor, his eyes on it yet his ears on their voices.

"I d-didn't expect you good sirs to be early..." Cosimo said in between his nervous laugh.

"We are just checking if...everything is going smoothly." Lance remembered that voice, it belonged to the tattoo man.

"Oh yes, yes! Everything is being prepared like how the big boss wanted! No problem here!"

"Good. I am sure you are not stupid enough to anger him more than you already did. Your face had limits on how much it could take from my fist after all."

After that, a laughter from the comrade of tattoo man echoed and a small nervous laugh joined in from Cosimo.

"B-But you did say that I will have compensation for hosting this event...right?" Cosimo asked, his voice full of nervousness and uncertainty but his intentions very clear.