Tanya opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish. She was utterly baffled by what he was saying. By now, even the bartender had understood that something was amiss. He leaned away from her frowning. Just as he opened his mouth to talk, another voice came from behind him.

"Francis, boss is calling you." This voice was older and Tanya looked sideways to the owner of it.

It was another bartender, judging by the same t-shirt he wore, who was frowning at her. He looked her up and down and went straight to the point. "You were asking for Tony?"

"Yes, are you him?" Tanya decided to drop her pretence too seeing his no-nonsense attitude.

He frowned and folded his arms across his chest. "Yes. What's it to you?"

But by this time, Tanya had regained her confidence. She smiled broadly, all innocence and light, "Hi, Tanwirjeet. I have no work with you. I just took your name to sound familiar, you know."

"Why?" He was still frowning.

"You know, it makes one look friendlier. Especially in a place like this." She said the last part conspiratorially with a little laugh which, instead of sounding confident, unfortunately came out shaky.

If she hoped to have made Tony soften his stance, it had the opposite effect. "Who the hell are you?" He asked her roughly, and this time in Punjabi.

"Shalini told me about you." She said hurriedly, then cursed as the frown on his face gave way to deep suspicion. He looked past her towards someone and nodded.

Oh, no! Were they going to throw her out? Oh crap, oh crap!

"I was here the other day, you know, just by chance." Tanya started spewing with barely a thought, "Seeing that she was from home, we got to talk, you know. Shalini was just telling me that like her, you too are from Punjab."

But once again, her babbling didn't earn her any points. Instead, she suddenly found herself turning around to find a hulking bouncer right behind her, ready to tip her out of her chair.

Tanya was genuinely scared now. Never had she imagined that this was going to be the consequence of her foolhardiness. This place was seedy enough as it was. If they were going to just throw her out on the streets, that was fine. At max, she would be banned, but if they took her for questioning in a back office or a basement, like they did in all those crime shows, Tanya didn't think she could handle it.

"Guys!" She stammered through a frankly desperately stupid smile on her face, "guys, what's the meaning of this? It was just a little prank."

As she was saying it, Tanya's brain served her the memory of seeing Shalini getting struck by the bearded man in that storage room. Her fingers were starting to feel numb. And she was pretty sure she was shivering as well.

The bouncer put his hand on her shoulder and a clever manoeuvring later, she was out of the seat without even registering the fact. He turned her to face towards the door and put a hand at the centre of her back, pushing a little to make her start walking.

And Tanya went, her face lowered, her skin on fire from embarrassment. The club was dark enough for no one to be able to notice her walk of shame right away, but she felt as if every single eye was focused on her, judging her.

This was beyond humiliating.

"Pedro."

Someone called from behind and the hand on her back was removed. The bouncer and Tanya turned at the same time towards the soft voice and Tanya was stunned.

Ilario!