The cab pulled me in like a confession booth, sticky vinyl gripping my thighs, tonight wanted one more fingerprint before letting me slip past the checkpoint of decency. I paid the driver in crumpled notes laced with old perfume and worse memories, hush money every city extorts before peeling open another forbidden paragraph. Neon freckles drummed against the window, each pulse a private siren, coded warning that betrayal was already sweating through the walls, waiting to be tasted, chewed, swallowed, and spat out with a grin.

I staggered into the lobby of the coffin-shaped hotel where secrets dress in tuxedos and lies paint their lips with fatal red. The marble floor nuzzled my boots, slick as a back-alley promise. Somewhere down the corridor, a saxophone practiced slow violence, notes slipping beneath doors, begging to press between locked tongues. I chased that sound as it owed me rent, past portraits that watched my hips with the impatience of a judge who’s already chosen a verdict. Every frame whispered the same sermon: trust is a safe word, always spoken too late.

Suite No. 707 waited. Inside, the air tasted like plums left to rot inside a poet’s desk, thick, sweet, nearly sacred. Curtains billowed like skirts caught mid-apology, flashing the city’s spine, crooked geometry of power lines, and midnight temptation. On the chaise, she lounged, hair the color of courtroom coffee, eyes crackling violet when someone tried to cage her biography. She was scripting curses on the rim of a crystal glass, each drip sliding down like a vengeful psalm. Betrayal, she said, was her favorite cologne; it blooms hotter on skin already bruised by half-finished love.

We spoke in shards, sentences chipped and jagged, polished only enough to draw blood without tearing fabric. The hotel’s climate control hissed like a serpent, and the wallpaper peeled at the corners, eavesdropping. She asked if I believed in redemption, then kissed the question onto my pulse, biting hard enough to brand my reply onto her tongue. I tried to recall the armchair wisdom spat by men in suits, how betrayal is a voluntary violation, how a liar drowns in the quicksand of their own syllables. But the words cracked in my throat, turned to sandpaper on her collarbone. Real knowledge burns. Bruises, not classrooms, earn it.

She laughed, a sound like burnt sugar crusting old sins. We toasted to the animals we used to be, before morality taught us posture. Champagne snapped like handcuffs breaking. Foam tumbled, wetting our knuckles, sweet, sticky, perilously innocent. With every sip, the room tilted, gravity rewriting its contract until the ceiling became a secret basement and the carpet spun constellations beneath our reckless heels.

Clothes shed in stages, like theater curtains revealing acts the critics never survived. Her skin shimmered under the lamp, a manifesto in invisible ink. I traced sentences that my mother warned me never to read aloud. Fingernails left autographs on my shoulder blades, and somewhere between the hum of the minibar and the growl of distant thunder, we rewrote the commandments in sweat. She tasted of verdicts reversed on appeal, promised revolutions scribbled on receipts, everything that keeps priests awake at dawn.

Yet betrayal lingered in the corner, smoking my last cigarette. I saw him, that crooked ghost with pockets full of confessions, winking at the bedside telephone. The handset glared red, recording breathing patterns, memorizing tremors. I pretended not to notice; tonight, ruin wore velvet gloves, and I wanted fingerprints everywhere. We moved like conspirators mapping a coup on silk sheets, every motion a declaration of war against restraint.

She paused, nails grazing my throat, eyes bright with an accountant’s precision. “Do you trust me?” Not a plea, a loaded die. I swallowed the challenge, tasted copper and the ghosts of champagne. “Never,” I whispered, honest for once. She smiled, raw and satisfied, as if honesty was the dirtiest act in our whole arsenal. Outside, police sirens harmonized with thunder, the city applauding our opera of mutual sabotage.

Hours folded into themselves, like illicit bills in a gambler’s fist. By the time the sun threatened the horizon with pink remorse, we lay panting on a battlefield of empty flutes and crumpled linens. I studied her silhouette, backlit by dawn, every curve humming with unpunished crimes. She reached for a cigarette, lit it with a match struck on her own tooth, spark, flare, defiance. Smoke rose, sketching halos around her horns. The taste of ash and citrus settled on my tongue, bittersweet as an unmailed apology.

She slipped a deep purple, funeral-parlor-decadent velvet ribbon from her purse and tied it around my wrist. “Payment,” she said, “for a night of honest treason.” The knot cinched, pulse racing against silk, an oath sealed in silent Morse code. I knew I would wear that ribbon for weeks, let strangers wonder which saint claimed my veins. Betrayal is a tattoo drawn with invisible ink; only ultraviolet regret reveals the art.

We dressed in half-truths and creased promises. She left first, stilettos clicking a Morse of goodbye, hips writing ellipses at the exit. I lingered, inhaling the musk of spent champagne and scorched desire. The housekeeping cart squeaked outside, innocence on wheels, ready to bleach the blood from history’s sheets. Before leaving, I scribbled a note on hotel stationery: “Trust is a loaded gun; pull the trigger or hand it over.” I tucked it under the empty bottle, an epitaph for last night’s skins.

In the elevator, my reflection accused me. Collar crooked, ribbon branded, teeth swollen with unsaid verses. The descent felt like confession, each floor a decade of penance. When the doors slid open, the lobby reeked of lobbyists and freshly laundered alibis. Outside, morning air bit my cheeks, crisp as courtroom silence. I walked through puddles shimmering with oil-slick rainbows, each ripple echoing footsteps I might betray tomorrow.

Back home, I tried to shake the night’s sermon from my mind. I thought about how every philosopher likes to dissect betrayal, how they imagine souls imploding, how they theorize life’s architecture collapsing when trust rots in the basement. But wisdom never survives contact with velvet ribbon evidence. Her lipstick still haunted my mouth, a flavor both verdict and pardon. I laughed, hoarse and broken, because theory evaporates the moment skin is branded with a living oath.

For days, I wore that ribbon like contraband, hidden beneath cuffs, against skin still humming her war drums. Colleagues eyed the slack bow when it peeked in meetings, curiosity salted with envy they would never spell correctly. I penned reports, signed memos, sold illusions, all while her phantom breath ghostly in the air. Betrayal wasn’t a memory; it was oxygen, fresh and scorching. And I inhaled, greedy, every lungful a dare to collapse.

Weeks later, she mailed me a Polaroid, her hand holding a key stamped with the hotel logo, lipstick smeared on the metal. No return address, only a sentence on the back: “Next time, let the ribbon bleed.” Underneath, a crimson print of her thumb, half-moon of nail polish chipped like a fallen crown. I framed the photo above my desk, next to the motivational poster HR hung about integrity. Every client meeting glowed with quiet perversion.

The city marched on. Subway poets scribbled in margins, prophets preached from fire escapes, and everywhere, people dissected their own betrayals in bathroom mirrors. But I knew the seismograph only read true after one midnight in Suite No. 707. Trust and treason became lovers swapping masks, every handshake echoing the snap of velvet binding fresh skin. I tasted it in espresso foam, in contract ink, in the sweat of late, night cabs. Betrayal had ruined me perfectly; it polished the rust off my nerves and taught my heart to beat irregular jazz.

They say liars drown in their own stories. Maybe. Yet here I float, buoyed by ribbons and unfiled confessions, drifting past skyscrapers built of other people’s regrets. Her perfume lines my coat, that bruised plum halo, and some nights when the moon sits crooked, I hear champagne handcuffs clinking in the clouds. The world warns, violate trust, and dig your own grave. But graves are comfortable if lined with velvet and lit by forbidden matches.

So I keep the shovel handy, polished and brazen. Tomorrow, some unfortunate soul will hand me their faith, folded like origami. I will admire its wings, promise to guard it, then lock it in a glass case, first crack spidering under the spotlight. They will never suspect the ribbon under my cuff, pulsing with aftershocks of suite No. 707, daring me to pull the trigger all over again.

Betrayal is not a trespass; it is an art gallery of broken mirrors. Step inside, admire the reflections, slice your fingertips, tracing each shard. Exit only when dripping enough stories to paint your own obituary. Mine is half-written, ink wet, edges burning.

The signature bleeds, purple on white, just like the ribbon clamping my wrist, whispering a lullaby no textbook ever footnoted. Trust me. Or don’t.

Either way, the ribbon smiles.

-jspc ] street artist of wanton [