Why the young master was doing this, I genuinely could not say. He'd always told me, plainly, that people were idiots not worth his time — and here he was, watching a man steal ninety thousand dollars from his own casino like it was a show he'd paid good money to see.
I'd known Lawrence Sebastian Grey since before he could walk. Watched him grow into a boy who didn't speak much to anyone outside his parents and me, watched the wall go up around him sometime in high school and never quite come back down — except, apparently, for one boy he'd had a crush on once, years ago, who'd never even known the wall existed in the first place. He never told me the name. He never told me much of anything about it, except that he'd come home one day with color in his face I hadn't seen before, and lost it again a few weeks later when the boy turned out to only ever want him for his money.
I assumed, watching him now, that this Alexzander Cinder was about to be a repeat of that particular education.
"Sir," I said, approaching where he sat watching the surveillance monitors, "the man I ID'd looked considerably more nervous than the average guest."
"Should we throw him out," I added, when he didn't respond right away.
"What's his name," Law asked instead, not bothering to look up.
"Alexzander Cinder," I said.
He went quiet for a few minutes, scrolling back through footage of the ID check, studying Alexzander's face with the kind of focus he usually reserved for actual business decisions. "Leave him be," he finally said. "I'll handle it myself."
"As you wish, sir," I said, and meant it the way I always did — not agreement, exactly, but trust earned over twenty-some years of watching this man make decisions that occasionally worked out despite themselves.
I watched him leave the security office and head down toward the main floor, and I stayed behind a while longer, half out of habit and half out of a nagging feeling I couldn't quite name. When I finally checked the monitors again, Law was sitting across from Alexzander like he'd planned the whole encounter, smiling in a way I hadn't seen from him in years.
Cute little Alex, I imagined him thinking, already three steps ahead of whatever the rest of us could see coming.
By the time the front desk called to confirm a $90,000 token exchange, I already knew what answer Law wanted me to give. "Go ahead with the transaction," I told the receptionist, sighing harder than the situation strictly called for. "The boss says it's fine."
When I finally made it to his office afterward, he was still watching the cameras, tracking Alexzander's progress toward the exit with the patient, satisfied look of a man who'd just set a trap and was enjoying watching it close.
"Why did you give him the key card," I asked, not bothering to soften the question.
"Because I need something to blackmail him with," Law said, turning to smile at me — the exact smile he used on his parents whenever he wanted something he knew they'd say no to first.
"You let him walk out with ninety thousand dollars like it was nothing," I said.
"I know, Markus." He said my name the way he always did right before asking me to do something I wasn't going to enjoy. "I need you to drive him wherever he goes today. Tell me everything — where he goes, who he sees, what he does with the money."
"As you wish, young master," I said, bowing slightly before I left, already certain this day was going to be considerably longer than I'd planned.
"Oh, cute little Alex," I heard him murmur behind me, before the door shut between us. "You're going to be a good pawn in this game."
I walked the opposite direction toward the garage, found the black sedan that was mine for the day, and sat behind the wheel for a long moment before starting the engine.
This entire thing reminded me too much of that boy from high school — the one who'd used Law and never looked back. I didn't know yet whether Alexzander Cinder was going to be different. I just hoped, for both their sakes, that he was.