He laughs softly and my eyes fly back to his face. He’s laughing at me, teasing me, and I don’t like it one little bit.
“Relax, Cindy. Drink as much as you like. While I admire your work ethic, I just gave you the rest of the night off,” he says.
My eyes widen incredulously. Then I burst out laughing at the sheer audacity of him. He might be used to getting his own way, but it’s a bit of a stretch for him to believe he has any control over my job, when I work or don’t.
My laugh dies in my throat as he just sits there, cool as a cucumber, watching me patiently, as if he’s waiting for me to catch up with the conversation. His expression tells me one thing. The reality of the situation hits me. What the fuck am I doing sitting here drinking with this guy? This guy who seems to know too much about me and is now behaving as if he has the right to tell me to take the night off.
I narrow my eyes, my suspicions well and truly up. He’s still watching me, a predator waiting for his prey to slip up. What does he want with me? How has he managed to insert himself into my life like this? And why does he want to?
“Who the hell are you?” I ask, my voice a shocked whisper.
He looks down at his glass and then takes a slow sip of his drink. For a second I think he didn’t hear my question, but he turns back to me and smiles oddly and I know he heard. He’s playing with me again, keeping me on tenterhooks, making me wait until he’s ready to talk.
“It’s not so much a question of who I am Cindy. It’s more a question of what I’ve done,” he drawls.
I don’t want to get lured down this path. This path where I can’t seem to stop myself from playing into his hands and doing exactly what he expects of me, but I have to know. And his statement was a clear invite to ask.
“Ok,” I say, my voice coming out a bit louder and sounding more like my own. “What have you done?”
“I’ve bought The Macau,” he smiles. “It all became official yesterday. So … I’ll say it again. Relax. Drink. You have the night off.”
My first reaction is: he’s lying.
There has been no mention of a sale, no mention that the business has changed hands. And surely as the manager, I would have been privy to that information, even if the rest of the staff weren’t.
It would be such a stupid lie to tell, though. And one thing he is not is stupid. But what could he hope to achieve by making something like that up? And there’s something disconcerting about the casual way he says it. He’s not making it a big announcement.
That makes me think he’s telling the truth.
Alex
I gauge Cindy’s reaction to my news out of the corner of my eye while I pretend to look at a man I’m vaguely acquainted with.
From what I’ve seen of Cindy so far, she seems to think she’s hard to read, but her emotions play all over her face. She’s easy to read if a person knows what they’re looking for, and the first rule in my business is to learn to read people so they can never take you by surprise. Cindy has managed it once, but I won’t let her catch me off guard like that again.
Her first reaction is, of course, disbelief. Then I see her mulling it over, wondering what I could achieve by such a lie.
I am quite impressed she’s even giving it this much thought. I am a hard man to doubt. Nine times out of ten my inbred confidence makes people believe whatever I tell them. And the other time sheer confidence fails my poker face does the trick. If Cindy thinks I cleaned her out on the craps table, she should see me play poker. I’ve spent years perfecting the art of bluffing and reading people, and putting those two things together makes me almost unbeatable in business.
Actually, I am pretty sure I could walk into any business and announce I own it and within minutes, have all of the staff believing me. But Cindy is obviously different. She’s one of those rare birds that doesn’t believe easily. She wants to examine the idea, turn it over in her mind, and see if there’s anything to suggest it isn’t true.
In this case, there’s no reason for her not to believe me. I’m not bluffing. I am the owner of this casino. Lord Alstree, the previous owner was happy to humor me and keep the deal on the down low. He didn’t ask why. If I was up to something shady, he believed it was my affair not his. I like the English for that. They know how to mind their own business.