Page 2 of Dominion's Guard
"Or," she says.
The word hangs between us. She lets it sit there, watching me the way someone watches a chess game they're already winning.
"Go ahead." I cross my arms, mirroring her posture even though my lungs are burning and every instinct I have is screaming at me to bolt. "I love a good sales pitch."
Her eyebrow rises by just a fraction. "You're mouthing off to the woman who's deciding whether to call the police."
"You haven't called them yet. Which means you want something, and you're hoping I'm smart enough to take the deal instead of making you do paperwork." I lean my hip against the desk because if my knees are going to shake, she doesn't get to see it. "So what's the offer?"
The almost-smile becomes a real one, small and controlled but real. "My name is Margot Pascal. I own a private club in the Warehouse District. I need a bartender."
She wants me to be a bartender.
I just got caught with my hand in a safe and she's offering me a job slinging drinks. The laugh that escapes is sharp and too loud in the quiet study, and I hate myself for it because it sounds like relief.
"A bartender," I repeat. "You catch a thief red-handed and your first thought is to put her behind a bar where she can steal from you at the point of sale."
"You won't steal from me." She says it like it's already settled, like she already knows how this ends and she's just waiting for me to catch up. "You're, what, twenty-four? Twenty-five?"
"Twenty-five."
"Twenty-five years old with a skill set that's going to land you in Orleans Parish Prison before you turn thirty. How much do you owe?"
The question lands like a gut punch because she's not asking about tonight. She's asking about the reason I'm standing in a stranger's study at eleven o'clock on a Wednesday, wearing lambskin gloves and a canvas bag.
"Enough," I say.
Her gaze drops to my hands, to the gloves and the calluses visible at my wrists where the leather ends. Then her eyes travel back to my face, and I can feel her putting it together the way a doctor reads symptoms. I'm young and skilled and alone in a rich woman's house on a Wednesday night. I'm not desperate enough to be sloppy, but I'm desperate enough to be here.
"Someone's medical bills," she says. "Parent, probably. You're too young for it to be a spouse, and you wouldn't be this careful if you were stealing for a habit."
The accuracy of it hits like a hand through my ribs, closing around something I keep locked away. The flinch gives her the rest.
"Mother," she says quietly. The word lands like a certainty, not a question.
"Are we done with the cold reading, or should I take my shoes off so you can check my soles for character flaws?"
"Here's what I'm offering." She stands from the armchair. "You stop stealing. You work at my club until the debt is settled."
"And learn a legitimate trade and stay out of prison and stop burning my life down?" I fill in the rest for her because the shape of the pitch is obvious. "I've seen this movie. The part where the pretty criminal gets saved by the rich lady with a heart of gold."
"I don't have a heart of gold." Her voice drops the conversational warmth and what's underneath is granite. "I have a business that requires loyalty and staff who understand that trust isn't negotiable. You have skills I can redirect. This isn't charity. It's an investment."
The word lands differently than I expect. She's not saving me; she's investing, and the distinction matters because it means she sees raw material where everyone else would see a write-off.
"And if I say no?"
"Then you run for the service entrance and I call my friends at NOPD." She straightens, smoothing the front of her blouse with one hand. "But you won't say no."
"You don't know me well enough to predict what I'll do."
"I know you put the necklace back before I asked you to. And you closed the box." She holds my gaze. "A real thief would have pocketed it while we were talking. You wanted to, but you didn't. That tells me more about you than a background check."
I want to tell her she's wrong, that I'm exactly the criminal she caught tonight and that her read on me is sentimental bullshit and that I don't need saving. But the argument dies somewhere between my brain and my tongue, because she's right about all of it. She's right about the exhaustion I've been ignoring for the past year, the close calls that keep getting closer, and the feeling that the walls are tightening every time I slip through them. My mother is dead. The debt is still alive. And the only skill I have is one that's going to destroy me if I keep using it.
My body knows it before my brain catches up. The tension in my shoulders drops a fraction. My jaw unclenches. The fight-or-flight that's been screaming since the light came on quiets to a low hum, and what replaces it sits heavy in my chest, warm and terrifying.
I pull off the gloves. I fold them once and hold them in my fist.
