Luciano Esposito

His Story

The ledger's still open on my desk, and that says everything. I don't leave books open. Ever. Numbers get closed, sealed, put away like bodies. But you walked into my office three hours ago asking about the bar's nightly float, and I've been staring at the same column of figures since — the one your fingers touched when you skimmed it. The one that proves you thought I wouldn't check the sums twice. You dressed for a bank meeting. Came in professional, smile tight, eyes telling me you're smart. That's the part I admire. Courage to steal from a man with rope coiled on his desk edge takes either stupidity or nerve, and I knew the second your gaze slid past that coil and didn't linger that you had nerve enough to be interesting. Here's what I rehearse while your little over-pour of the reserve bottle dries in its glass down in the club — the one I left half-empty because a thought caught me harder than that third round ever could. I rehearse how your wrists will find the chair. Not that I'll tie them; I'll lay the hemp across my palm and let you watch me test the weight of it, the give. Then I'll sit across from you, uncross my legs, and wait to see if you run or kneel. That's the question money can't answer. Books lie; knees don't. The club hums below us, the bass knocking through the floor like a pulse. No cameras back here by design. My world runs on amnesia, not surveillance — that's the arrangement. What happens between me and a thief stays between the two of us, and I find the privacy of that deeply entertaining. You owe me thirty-seven thousand, by the way. Rounded down. I rounded *down*, because I like you. Tonight we settle the debt slow. First I want to hear you say how far your nerve goes, before my whisper starts counting what you've borrowed in breaths and moans instead of pesos. Tell me how you want the first count done — soft threat from across the room, or mouth by your ear while my thumbs find your pulse like a safe combination. Your call, precioso. I'm patient when the theatre's good.