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"Then you need a ride."
"And... you're going to give it to me?"
"Why not? I was in the neighborhood?"
I shoot him a wary look. "And why were you in the neighborhood?”
He grins. "In case you needed a ride."
The chuckle that comes out of me is loud, unexpected and unwanted, and I swallow it down as fast as it had come bubbling up. He really is charming. A jerk, but a charming one. But he didn’t need to hear that from me.
"So, where to?" he asks, holding his arm out.
I ignore it as I walk toward the front door. "How about you show me this casino that I'm supposed to be working at. Make sure that it's as good as you say it is."
He doesn't even try to hide the look of surprise on his face, and then follows me out, holding the car door open for me. He takes the half empty coffee cup from my hand and throws it into a nearby trash can.
After he climbs into the car, he hands me a coffee tumbler with a lid he pulled from the drinks tray. "For you. I already put the sugar and cream that you don't want into it. Don't want you spilling hot coffee on you while I'm driving.” He gives me a wink and takes off.
And something tells me, by the end of the day, what little resolve I have left to keep him at arm's length is going to be gone.
And for the first time in a long time, I'm not running away.
Kylian pulls into a covered car park. The outside of the building is still covered in some scaffolding in the front and the landscaping has only just started with a deep fish pond being built in front of the grandiose entrance.
I follow him from the carpark up a service elevator. It opens up into the back of a large kitchen.
"This is going to be the kitchen for Grace, the restaurant that our friend Jax runs. If you're around in a month, he's going to do a menu tasting. Some of my brothers are going to come over for that. And Damien’s fiancée, My-Linh. You're going to love her. As for Damien... er, maybe not so much but that's okay, he only has eyes for My-Linh anyway.”
He chatters away as he leads me through a wide hallway, decked out in a plush red carpet, golden ornate but modern light fixings that give the effect of burning oil lamps on the walls, a drop chandelier that looks like it had over a thousand crystals on it and empty shops lining each side.
"We've got about thirty vendors coming in. LV, Prada, Tiffany, all the luxury brands, and six of the positions that you see at the end here will be for pop ups of local businesses. We’re renting them out for free for six-month leases and they’ll pay us 25% of their new receipts. No point letting the big names scoop up all the casino winnings We’ve been looking at applications for the last year of so, and some of these designers and products give the luxury brands a run for their money. It’s actually how we found the designer for those lamps you see along the wall. Almost all the materials and decor that you’ll see in Jade Bay comes from local Hong Kong businesses.”
Touched and impressed at the attention to detail, I nod as he leads me down another hallway with more store spaces. Already I’m seeing the scope of this building; it seems to go on forever. The interior is coming together, and everything feels rich and opulent. This isn't just any casino. This is gunning to be the best casino in Macau. And I've been in enough of them to know that he just might have a shot.
There's swelling of pride somewhere in the side of my ribcage.
Even without telling me, just from his voice, I can tell he has lived and breathed this project.
Kylian leads me into one of the main game rooms by descending into a stunning grand staircase.
"Wow, this is like something out of—"
"Titanic?” he finishes with a grin. “Thanks for noticing."
My mouth drops open. "You modeled it on that?"
"Let’s just say it was inspired by it. It's almost twice as wide, we have a little more room than a cruise ship, and about one-and-a-half times higher.”
"I feel like Kate Winslet descending to meet Leo,” I say with a nostalgic sigh.
"I would've thought you would have preferred to be Kiara meeting Leo. As I recall, you were a little jealous of Ms. Winslet in your teen years."
I press a finger to my lips. The crushes of our youth should not be brought up in our adult years.
He stands in the middle step of the staircase and pulls his phone out, showing me the layout. "So, this is the main games floor. No special memberships or VIP levels. Machines over there, games tables along this side here and in the middle of the floor we’ll have the displays for our machine jackpots."
I nod, it sounds about standard but there's something different about the lay out. It takes me a moment before I pick out what it is. I peer again at the blueprint on his phone to make sure.
