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“What thing on my neck?” he asks, just as I’d hoped he would.
“Your face, you dickhead!” I tease him, knowing full well that anywhere there are eligible single women, there's talk of Nathan Yin, Hong Kong's most eligible bachelor.
He growls and then takes another sip, before he asks again, “So, Kiara?”
Guess the stalling only lasted so long. "Um, well, we've talked, like I told you the other day. But after I showed her the casino, I think she's on board. She seemed really impressed with the Light Room.”
He frowns, “So she'll work at the new casino? Doing what?”
I eye him. There are two people I won't play poker with, my cousin who cheats and is a bad loser, and Nathan, who, for as far as I can see, has no discernible tell. That isn't normal. Never play with someone like that. They will rip your heart out and feed it to you.
I wonder how much he knows about her business, so I put the ball in his court. "Well, how do you think she'd best fit in at the casino?"
He snickers. "Other than as someone who goes around picking everyone's pockets? I don’t know, a hustler?”
I laugh. I know that's not exactly what prop players do, but some believe it is. Still, in poker you can't blame someone for being better at reading you than you are at reading them. "I don't know how she'd take to being called that."
"I do. She'd be proud and say thank you. I say that from firsthand experience." He shakes his head at the apparent memory of this run in with his baby sister.
"Okay, So, um, do you know what else she does?” I suddenly feel a sense of protectiveness over her. If she doesn't want her brother and father to know about her work, then they’re not going to hear it from me.
His eyes narrow. He knows me too well. "You know, don't you?"
"Know what?"
"Kylian. Left finger tapping on the thigh."
I grin, he must know that I don’t intend on playing poker with him ever again, if he’s telling me he thinks he knows what my tell us.
"So,”— he leans back into the couch— “what do you know?"
I shrug. "I know what she wants me to know, and I'm guessing you know what she wants you to know."
He doesn't like that answer, and lean forward again, serious. "Kylian. If she's doing anything she shouldn't..."
"Shouldn't? Come on, man. She's an adult. Don't you think she should be able to make decisions for herself?"
He takes a sip from his glass, watching me drink from the other glass.
I try to ignore it by pouring some more whiskey into my glass. "What?"
"You're drinking her Kool Aid."
"What in the fuck does that mean?"
He cocks his eyebrow. "I mean, she's given you some spiel about how hard life is as a Yin and she just wants to be her own person."
"You'd might be surprised to hear that I have heard no such speech. I have heard the one where I'm an asshole who always goes running back to Nathan with everything, and that if we're to work together then that's not acceptable. So, what do you want me to do, tell your Dad that I can't offer her a job, because Nathan wants me to report back to him everything that she's doing?"
"That's not what I mean. I just want to make sure she's doing okay."
I hold my palms out. "Then you're going to have to find that out from her. "
"Find what out from who?" Kiara says, stepping into my office, with a big smile on her face and a basket on her arm. Her face immediately freezes when she sees her brother sitting there, and then looks at me, a panicked expression on her face,
He stands up. "Kiara, what are you doing here? Are you here to see me? I told my assistant that if you or Dad looked for me, I'd be here for lunch."
She walks over to him and lets him give her a hug while still trying to sneak a look at me. "Erm, yes! I had to come and talk to Kylian about… something... anyway, and then I called to see if you wanted to have lunch, and was told you'd be here, so two birds. Hey, um, look, I brought some sushi and miso soup. Come on, guys. I'm sure you're both hungry. You probably didn’t think to get anything to eat with those drinks.”
