Strut.

Li sits on the sticky leather bench. The table in front of him is greasy. He’s uncomfortable, bordering on anxious. There’s a briefcase on the floor next to him, and he is absolutely terrified someone will take it. Irrational fears, but this is one week’s worth of work. And working at Li’s pace, that’s a lot.

The door to the little restaurant opens, bell jingling. Ross looks out of place in his designer boots and styled hair, but then, so does Li in his business suit. This isn’t really that type of establishment.

Ross slides in the booth across from Li, sending him a pleasant smile. “Fancy seeing you here, Zhang. Know if this place is any good?”

“I don’t know, is it? Because it looks like a piece of shit.” Li looks distastefully at the napkin dispenser and checkered tabletop. A passing waitress shoots him a glare.

“Well, that pretty much guaranteed you spit in our food.”

Li rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Ross, why here?”

Ross takes the paper ring off his napkin, spinning it absently between his fingers. “It’s my life goal to find the best pizza place in New York City,” Ross confesses, a smirk playing at his lips and a far-off look in his eye.

“Seriously?” Li is incredulous. “Ross, do you have any idea how many pizza places there are, just in Manhattan? That’s absolutely–”

“Shh, our lovely waitress is here.” Ross beams up at the young lady, making her blush. “We’ll have a cheese pizza, thin crust, and another of whatever your specialty is.” He turns back to Li. “And yes, actually, I do; there are three hundred and forty-six.”

Li is bewildered by now, and the only thing he can think to ask is, “Two pizzas?”

“Yup,” Ross answers nonchalantly. Before Li can question anymore, he interrupts him. “It’s how you tell if a pizza place is good. You want plain cheese, so they can’t disguise the bad parts with anything, and you want a thin crust because that’s hard to pull off. It can’t be too crispy, or too doughy. And as for the specialty, they should be able to make their own best dish, well, good.” Ross sits back in the booth. “And if they can do both, then you’ve got yourself a keeper.”

Li gapes, astonished at the amount of thought Ross has put into his endeavor. Jesus Christ, he had it down to a science. How often did Ross go out, probably alone, to some shady restaurant to buy two pizzas that he won’t even eat half of?

Li realized then that, really, he didn’t have any idea of what kind of a person Ross was. Well, okay, maybe what kind of a person, but overall, Li barely knew anything. He didn’t know what he did with his free time; Li didn’t even know what he did for a living. He knew one of his hobbies, certainly; he knew one of them quite well. He knew Ross’s mannerisms, yes, but only from being around him, from seeing him angry so much. Actually, now that he stops to think about it, Li only really knows the angry mannerisms.

For a moment there, Li had almost considered them friends.

That moment had passed. Li felt more like an employee than ever. He felt used, somehow; who was this man sitting in front of him? How could a person be so tricky and selfish, but–but somehow make that waitress swoon in just a few words? How could someone fake an identity that well? God, it was sickening.

Ross had always been a little sickening to Li; that was simply the manner of his dealings. But this hit Li harder than anything else, somehow. Ross didn’t just threaten people, he played through. He got to know these people, and then he crushed them. He, he’s… God. He’s practically a monster.

Li is at a loss for words now. He’s staring at Ross’s face in revulsion, and Ross in turn is staring at him as if questioning the man’s sanity.

Yes, Li works for him, but Li does this work to pay the bills. Besides, it isn’t as if he has a choice. I mean, the Cesters have connections. If Li refused work from them, he’d probably get jumped down some dark alley, forced into it somehow. Better to submit to it willingly than get on a Cester’s bad side, right?

Right?

Li is convincing himself of his own innocence at this point. This suitcase, it’s filled with Alexis Flight’s personal information. He is, quite literally, handing over another victim to Ross.

But that doesn’t mean he has to hand over everything.

Li fingers the briefcase propped up beside him, thinking of the page that lies on the top, face up. The most important page.

“What?”

Li looks up to meet Ross’s eyes reluctantly. Realizations in hand, he doesn't want to give Ross the chance to see his newfound disgust. “Why don’t I just… give this to you now. You can enjoy the pizza yourself.”

Ross’s eyebrows knit together, but he quickly cocks one, grin in place. “Why? Come on, buddy, stick around.”

“No, Ross, I don’t–”

“I do. Come on, it’s on me.” Ross’s tone is still mocking, but his eyes convey something more serious. Not an unsaid threat, perhaps, but… something else. Li can’t quite place it. He sighs, sliding back down into the booth, for he had half-stood up in his haste.

“The food’s coming now. What’s the rush?”

“I’ve got someplace to be,” Li mumbles, gesturing to his suit. It’s a lie. He doesn’t have to be there for another two hours.

“An hour late won’t hurt.”

“Yes, Ross, it will—” Li is lying more in earnest now, but it doesn’t really make a difference. Li’s arguing never really made a difference with Ross, but Li continues to simply because if he’s doing this despicable of a thing, he at least doesn’t have to do it politely.

The pizza comes, and they eat in silence. Ross makes some noises of contentment as he consumes an astonishing amount of food; both the pizzas are nearly gone by the time they finish. When the table is cleared, Li speaks.

“So, what’s the verdict?”

Ross blinks. “Of what?”

“You know,” Li says, but from his expression Ross clearly doesn’t. “The pizza.”

“Oh.” Ross sits back and smiles. “The specialty was quite good, the crust was done really well. Usually places make them all fancy to try and show off how many ingredients they can fit in, but it’s nice when a restaurant actually puts some effort into the flavor palette. But the cheese, God, that was sick. It was all rubbery. That’s how you can tell it’s been frozen. See, the specialty’s cheese was like that too, but you didn’t notice, did you?”

Li debates answering this question, but decides Ross would go on for another solid minute without it.

“No, you didn’t, because you were too distracted by the other tastes. That’s why you have to order the plain cheese. It says a lot. The thin crust was all right, I guess, but it was a bit too crunchy—like a graham cracker. Ugh. Who wants to eat a pizza on a graham cracker?” Ross shakes his head, as if disappointed.

“Right,” Li says absently, then changes the subject oh-so-smoothly. “So, I’ve got your papers.”

Then Ross gets the business glint in his eye, so different from any other. A broker, their look would be calculating and sincere. A CEO’s would be emotionless and money-driven. But Ross’s, it’s almost amused. “Excellent.”

Li places the briefcase in front of him and opens it so Ross can’t see the contents. He rummages through, apparently selecting a few of the pages he wants to go over with Ross. He takes the rest out of the briefcase, placing it in a pile off to the side, and holds the thinner packet in one hand while the other closes the case, placing the seemingly empty box back on the floor.

Li’s tricky. Or at least, he thinks he is.

Li fans out the leaf of papers he’s holding across the table, pointing out certain things to Ross that may be taken out of context or are inaccurate. See, Li doesn’t only give you information; he makes sure you know how to use it. Ross nods, his face at once serious and elated as Li explains to him.

“So, the first thing you need to know about Alexis, is she’s a party animal.” He lays out several pictures, taken maybe from Facebook or something of the like. They show Alexis dancing, Alexis drinking, Alexis sitting and looking pretty. “She’s somewhere every day of the weekend, sometimes even weekdays. She’s fond of the elite party scene, dancing, drinking, but she gets out to the clubs every once in a while. It keeps her social life looking sharp. She never actually looks like she’s enjoying herself, but I guess it’s the thought that counts. She doesn’t like hard liquor—she’s a model, after all, a lightweight, needs to stay girly. Any expensive mixed drink is good, though.”

Next are some… shall we say more risqué photos? “She’ll pose, as you can see, but for now she’s going for a sexy, but clean look. I couldn’t find nude shoots anywhere—”

“Yeah, you totally looked,” Ross cut in.

“—so I’m concluding at this point that they probably don’t exist… She’s kept her head in the right place there, at least,” Li continues grimly, ignoring Ross’s comment. “I’m sure some will surface eventually, but she’s just not in that stage of her career yet.

“She also has quite a few boys on the side–none of them have been big enough to make headlines. She keeps pretty quiet about her sex life. I don’t know if that’s just Charles or her bribing the tabloids or something; having an agreement with papers like that is risky. Thousands of these pictures exist; they’re relatively easy to find, but you wouldn’t come across them if you weren’t looking.” Li is gesturing to some shots of Alexis with the arm of a random boy wrapped around her shoulder or waist, sometimes landing on her ass. “She’s cut back on boys like that, though–ones she’ll be seen with in public. There are a few shots of her making out with guys at a club or something. She’s getting more into the one-night stand scene, I’m thinking. Except for her manager… now this is interesting.”

He pulls out a spreadsheet of basic information: name, age, the like; on a Cameron Brooks. “He’s her booking agent, whatever you want to call it, and he basically controls every aspect of her social life. He plans what parties she goes to, what appointments and jobs she accepts, when she goes out to eat with her friends—everything! Brooks has a whole team working under him, too, but he’s the one in charge of the look and feel of the whole thing. I’m sure that’s just the norm when you’re as big as her. But, I have reason to believe they don’t have a strictly business relationship… Alexis went through multiple managers in the years before she hired Brooks, and she was always difficult to work with. Now she submits to anything he says—and it’s working out for her.” Li shuffled more papers around. “Alexis Flight, as a business, made almost ten million last year alone. She’s rolling in it. A good eighth of this is going to Brooks, and the majority of the rest is paying off various workers, but that’s still an absolutely ridiculous number just for modeling. I can’t quite figure out where to fill in the gaps, but I’ve got a rough outline on the finances—” he points to a hand-written sheet of scribbles as he moves aside some sheets for a new page.

“This,” he says, pointing at a document, “is an example of her credit bill. Someone found it in a dumpster and scanned it—her credit card number is still on it, even. I don’t think they knew what they had.” Li straightens his glasses. “As you can see, she lives a pretty expensive lifestyle… the whole thing is racking up to almost ten thousand dollars. It’s mostly clothes, jewelry, things like that, but there’s a few other things that might be of interest… a drugstore at four in the morning, a hotel shop around the same time… probably nothing, but you can’t be sure.”

Li continues like that, running through everything. He knows about Cameron, knows how abnormally close their relationship seems, knows how he controls most aspects of her social life. He knows about Charles, how abnormally unclose the couple is. The marriage, as he sees it, is a business arrangement. Like a merger, it’s just bringing two superpowers together. There’s this, and there’s more; Li points out every minute detail that might be to any importance at all to Ross—and, naturally, this leads him to talk about nearly everything.

When he’s done, Li clips all the papers together and hands them to Ross, who at this point is thoroughly exhausted from all the facts being crammed into his brain. He stows the packet in his coat almost absentmindedly, and it disappears within one of the many pockets.

That jacket of Ross’s, it’s like Mary Poppins’s bag. He could hide an entire meal in there if he wanted to, Li swears to God. An entire ream of paper goes in, and it hardly makes a lump.

Ross stands up, some change in his pocket clinking. He smiles one more time at the young waitress while putting down a generous tip, and then moves to shake Li’s hand.

This is out of character. The entire thing is, actually. Li never gets the full amount promised to him. They never meet in a public restaurant, they’ll meet in little out-of-the-way backstreets, so as not to be seen or overheard. Ross never calls him Li, either, which he’s been doing lately; it’s always Zhang. And Ross never shakes Li’s hand after the exchange is done, he shakes when Li agrees to the job. In other words, he shakes to slip him the money.

Li accepts Ross’s firm grasp, and, expected or unexpected, when he pulls away there’s a twenty in his hand. Ross is paying him extra. As if it couldn’t get weirder. Li hardly knows what to think at this point.

“You’ve done a good job, Li.” Ross pats him roughly on the back. “I’ll see you around.” Ross strides out of the restaurant, off into the chilly street.

Li shakes his head as if shrugging off a fly, a minor nuisance, and collects his briefcase, stalking off in the opposite direction.

Within the case, there is a single piece of paper.