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They'd first crossed paths one sweltering afternoon in Dallas.
At the time Cassian was little more than a feral teenager getting by on short-changing scams. Luthen made sure to get the whole story out of him as soon as he got Andor on a one-way flight to New York. The boy had come from somewhere in Mexico, Narco territory. When he was nine his parents had been killed and his younger sister kidnapped, probably trafficked, as he watched from his neighbours’ house. The neighbours had stopped him from getting himself taken, too, and he’d been on a mission to find his sister ever since.
The neighbours who had rescued him had brought him with them to America, and eventually managed to adopt him. Fourteen-year-old Cassian must have gotten the deja-vu of his life as he witnessed his adoptive father get shot to death by a cop on the dusty streets of Ferrix, a shitstain town just outside of Dallas. He’d been arrested a few days after the fact for attacking a policeman.
This, of all places, is where Andor faltered in his tale. Sipo. He’d spent three years there as an alternative for juvie. The judge had told them it was a commuted sentence he owed to his lack of previous criminal record. Folks paid to send their kids there, Cassian had parroted, a bitter sneer on his face. Consider yourself lucky.
Luthen knew about Sipo, so he didn’t press further. A troubled youth facility with a record for attempted escapes which ended in tragedy; at the time it was on its way to being shut down. A group of former pupils had come forth with testimonies of torture and sexual abuse, creating a scandal that had proved too big for the school to overcome. For all intents and purposes, the kid had survived hell only to end up in another circle of it.
Cassian’s anger was palpable. It was in his eyes as he looked at the world at large: it just changed subtly in shade – cold contempt for other criminals, burning hatred for any law enforcement, scornful denigration for the middle American bourgeoisie.
All of this made him a mediocre con artist, as it turned out. Luthen was immediately drawn in by the contradictions playing on his face, the ones who gave him away so plainly. A radiant smile overshadowed by a displeased set of his brows, a wide-eyed plea soured by a downturned mouth. The boy's attempts to hide his true self worked the same way in cartoons stepping on one bump in the carpet is sure to create two more.
Sitting at the bar in the same poker room he’d used as meeting spot with a possible buyer, Luthen watched a scene kick up as soon as a waitress realized she was being scammed by the scruffy young man with the hard eyes of a killer. As if looking into the room from a window in the ceiling, Luthen saw himself get up and pull out a poor imitation of a DPD badge.
Riding in the passenger seat of Luthen’s rented Jaguar, Andor looked like a disgruntled stray kitten someone had bundled up in a blanket to bring home to their kids. His dark eyes shot around like pinballs as he registered they were driving towards the Interstate.
“Where are we going?” Andor managed with his broken English.
“New York.”
Andor had almost thrown himself out of the car, stopped only by the child lock.
“You said you were giving me a ride home.” He said, trying to disguise his panic.
“That’s right. New York is your new home. I’ll train you up, make a good thief out of you yet. Just how many people have you fucked over around these parts?”
The silence that met his question was the only answer he needed.
“Time to get the hell out of Dodge, as you Americans would say.”
“I’m not fucking American.” Cassian scoffed.
“Glad to hear it.”
Luthen had needed a desperado when he found Cassian Andor. He was planning a heist, the biggest he’d ever attempted.
Yes, he mostly dealt with antiques, but the time had come to act on some insider knowledge on a local bank that could set him up for life. His crack team had everything he could have hoped for - brains, skill, conviction - but it lacked what Andor had: the guts to kill if the situation called for it.
Andor had pulled through, demonstrating skill and sangfroid, ready to kill and die for next to nothing, as Luthen had predicted.
The thing was, Sipo made soldiers. The girls and boys it didn’t break it instilled with so much violence and need for structure they would struggle with freedom. Suddenly they lived in a world where they could eat, speak, smile whenever they wanted. It was enough to drive most of them insane. But Cassian didn’t die, and Cassian didn’t break. Instead, he was whittled into the perfect tool, diamond-hard and brittle, something held together by pure spite. A precision rifle who wanted only to be claimed by a bad man with a moving target.
Luthen couldn’t believe his luck sometimes. As he watched the grainy CCTV footage from the heist being broadcast on the news his eyes immediately found his weapon. Even masked and clad in black from head to toe, his slim figure radiated so much ruthless focus it was impossible to mistake him for anyone else.
“My little monster.” Luthen chuckled fondly.
***
Things became complicated a few years into their arrangement, after Andor went MIA and started searching for his sister in earnest. He hit up clubs, whorehouses, caused such a stir in the Juarez underworld it was a wonder he’d managed to make it back to the US in one piece. Of course, he’d left a trail of bodies wherever he went.
Bodies that, in one way or another, were sure to bite Luthen in the ass. Andor had been using contacts he’d gained from working with them, possibly exposing them to unwanted attention.
“He’s become a liability.” Kleya, his other enfant prodige, furious with him for every chance he took, every uncalculated risk. He needed her as much as he needed the likes of Andor; she was the only thing standing between him and the inevitable career-ending disaster waiting for him in some gloriously ambitious but ultimately flawed scheme. He’d never been one for details. Give him the world, or nothing at all. Leave the bureaucracy and the nail biting to the wage slaves, visionless fools who thought their hard work would be compensated in the end, if not in this life in the next.
He distinctly remembered Cassian’s opinion on the topic. Cassian who saw most people as marks, their vulnerabilities as things he could exploit, Cassian who had never thought about God after his parents had been killed, never one for second chances. Cinta had asked him if he ever thought about the afterlife, and he had rattled off some religious expression about resurrection in Spanish, then laughed. As a kid I thought it meant the poor fuckers had been waiting so long for the resurrection they fell asleep.
“What do you propose?”
Kleya thinned her mouth and hardened her eyes.
“Ah.” Luthen sighed, looking around the dusty backroom that was Kleya’s domain, where she cooked the books, made contact with their buyers, restored the ancient artefacts. The veritable inner sanctum of their operation.
“He’s going to get himself arrested. He’s a loose end. I don’t like it.” Kleya spelled out.
“Must you always be right?” Luthen groused, letting some irritation bleed into his voice. Playing a character, acting like the truth was too big for him to hear, like he didn’t have this eventuality planned out from the moment he’d set his eye on Andor.
Kleya didn’t smile. “Yes. You’re the one who assigned me that part.”
***
Finally, Andor got arrested in some beach in Florida. For loitering, of all things.
They didn’t tie him back to their network, but they did find plenty to crucify him with. They were ready to lock him up and throw away the key. Luthen didn’t know any of this, too busy trying to find him in Mexico, the last place his credit card had been used.
When he learned that Cassian’s mother had died in Ferrix he found he had little choice but to wait for him there. In the meantime, Andor orchestrated a prison break that would have put Shawshank Redemption to shame, and headed straight back to the Lone Star State.
When Luthen thought about it later, it would remind him of a tale he’d once heard about a man who wants to evade Death by running away from it, only to find it waiting for him at the edges of the world.
“I thought you wouldn’t make it here in time,” Death would say to the man.
Being back in Texas reminded him of their first meeting, the poker tables, the disgruntled waitress. It made him wish he could go back in time and do it all over again, impress his mark deeper in the boy this time, make him stay. Make him heel.
The funeral was one of the oddest things he’d ever experienced, mostly because a riot broke out halfway through it. The police had also been there waiting for Cassian to show up, which had put everyone on edge, and things had escalated far too quickly for Luthen to make sense of them.
Luthen found himself questioning what he really knew about the country that had been his home for so long, his cow to milk, his golden-egg-laying goose. What he really knew about the injustices people like Andor went through. Sure, he’d known about it, in an abstract way, but seeing it happen right before his eyes was something else entirely.
Just as the clash broke out, Luthen made eye contact with someone wearing a hoodie and a baseball cap over eyes the colour of burning coals.
“I thought you wouldn’t make it here in time.” Luthen said, unable to hear himself over the blaring of sirens and screaming and smoke bombs and firecrackers.
Andor frowned, looking back one last time to his mother’s grave before disappearing into the crowd.
Luthen spent the whole day looking for his wayward asset, damning himself for not taking the shot when he had the chance to.
Cinta was patrolling Fort Worth in the hopes they’d catch him trying to board a flight, while Vel went from Greyhound station to car rental, calling up motels for every alias they’d ever provided him with.
Luthen knew it was hopeless, that if Andor didn’t want to be found he wouldn’t be found. Which is why he almost felt relief upon entering his sad little motel room in Ferrix and seeing a gun levelled at him. Luthen quietly shut the door behind himself, unafraid to show his back to the other man.
“You came here to kill me.” Andor’s voice was a soft rasp, obscenely intimate in the cramped room. Not a question, Luthen noted. Just the acknowledgement of a fact.
Luthen remained stony-faced, letting Cassian come to whatever conclusion he liked.
The only light came from a lampshade in the corner of the room, the darkness making Andor’s reactions inscrutable.
“Do it.”
Luthen’s heart skipped a beat. Suddenly Andor was stepping closer to him, so close he could finally see the blazing light in his eyes, the resolute set to his mouth. He looked as haggard as ever, probably hadn’t shaved or showered since his escape from prison.
Too caught up in drinking in the sight of him, Luthen realised belatedly Cassian was holding out the gun for him to take. He did, warily, expecting a trap but finding none.
“Kill me,” Andor demanded, tone defiant even now, even in this. “Or take me in. I’m done running.”
Luthen weighed his options. He really let himself think about putting a bullet between those pretty eyes, putting him in the trunk of his car and driving him out to some wasteland, burying him, or tying stones to his feet and dumping him in a lake.
All he could think was what a waste.
He let himself raise the gun anyway, just to feel the thrill of holding the thread to Andor’s life in his hands. He looked for fear in the boy’s eyes - didn’t find any.
Cassian still sucked a in a sharp breath as the gun made contact with his throat, then traced the elegant curve of it until it lodged itself under his chin, tilting his face back, allowing Luthen to look straight into his eyes. There was no mistaking the intimacy of this gesture. They were treading dangerous waters; there was no telling what would happen if Andor flinched, if he refused him this. Luthen smiled darkly.
“Show me.”
Andor did, falling to his knees with none of his usual feline grace, just a body that had been pushed to its very limits and now saw a new, impossibly big task ahead of itself.
There was something disquietingly blank in his expression, and Luthen clenched his teeth against any scrap of emotion his conscience could still conjure up. Still, this wouldn’t do.
He let Cassian get to work on his belt, let him grope clumsily for his cock trough tailored flannel, even mouth at his crotch like a prostitute trying to impress a john. But when the absence evident in his movements reached its peak, Luthen struck him; a sharp backhand that sent him sprawling on the carpeted floor.
The reaction was instantaneous. Anger flared in the boy’s eyes as blood painted his snarling lips. Maybe the first hint of fear, too.
“There you are.” Luthen said softly, leaning down to trace Cassian’s lower lip. The young man’s eyes darted down to the offending hand, like he was contemplating biting it. Still feral, under all the careful masks Luthen had tailored for him, down to the fine wrinkles that rippled across his nose whenever he was aiming a gun.
But when his little monster rose back on his haunches it was only to subserviently take Luthen’s fingers in his hot little mouth, black eyes begging him for love, for absolution.
“If you put me in that position again I’m going to make you wish I’d killed you just now.” Luthen spoke, cold and inexorable. Cassian huffed his assent, and went back to work.
Old regrets chased each other as he typed out his message to Kleya. Cassian was fast asleep, curled up tight around himself, looking far too delicate for someone who had seen so much evil, who had been so thoroughly shaped by it.
Part of Luthen wished he could give Andor a noble cause to die for, some holy war against his oppressors of old. To do that would be to win his undying loyalty, once and for all. To see his full destructive potential in all its terrifying beauty. But all Luthen had to give was an empire built on theft and blood, and that would have to be enough.
Tomorrow, Luthen would bring Cassian home, away from this place, all its graves and ghosts and whispers of the past. Let the boy reminisce one last time about all the yokes he’d been under, all the cages he’d escaped. Let him wake up in the cold certainty that he’d used up his very last chance, and let him feel the leash tighten around his throat as a result. In the end, they both knew it was all part of the game they played, something mutually beneficial, the best deal both of them would get in this lifetime.