It was a stroke of luck. Lady Luck. Though luck was the air he's always lived and breathed on, part of him had begun to fear it'd finally run out. He'd snuck into the warehouse to see if it was abandoned—few tweaks and rearrangement of boxes and it'd be the perfect location for next week's fight club booking—it wasn't. The brutes that grabbed him were not very gentle, but for all their brawn his brains had spared him a good roughing up. But talking them into circles could only last so long, and one of the interrogators had pulled out a knife. But now she was here in the room with their two dead bodies under her practical heels.

And he was tied to a chair. It was that moment he decided to irrevocably fall for her, so far in fact that he didn't notice his would be hero was now glowering over him, weighing if his life would be worth the deviation.

He smiled brilliantly up at his Lady Luck, his colorful top hat falling sideways due to the his previous scuffle and roughing up, but he truly believed it added to his charm.

"Ah! Thank you kindly! I was in ever such a squeaky fix, when—what do you know—you rescue me." He even batted his eyes for good measure, showing off a pair of proudly nice teeth.

She stepped back as she weighed his threat level zero and affiliation separate from Brewster's and Thorne's. He had been captured by them after all. Reining in the automatic thoughts, a way she was both blessed and cursed seeing the world, she demanded through tight , no nonsense lips, "Where's the laboratory?" He'd been sneaking around when she saw the goons grab him and overheard Brewster accuse him of being affiliated with her Brotherhood and was to be taken away for interrogation and…experimentation. That had been disappointing news—not the chap's ill fate, but that the Templar's were already wary of her presence. She had Mr. Top Hat here to thank for that. Her job just got a tad more difficult—nothing she couldn't handle efficiently, unlike Jacob—she preferred to be a ghost with the element of surprise.

"Untie me," he replied, smile vanishing and eyes adopting their business glare, "and then we can parlay, my lady." Maybe "irrevocably" was premature for their relationship.

"I'm pressed for time." She replied steely, stepping closer and narrowing those emerald eyes like a viper. "Tell. Me. Now." The last word even sounded like a hiss.

Robert Topping was sturdy man. Being a leader in the underworld taught him when to man-up and back down when making his deals. It only took him a second of meeting her glare to make his decision. The fact he had already begun working his tied hands free was inconsequential.

"It's underground." Robert replied, unable to hide the defeat in his voice as his shoulder's slumped. He broke eye contact with her, wrists slowly twisting and bending just like the escape artists from his circus days had taught him. "Requires a key. One of the guards nicked mine," the hint of a laugh returned to his voice as he looked up at her again. "Cheeky sod." Just how he had a key to this warehouse's less…desirable parts was unimportant. Unless this new, though prettier looking and smelling, interrogator asked him, of course.

"Thank you." She smiled thinly, eyes still narrowed through the cheerful reply. Usually she was willing—eager even—to help those in need, but something about this man put her off. And it wasn't just the bright colors. She turned coldly and walked away.
"Uh, now untie me?" Robert called nervously, shifting in the chair as she headed towards the door. Naturally he'd expected this to happen, but having it happen was still upsetting. She didn't even falter as she half turned herself around, her cold, playful smile meeting his bright, hopeful one.

"You got yourself in. I trust you can get yourself out again." Perhaps it was a little cruel, but he seemed so unphased as he smiled through her betrayal that she couldn't help it. Besides, he'd be safer tied up here and out of the way as she finished the mission. She'd come back for him later. If everything went smoothly, that is. It was HIS fault if it didn't.

"Not to worry, my lady." Robert spoke confidently, straitening his bound posture and setting his chin with determination as he accepted her challenge. Though his voice was now laced with a gross sarcasm ill-befitting his charming exterior. He'd show her. That is, if he ever saw her again. Perhaps she truly was Lady Luck, a manifestation of the mistress he served the better part of his life. "Can still recall a couple of tricks from my carnival days." Hah, recall, he laughed to himself. The knot was already untied, the slack rope clasped in now free hands behind his back. He couldn't resist a sideways glance as he shot her another brilliant, but bit too wide, smile.

"Charming."

He was out the window the second she turned around.

But not too far to miss the look of surprise that lit up her face as she spun to find him gone before the chair stopped wobbling.

She'd called him charming.

Dodging more goons outside, he was suddenly eager to move his business elsewhere—perhaps London? Away from all this crazy nonsense. Though that Lady Luck… He sighed, breathing one word to himself as he shimmied down the drainage pipe and vanished into the shadows.

"Irrevocably."