Chapter Prologue – The Explanation, The Apology, The View and The Offer.
Paris, France. 6:57pm, 10th August 2032.
Alex walks up to a particularly unassuming block of apartments and enters the lobby. He checks the address sent to his phone; this is the right spot. He didn't bring his cane with him, nor anything that he would need for thieving. Just the things a 'normal' person would bring, but normal is too far away from direct contemplation. Alex is here by himself; Erin and her friends went back to university, Penelope disappeared, Tyson left with his share of the money and swiftly took a holiday to Australia for a more favourable climate at this time of year. However, the real odd one out is Matt. He had no plans for the money or even something to go back to. All he had was himself and his dream was to be with Alex and Erin again, now that he had it, he was not going to relinquish it so easily. However, he had a choice; a very difficult one. Go with Erin or go with Alex. He decided that he would go with Alex then when he came back he'd try again with Erin, someone who he perceived as being perfect. Nevertheless, he's out on his own, enjoying the sights at night.
He enters the lobby and immediately makes his way to the stairs, climbing up them slowly and in no rush to go to the top. The build seems to repeat itself with every revolution he makes around the staircase, the same window, the same door on the right, the same small wooden side table with high thin legs beside that before it is repeated again. It doesn't take him long to reach the top. Stairs are never a problem for Alex. He knocks on the front door and waits as he hears footsteps come closer to the door. It opens to reveal Jeremy Le Paradox in a way that he didn't expect. Gone is the suit that Alex is so familiar with and instead he wears a baggy PSG football shirt with no name or number on the back in its dark blue with touches of white and red along with a pair of plain grey tracksuit pants and plain white socks on his feet.
"Ah, Alex, glad you could make it." Jeremy happily greets the raccoon who feels really confused about Le Paradox's attire. He's pretty sure that the skunk didn't lose all of his money; he still has the business as well as that apartment building in London. He could rent out the lower floors for some income.
"What's with the clothes?" Alex asks as he follows Jeremy inside.
"Eh, I need to relax a bit after everything that's happened." Jeremy says as he makes his way to the main living area where he has set up the couch in front of a TV with a low coffee table separating the two. He spots the large wide bowl of popcorn in between.
"Hang on." Alex says, recognising the wall paper and the general shape of the apartment. "I recognise…"
"This was your dad's.", Jeremy says as he reaches into the deep tracksuit pockets to pick out his phone. "Any food you want I will order."
Alex is not concerned with his food preferences right now, as he's fixated with the magnitude of those words.
"You bought the place." Alex realises quickly, but not angrily. "Why?"
"A lot of things, the reason changes frequently." Jeremy explains. "It's not important. Anyway, any food you want I can get. From a crepe cart on the street to the finest chef in Paris; anything at all."
"I thought, since you were hosting, you're supposed to choose." Alex replies.
"No, you're the guest, you choose."
"You choose."
"You choose."
"No, it's your choice."
"Tell you what." Jeremy says, stoping the perpetual back and forth argument. "I'll get a list of every restaurant, bar, wine bar, everything; and we let chance decide our fate."
"I don't think that's a great idea." Alex replies, a lot less excited about the prospects than Le Paradox.
"Haven't you ever walked up to a casino and put it all on black?" Le Paradox asks.
"No." Alex replies.
"Then I will show you what it feels like!"
Jeremy takes a seat on the couch and brings up a website, listing every single eatery in the Paris area, on the TV.
"Are you ready?" Jeremy asks. "Here we go."
Jeremy clicks the random button and waits for chance to decide his fate like he wanted. The restaurant that it comes up with is a Moroccan take away on the outskirts of Paris.
"Moroccan food." Jeremy announces, he doesn't feel like that so he turns to Alex, who's still standing up. "Do you want Moroccan food?"
"Not… really." Alex replies. Unsure about the context of what he is asking.
"Let's go again." Jeremy says, abandoning his talk about chance and now just cheating his way to a more desirable meal. "There, an Italian restaurant."
"Okay." Alex replies.
"Good, what do you want?"
"Um…"
"Doesn't matter, I'm choosing for you."
"What?" Alex exclaims in confusion, but he doesn't feel like re-making an enemy because of a dinner choice. Jeremy shuts the online menu and promptly orders his desired choices before turning the TV off.
"I thought you had no money." Alex asks, questioning the fact that he just helped the skunk with a payment to keep him alive.
"I really did need the money. No one would pay until this morning and by that time I would have been hunted down. Nonetheless, because you paid the money that I am eternally grateful for, I am alive to collect their payments and now I have enough to start over again." Jeremy explains. "I'll make sure to pay it back within the week."
"Thanks." Alex replies, but with no real excitement.
"Okay, let's talk." Jeremy begins. "Sit down first."
Jeremy shuffles across on the couch to give Alex some room. The raccoon hesitates initially before he sits down on the still warm couch.
"This isn't going to stink right?" Alex asks.
"No, I had that surgically removed, annoyed the crap out of everyone, even myself." Jeremy explains. "Now… I've always known who you are and what legacy come before you, ever since I started my own criminal empire I was always constantly thinking of a solution over how to… control the threat you posed." Jeremy says, searching for the correct word. "Don't act so surprised, you would have done the same if you were in my position."
"Anyway, the first solution was very basic; kill you." Jeremy says nonchalantly, Alex doesn't react visibly to the news. "No frills, no special treatment; just a bullet in the head and be done with it. But, it might seem so easy to say but in practice, killing you is hard, very hard, since you had that assassin protecting you. I have no shame admitting that I tried to kill you on multiple occasions and in various fashions. The plans became more complicated and riskier each time but they all failed. I was awake for several nights, trying to concoct some sort of scheme that would work, but all that gave me was sleep deprivation. So, I stopped trying to kill you and tried something different; make you be disinterested in thieving. This would mean it would be the cleanest way do fix my problem and it wouldn't affect your health or life expectancy."
Jeremy stops briefly and reaches over to the bowl of popcorn and brings it onto the couch.
"You want some?" Jeremy offers.
"It's not poisone?" Alex asks.
"No, I don't want to be ironic." Jeremy replies. Alex grabs a handful of the lukewarm popcorn and places one exploded corn kernel into his mouth; it tastes nice; not too much salt.
"So, this cost quite a bit more money, as I wherever you went, I had to pay off multiple criminal organisations so they would not need your work. But I would leave some jobs, some… undesirable ones. Ones that really make you want to turn away because they put you in difficult situations. I made you go through things which really crush any sense of morality that's left in you; not that I have much myself." Jeremy explains as he snacks on the popcorn. "I chose to do that because after doing quite a lot of research on you and your ancestors, I discovered there is a strong moral fibre that seems to be present. So, I hypothesised that this 'morality' and thieving were independent of each other and by making stealing as a career seem immoral, you would abandon it. I thought it was a great idea when I figured it out… but, it did not go to plan. You acted as if stealing was the only thing you could do, like there was no alternative at all. I had to deal with the fact that you were going to become a thief so, instead of trying to prevent, I tried to control."
"I say tried, because that plan worked horribly too. I had planned to keep you busy on other parts of the world whilst I did things elsewhere, but controlling someone's behaviour is impossible without doing some invasive surgery; and I didn't want to do that. This leads me into the past week. I was becoming desperate for ideas because the older you'd get, the more dangerous you'd become, and since you were on low on money, I thought you would attempt some extreme heist which would succeed, causing all the work I did to be worthless. So, I learned a trick that one of your father's associates used; the art of a double personality. It's safe to say, that didn't work as I wanted either. I would build trust by making you do a series of heists, all of which I had set up to give you the illusion of success. Once completed, I would act through this intermediary to make you do whatever I needed." Jeremy explains before pausing.
"The thief you know as Antonio is actually me." Jeremy states plainly, but it is a statement that he does not make without taking some slight precautions. He rests his hands up near his chests in case Alex punches him and makes sure he can get past in case he has to leave. He waits anxiously for a reaction of some kind, but the raccoon has his head down, looking at his knees, deep in thought. The fact that Alex is not saying anything makes the skunk even more tense.
"If you're… so…" Alex says, trying to put a sentence together, increasing his anger. "I mean, why go through all the trouble? You could have come straight up and showed yourself to my face!"
Jeremy is rather satisfied that Alex vented some his anger, he relaxes into his seat a bit more.
"Hindsight is such a bitch." Jeremy simply replies. "Just think about it. The chance that you would embrace me with open arms before is literally zero. I had to, how do I say this? I had to change your expectations slowly, step by step. It sounds like a poor excuse for the things that I did to you, but, what else is there for me to say? Unless you have a time machine to erase this whole thing."
Alex gets the feeling that something buried inside his long-term memory has come to life. But he chooses not to say anything.
"So, if you don't, the past is the past." Jeremy says, checking his watch. "I'm sorry; for pushing you off a building with a camera strapped to my chest, don't worry it's not on the Internet. I'm sorry for… do you get the point?"
Alex thinks it over.
"You know," Alex says. Jeremy doesn't know if he's about to be assaulted or embraced, maybe Alex has worked on his poker face since they were last in Romania. "Most people would try to kill you for doing what you did. If you did this to my sister, you'd be dead."
'I know." Jeremy hushly comments.
"And… I hope your not going to screw me over in the future, because, I won't be so forgiving. Not only would that be an insult to me and everyone I know, but it would only put shame on yourself; to undo all the work you've done just for a cheap gain." Alex warns. "Your dad the same thing… but all it did was seal his fate. Maybe you won't be as insane as him."
"Alex. My last name may be Le Paradox, but that doesn't mean I'm the same as him. I'll say what I said to your friends when I showed them this place; I am not limited by and that I can overcome the past. I don't know much about my father, but he was as blind as they come. Blinded by hate; but hate comes from anger, and anger comes from fear. I no longer fear you, but I do respect you, not simply because you saved my life, but because you're allowing me to have a second chance. Over the last 24 hours, I've been doing nothing else but thinking about what to do next. I've now gone back down to the start, whereas you have only just started."
Jeremy pauses as to whether to repeat the same offer he made in this same room.
"Maybe we could work together? I mean, I'm not the best thief at actually stealing physical objects, I'm better at running a business, financial scams, computer fraud, things like that." Jeremy offers. Previously he would have seen this act as lowering himself to the lowest possible point, but now it signifies a fresh start. However, Alex is not only thinking about himself in this picture; how would Erin react to this news?
"Didn't you say that we should be competitors? How about we do that except we keep it friendly, like no grudges, foul play, things like that." Alex replies.
"I like the sound of that, history will record that our hostilities stopped in this room." Jeremy comments as he checks his watch. "Where is the food?"
"We've still got more popcorn." Alex points out.
"No, It's that I hate it when people aren't punctual, unnecessary waiting is so unnecessary." Jeremy remarks before the door is knocked on. He turns the TV back on to show a hidden security camera showing who is standing outside.
"We need to leave." Alex whispers to Jeremy. "She's an Interpol agent."
Dressed causally with a delivery of food.
"I remember who she is." Jeremy whispers back. The door is knocked again.
"Let me in, I wish to thank you what you did, unofficially." Charlotte says through the door.
"It's a trap." Jeremy replies. "There's a way out…"
Alex gets up anyway and heads towards the door to let the short white furred fox into the apartment. He makes sure that there is no sabotage about to take place. There is no weapon on her on in either of the three cardboard containers she is carrying. She walks in calmly despite two criminals surrounding her and places the food on the coffee table whilst concealing her surprise about Jeremy's attire.
"Are you the delivery girl?" Alex asks.
"No. He, is a bit tied up down stairs." Charlotte explains calmly.
"And how did you find me?" Alex asks.
"Saw you at the train station in London, followed you here." Charlotte explains, now moving onto the next part.
"The Bank of England found out about the gold swap only last night; when my boss decided he had enough courage to tell them that 40 billion pounds had disappeared. But they haven't found where the gold is, they think the Americans have deposited it into their own supply in the Federal Reserve and spread it all out across the country but we don't know for sure. I've been tasked with recovering it, but no one else wants to be assigned to this job, bunch of pussies. So, in addition to thanking you for helping us to arrest Rasmus… I'm asking if you'll help us again." Charlotte explains.
"I'm not going to help you." Jeremy replies in disgust.
"I didn't think so." Charlotte replies before turning to Alex and pulling out her phone before turning on the in built projector to display a screenshot of a personal file. Alex sees the name and knows what argument she's going to pitch next.
"Your father worked successfully for Interpol for around 8 years, receiving several commendations and awards for his service. Hopefully you can continue that trend by doing this." Charlotte explains.
"Why come to me? You said you hated thieves like us." Alex replies.
"Everyone is incompetent," Charlotte says disappointingly. "I need someone who actually has the balls to do something instead of constant surveillance and waiting. Oh, one last thing, and this is strictly on the side. The only objective is to get back the money, I won't mind if you… do your thing, as long as you don't blow the mission."
Alex still doesn't know what the subtext to this is; maybe it's a trap.
"You're not going to arrest me after it's done; are you?" Alex asks.
"A 24 hour head start is all you get, unless you decide to keep helping me in which case, I won't arrest you. But if you stop helping me then all you'll end up being is a prisoner." Charlotte explains.
"And hiring a criminal to do your work isn't illegal?"
"No." Charlotte answers. "Not if anyone finds out."
"You're crazy." Jeremy replies, getting annoyed with having too many law enforcement people in the room. "Leave, the game's going to start soon."
"Are you in or out?" Charlotte asks. Alex thinks about the job, about what his sister would say and what everyone else in the gang would think about it. He thinks about the money involved and about having to work with the stone wall that is Charlotte, about the risks and about whether he needs to have a rest after all that has happened over the past week. But looking back on it all, in hindsight, it was all exciting; something different, something that he wanted. A change up from the boring low paid crumby jobs to finally something that his ancestors would feel pleased about if they could see. Sure, Alex didn't do it all by himself, Erin did all the work to prevent him from constantly touching rock bottom as well as simply being better in his mind. However, the sense of accomplishment feels good, and this next job could just be the thing he needs to keep that feeling going.
"When do we start?"
Author's Comment
So, this is it for now. Thanks for getting to the end and a special thanks to InYuJi for getting me to improve my spelling and grammar. I am always open to constructive feedback, so please let me know what you think via a review or a PM, as well as any ideas you may have for a future story.