Chapter 11: The Grey Line
There are favors I grant without hesitation — the sick, the desperate, the ones holding on by the thinnest threads of hope.
Then there are the others.
The clients who walk in with clean shoes and sharpened smiles.
The ones who call it a "business transaction."
Those are the ones I dislike.
---
His name was Preston Vale. Late forties. Expensive suit. Cufflinks that cost more than some of the lives he'd affected, I suspected. He met me in a private booth of a rooftop bar in Singapore, overlooking a skyline glowing like a promise too large to keep.
He offered his hand. I didn't shake it.
"I've been told you're a man who solves… complications."
"I grant favors. Not solutions."
"Semantics," he said, sipping from a glass of neat scotch. "I need someone removed. Quietly. Permanently."
I didn't blink. I just watched.
"Go on."
"He's my brother."
I didn't speak.
He leaned in, lowering his voice like that would make it more palatable. "He's going to expose something. Financial discrepancies. Old dealings. It will destroy our family's company. Thousands of jobs lost. My wife, my kids — they'll be out in the cold."
"So you want him dead?"
"No, no," he said quickly. "Not... death. I want him gone. Discredited. Institutionalized. I want his credibility erased."
"You want to destroy him without blood."
He smiled. "Exactly. And I hear you can make that happen."
---
I've met warlords who asked for cities to burn.
I've met grieving mothers who begged me to rewrite time.
But men like Preston — the ones who ask for clean evil — they unsettle me in ways fire and death never could. They aren't desperate. They're calculated. Polished. They smile while sliding the knife.
Still, a favor is a favor.
I laid out the contract.
"You know what comes after."
"I do. I've planned for it."
That sentence. That smug certainty.
I hate it.
He signed.
---
One month later, his brother was committed to a private psychiatric facility under forged evaluations. The board removed him. His voice was lost. Preston Vale's empire was safe again.
And so, the Wheel waited.
We met again in Paris. Morning light filtered through the window of a quiet café.
"That went well," he said. "I've prepared myself."
I set the Wheel on the table. No more words.
He spun.
Click. Click. Click.
Segment 14: Involuntary truthfulness. Complete loss of the ability to lie.
He blinked.
Then blurted, "I hate this already. I lied every day of my life, I don't even know how to function without it."
He covered his mouth immediately, his eyes wide.
Then, as if pulled out of him, he hissed, "I'll come back one day. I'll kill you. You'll see."
I chuckled.
"You didn't mean to say that out loud, did you?"
"No," he spat, standing up. "I didn't."
He stormed off, face flushed with humiliation, muttering truths under his breath like curses.
I sipped my coffee and smiled to myself.
Some punishments fit too perfectly.
And the irony — the delicious, poetic irony — was that the man who built his kingdom on lies now couldn't tell one to save his life.