Short noir, commissioned.

A name is a leash with good manners.

They call me Lucifer in certain rooms. Not to my face. Behind my back, the way cowards prefer it. I've heard it whispered over card tables, shouted in a parking garage once. That man learned the difference between a nickname and a sentence.

I never chose it. That's the thing people miss. Some accountant I ruined, some dealer I cut loose, some man who lost more than money at my table. One of them started it. The rest picked it up. Now it follows me. It opens doors before I knock. It also closes them.

A name is a debt you didn't sign. Every time someone says it, they're telling me who they think I am. And the dangerous part isn't the devil talk. It's that a man starts checking the mirror against the myth. Wondering which one is real. Wondering which one he's becoming.

I let the name work for me for years. Fear is currency. It spends. But it's not the same as being seen.

Then a woman in a coffee shop looked up and said my name. Not the one that opens doors. The one I answer to when I'm alone. She just saw a man who nearly wore her coffee.

The rooms can keep calling me Lucifer. I've started answering to the other one.