The House's Best Servant

He enters a rich night world at the bottom, under a contract that calls him a servant and treats him as disposable. The people upstairs prefer a man who does not answer. He answers anyway, first in small ways, then in ways that move money and fear. The house did not hire him to become necessary. / A darker bargain sits under the job. Break it and he is back on the street. Keep it and he may run the room that used to send him for ice. Every favor here arrives with a name attached, and he is done being the version of himself the house ordered.