The new Los Santos rich do not carry wallets. They carry relationships with people who make invoices become introductions, reservations become private rooms, and unpleasant totals become somebody else's administrative problem.
At the city's better tables, payment has become a performance of distance. A card appears without ceremony. An assistant signs from another address. A host says the evening has been handled, which is both hospitality and a warning not to ask by whom.
Cash is not disappearing. It is being reserved for the transactions nobody wants remembered.
Envy followed the money through motor galleries, hillside kitchens, after-hours jewelers, and one marina office whose official business concluded three years ago. The same names recur, attached to different companies and the same appetite.
This is not old money. Old money wants continuity. These fortunes want velocity, a transaction fast enough to become identity before anyone checks the paperwork.
The bill always arrives. In Los Santos, wealth is measured by how many people it passes through before reaching you.
