A fine tremble rattled up Danny’s spine.
“I literally almost died the last time we did this,” he rasped. “I… I… I left here after that fight and woke up in a casino in Monaco owing a small country to a mobster after we did this last time.”
Felix frowned. “Did you pay him the small country?” Never get in over your head, especially when you didn’t have backup. Wasn’t that what Danny had drilled into him?
“He took it out of my flesh,” Danny said shortly, but his body was relaxing, and Felix kept playing dirty pool. “And I went into rehab. Don’t… don’t fuck with my head here, Fox—”
“You didn’t show up,” Felix said, frowning. He’d been drunk a lot too after that fight. “I went to your PO Box, and you didn’t show up. Four months later I got a postcard with a new address on it. I… I just assumed you didn’t want to see me, so I had Josh write you.”
“I didn’t want to see you,” Danny said, and Felix had to hold fast to his heart or it would have crumbled. Then Danny’s voice wobbled. “I spent a month in the hospital, trying to pay back a small country. And another two months in rehab. I wasn’t in any shape to be seen.”
Felix’s eyes were burning, but he didn’t let go. He wiped his face against the skin of Danny’s neck so Danny would know what this did to him.
“Is that why you wanted to leave?” he croaked. “So you didn’t have to tell us that?”
Danny grunted and leaned back against him, and for a sweet moment, Felix bore his weight. Then Danny took Felix’s hand and placed it under the sweatshirt, and Felix frowned. A network of scars crossed the flesh there, bumps and gashes that hadn’t been there before.
“What the—”
“Doesn’t feel like a small country, does it,” Danny asked bitterly, and Felix gave up and let the tears fall.
“I would have come to get you,” he whispered. “I would have sold everything. I would have… I would have kidnapped Julia’s fucking father and ransomed him from his bankers. I would have—”
“Done nothing of the sort,” Danny said harshly, and Felix captured his hand as he tried to pull it away. “I was a falling-down drunk, Felix. I wasn’t worth it.”
“I thought you were,” Felix rasped. “I still do. Please don’t go, Danny. Stay for breakfast. Stay for lunch. Run the damned op out of here. Julia will help. God, don’t you see? We’ve needed you. This whole time we’ve needed you. Please stay.”
An eternity passed, Danny’s body still tense in his arms while Felix refused to give way. Patience, he’d learned. Sticking to your guns. Finally Danny relaxed infinitesimally, and Felix could have fallen to his knees and wept.
“For the job,” Danny said heavily. “For the job only.”
But he didn’t move out of Felix’s arms, and Felix didn’t let him go.
Phyllis’s call for them to come downstairs was almost a relief—almost. Felix’s arms, full of a warm, if resistant, Danny, ached to just keep him there. Almost as much as his heart ached to know the cost of his coming back.
Because there was a cost to Danny. Danny had a core of pride. Felix may not have known that when they were younger—he’d thought the grift was a lark, for fun, something to do before a better game came along.
For Danny, though, it was a way to never be dependent on the cruel whim of fate. Danny was in charge. He was manipulating the people, the transaction, the money, to his specifications. No more families that didn’t care, no more sugar daddies that treated him like property, no more waiting for someone to get better when they were just going to die on him. With the grift, he was in charge.
Until he’d trusted Felix to do one lousy thing.
Past
THE ROPER had an important job in a longer con. He was the person who put all the players together. Felix’s job was to rope Hiram Dormer’s daughter into a position to trust Felix. He’d infiltrate their home, get a bead on the material objects that Dormer loved, and then, when Felix was accounted for, Danny would steal the one he loved most.
And then pose as a buyer on the black market and sell it back.
Of course, any money they could get from Julia Dormer was a plus, but Felix had been adamant about one thing. He’d been a rich kid who had more expectations than affection. He wouldn’t take things with Julia beyond friendship. He’d just be a fun companion. Someone to dance with at the local discos. Someone to escort her to dinner when she was bored.
It had gone perfectly, in the beginning.
Danny spent a week getting Felix’s wardrobe ready. He watched the young American tourists; he paid one off for his jeans, one off for his T-shirt, and one for his shoes. He stole the windbreaker from one who tried to run his Vespa off the road and an entire suitcase from an asshole who didn’t tip en route to the airport.
He’d done all of that so he could leave Felix in a cloud of dust on the long road up to the villas, just in time for Hiram Dormer’s town car to come into view.
Felix stepped out, flagging it down with a wide-eyed expectation that of course they’d stop, and to his surprise—he almost expected the monstrous vehicle to crush him flat—Dormer did.
“Can I help you?” Dormer had rolled down the tinted window to scowl at him, and Felix gave his best, widest California boy smile.
“Yeah, hi! I’m so, like, sorry to bother you, but I was on my way to visit my uncle’s villa, and the guy giving me a ride was, like, all sorts of shady.”
“Shady.” Dormer was a fiftyish man with a square face and no lips to speak of. He had tiny eyes, like gray pinpricks in leather.
“Yeah, he got tired halfway up and just bailed!” Felix put all the earnestness he could into that, because the truth was, Danny was down the road, hiding behind a tree in case this didn’t work.
“Where you headed, kid?”
This part had required homework. Danny and Berto had spent the better part of two weeks asking around for which villas were empty and which families would be the most likely to have family in California.
“The Koehlers. They should be up toward the top of the hill.”
Dormer grimaced. “Hell, kid, did you even talk to them and ask?”
“Yessir. They gave me this date, I swear! My dad made the plane reservations himself.”
“Well, those people just left yesterday. They must have had an emergency or something.”
They had. They’d won an emergency yacht trip. Danny knew a guy.
“Oh, well shoot. Do you know when they’ll be back?” Felix made his eyes big and let his lower lip wobble. Dormer blew out a breath, and Felix could see the wheels turning. If it was up to this asshole, Felix would be sleeping on the street—or in a shitty hotel. But the community of Americans who vacationed in those villas was small. If news got out that Dormer had turned away someone’s relative when he could have offered the kid a place to sleep for a few days…? Well, he’d find himself on the receiving end of a lot of unfriendly glares and possibly some lost business deals.
Dormer knew this. “Get in the back,” he muttered. “Julia, get back there and talk to him. Keep it down.”