1. Damon
1
DAMON
“ W hat are you doing with the Picasso?”
I marched down the hallway of my split-level penthouse with my assistant, Jazz, trailing me. “Store that one in Saint-Tropez.”
“And the Polygon painting?”
I considered for a moment. “What’s the price?”
“Right now, the price is thirteen million.”
I frowned as I stepped back. “Do we need to buy that one? Depending on the owners, I can always separate them from the painting the old-fashioned way.”
Jazz chewed the corner of her lip and considered while tucking her wavy, often-frizzy hair behind her ears. “Well, if you would like to keep it private and never show it, other than maybe in your office in Paris, then fine. But it’s way too hot a commodity to steal otherwise.”
I frowned at that. “You mean liberate , right, Jazz?”
She laughed nervously while pushing her glasses up her nose. “Fine. Liberate . But not that one. You can’t liberate it unless you hide it or it’s for a private client.”
I frowned at her. “Fine, leave it be. Let’s wait until the Rembolt Gallery puts it up for sale officially and see where it goes.”
“I promise you, it will only be higher.”
“I hear you. But we’ll see.”
“Right. Final item on the list... The last payment you sent to the Burmans wasn’t deposited. Should I call and follow up to make sure they received it?”
I stalled. The Burmans. They’d by far been my best fostering situation. I’d only been with them for a couple of years though.
The woman, Linda Burman, had gotten cancer, which meant the Burmans had to stop taking on foster kids. They were genuinely good people. I’d loved that home and been real disappointed to leave.
I’d been moved to the Joneses’ after that, where I’d met Jazz. I’d run away from there as quickly as I could.
“Um, just check in with the Burmans and see if Linda is okay. If she’s not, arrange a flight for me.”
“Okay, done. And your brother has been calling. For a couple of weeks now.”
I paused again.
Max.
We’d met at the Burmans’, and he’d been five at the time I moved in. God, the kid had followed me everywhere. I could still see his blond curls bouncing happily by my side.
Like me, he’d had a much-shittier next family. But I’d been able to run away and had found Paul. Max ran the streets and got into a lot of trouble. In those early years with Paul, I hadn’t kept great tabs on him. I’d been so worried about my own survival. But as soon as I had some money and got stable, I looked him and Jazz up.
Jazz was my age, trying to earn enough money to take classes part-time. She’d had a rough go of it after the Joneses’, so when I was in a position to help, I did. Just like with Max.
Except she’d taken to the job I’d given her. Unlike my brother.
Max, I’d taken under my wing and pseudo adopted. Hell, he even took my last name. But he was still struggling with exactly what he wanted to do with his life, and I more often than not struggled with the best way to help him. I’d given him money and opportunities, but he didn’t seem to want what I was offering outside of booze and partying.
He resented me for not getting him away from the Joneses’. And I carried that guilt. But I’d been starving on the street until I met Paul. I would have just gotten him killed.
You got him out as soon as you could.
But somehow it never felt early enough.
“Has he left messages?” I asked.
“No, but he’s tried your main office number twice and tried Paris as well.”
I muttered under my breath, “Shit.” Then I added, louder, “He doesn’t have my new cell number? I texted it to him as soon as I changed it. Maybe he’s in trouble?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s not actually trying to reach you.”
I paused and halted right at the opening of my gym. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Well, you said he’s prone to getting himself in trouble, right? What if he’s supposed to contact you but doesn’t want to do that, so he’s going through the motions? Maybe that’s why he’s not leaving a message or calling your cell, where he would actually reach you.”
I cursed under my breath. “All right, have all calls rerouted to my cell.”
“Oh, no. Do you know how many calls you’re going to get?”
“Yes, but if he’s calling, I need to talk to him.”
“How about this: I’ll reroute all calls to me, and if it’s urgent, I’ll forward it to you. That way you won’t get inundated with all the business calls and money requests.”
“That’s fair,” I said. Jazz was a godsend. She protected me in a way I didn’t know I needed to be protected. She certainly made my life a lot easier. “You got everything else handled?”
“Yup. Have a good workout.” Jazz turned to go, her heels making a click-clack sound on the marble floor. I told her she didn’t need to do the whole professional-PA thing, but she said the routine and the uniform of sorts helped her.
Jazz was loyal and protected me at all costs, often to her own detriment. My plan wasn’t to keep her as my PA forever. It was too risky for her. I’d give her another year and then move her to the import-export side of my business. That was the plan B profession. The one I paid taxes on.
As I started a quick warm-up, I did the one thing I knew I shouldn’t do: I called Max. It wasn’t a secure line. But I figured I could just call and hear his voice and know he was all right. This risk would be worth it.
He obviously needed me. But when I called him, using our code—calling once, hanging up, and calling back—he didn’t answer. I tried three times. As I ran on the treadmill, I frowned, wondering just what the hell my little brother had gotten himself into.
The thing was, it was Max . He might be twenty, but he was still a kid, and I felt like I’d abandoned him after getting out my shitty situation.
The problem was that I’d jumped from getting my ass kicked every day to a life of not-so-stable crime that I didn’t want Max involved in. For the year after I ditched the Joneses, I was a pickpocket and a thief. Did anything to survive. That was when Paul Denton found me—I tried to pick his pocket, but he caught me, dragged me into his garage, and tied me up. I thought I was going to die. Instead, he’d given me a job. A life. A home.
And how did you reward him?
Ari
When I was young, I was told that nightmares weren’t real. That they were only dreams and I should get over them. But the same nightmare that had gripped me since I was fifteen years old tugged at me now, pulling me down under the weight of it all.
The blood oozing through my fingers. My hoarse screams. Dad. No, Dad, please! No. I can’t lose you.
I was drowning in the whiskey-colored eyes of the man responsible for my biggest trauma as he mouthed the same words to me on repeat: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
At the end of the day, those two words couldn’t staunch my father’s blood or bring him back to the land of the living. Those two words didn’t fill that empty hole in my heart.
I wasn’t quite certain how long I’d known what my father was or what he did. When I was a little kid, all I knew was hanging out with my dad in the garage was my favorite time.
He showed me all kinds of things and let me tinker around with the old safes there. It was my means of distraction and escape. I’d loved it.
After mom died, he did his best, but we were both grieving, and the open, jovial man I had known became just a bit more distant. But he tried. And I tried to be the perfect daughter, needing to connect to him even more. But then there’d been the art class debacle.
And then, he didn’t want me hanging out at the garage anymore unless it was absolutely urgent. He never looked happy to have me there. He never asked me about blueprints again, about entry points or exit points or alarms. Worse, he refused to teach me how to work on safes anymore.
One day, I’d snuck over there anyway. This bully, Miriam McConnell, had insisted she was going to wait at my house to beat me up after school, so I avoided my house like a coward. I thought my dad would understand.
I went to the garage and found a lanky boy a little older than me tinkering with one of the safes. He looked like he could use a burger. Dad was annoyed that I was there and that I’d disobeyed his orders to go straight home.
He yelled that he was too busy to deal with me that day. Told me I’d be underfoot. I immediately hated that boy, the one with the dirty jeans and a ripped T-shirt whom my father wanted to teach.
Three years later, that same boy had his hand over the hole in my father’s chest, and I’d been left looking into his grave whiskey-colored eyes and listening to his whispered apologies.
Even though I knew it was a nightmare, I was sucked back into that time, into the shuddery dread where my world swirled around, my only tether to sanity gone. And I never once got to ask my dad what I’d done wrong or why he’d stopped loving me. Never once got to say, I love you, Daddy. Please come back to me.
Like the thief in the night that he was, that young boy with the knowing eyes, the too-handsome face, and the scar that made him more interesting, was gone. Out the back door, no doubt, down the back alley.
Then I was in the hospital, holding my father’s hand.
My throat hurt from all the begging and pleading. Daddy, please don’t leave me. Please don’t go. I need you. I’d screamed that over and over and over. When I lost my voice and stopped talking, the speech therapists worried I’d permanently damaged my vocal cords by screaming so much.
Aunt Adele made some kind of bargain with the nurses to let me stay with my father because every time they tried to have me removed, I’d start screaming. So they let me have as much time with him as I wanted. And for the three days he lay in that coma, I held his hands alone, crying, bargaining, wishing. But then one day, as I held on tight, I noticed his hands were cold. And just like that, my father was gone.
Like always, I woke up with a start, covered in sweat, my breath shallow and choppy. And I spoke the name of the man I held responsible.
“Damon Hunt.”