CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
SYLVIE
We cross the resort grounds at a brisk yet leisurely pace, Cash and Jax flanking me.
It’s then that I have a sense of belonging that is both unlike anything I’ve ever experienced and also nostalgic.
Maybe it’s due to the high that surges through my veins at the completion of a heist. There’s nothing quite like it—an intoxicating on-top-of-the-world sort of ebullience.
But even in our haze to disappear into the afternoon radiance, I know it’s more than that.
About a year after my father was murdered, when I was in the thick of my spiraling and at the height of my thieving days, Luella came to visit me.
It was rare for her to seek me out apart from my mother, and yet she’d been like a guardian angel while my father was in prison—one person outside our home who we could trust. She showed up in her put-together former-model elegance, but her whole being was set on a mission.
She claimed I needed something to fight for, and I insisted I was fine.
“Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt,” she quipped.
It was cheesy, but she’d lost her husband to alcohol poisoning after years of living with his addiction, and Al-Anon had become her safe place.
I rolled my eyes, unwilling to give credence to any of that self-help bullshit. “The Nile was plagued with blood. Surely, you can come up with something more hopeful for someone whose father was brutally murdered.”
“When was the last time you laughed?” she pressed, steamrolling over my brattiness. “Really laughed.”
I couldn’t remember, and in the years that followed, that often stuck with me. Even when things were better, they still didn’t feel whole. Jubilation was in short supply because grief and anguish were relentless, knocking me down every time I managed to get firmer footing.
But now, even on this island that is the setting of our hoodwinking expedition and my stomach-turning execution of a guard, I can still hear the melody of joy.
“What happened to Tatum?” I ask Jax, indulging in the idle chitchat we need to appear to be having so our evacuation seems natural.
The golden hue of history paints the land, the distant clamor of social butterflies breaks on the wind, and faith lies in the swirling rotary wings singing about our imminent retreat.
Jax flashes his lazy grin, as if this were any other day. “I carried him into the lobby of the main resort, dropped him in the elevator, and … told him to pick a floor and I’d try to find him.” He pauses, but it’s laden, requesting that we wait for it. “He was into it.”
An unbidden chortle flees from me as I cast a sidelong glance at Cash. “You guys really like the movie Serendipity, huh?”
Jax snickers. “It was one of our mom’s favorites, so Rena obsessed over it as a teen.”
Suddenly, the weight of that reference slipping out the first time Cash and I met holds profound significance.
It’s a connection to the woman who raised him, but couldn’t stay, and the beloved sister they’re all trying desperately to keep with them.
It’s like something inside him believed we were inevitable, even though I know his insistence at the time was mostly a line.
Cash is fully focused on our surroundings, leery to breathe freely yet, but he squeezes our woven fingers to reveal that I’m not alone in that epiphany.
“It was definitely fate, you and me,” I tell him as we pass the final gathering of people on our way to the helicopter pad.
We tromp across swaying blades of the greenest grass to cruise toward the secluded precipice that will deliver us, and I drink in the salty breeze.
“Of course it was.” His lips curl into that haughty grin that twists my insides and makes my knees wobbly. “I knew you’d come to my side. Every trick we ever pulled was so that I could swipe your mask and you could blackmail me with my wallet. Soulmates.”
“Kismet,” Jax adds, the word laced with humor.
A haunting French pop song serenades us as we pick up our pace and round the corner. For several strides, none of us speak. There is some military-esque chitchat on the comms that doesn’t fully take root with the roar of the waiting chopper devouring it.
The grounds open up to sun and sky, cliffs and sea. A sultry gust rips over the craggy bluffs. The floral accents and evergreens rollick in delight. And for just a beat, the scenery bathes us with vows of another round.
There are cards left behind, but plays still to be made.
Eventually, as we close in on our departure point, I break the silence with a quick confession.
“My father always promised he’d get that mask for my mother since they passed over it on their honeymoon, but he never got around to it.
So, it was a parting gift to my mom. In his honor.
” That garners the heated stares of both men at my sides as I finish.
“I never thought I’d survive this. I didn’t care if I did. ”
Jax releases a shuddering breath, but there’s understanding within it.
And Cash? He tucks me into his side and throws out something he asked once before—after the Boston heist that went so terribly wrong. “And now?”
“Now I have the masterpiece of a life that I’d do anything to preserve.”
He winks in that carefree way of his that makes any moment lighter. “Mission accomplished then.”
As the words dangle in the air, something shifts. I’ll never understand how the mind knows to slow down, to soak in the grievous revelations before they strike. Premonitory flashes. But it happens that way, doesn’t it?
Time twisted when the call came about my father.
I still remember the lecture hall shaking like the earth was cleaved in two as my phone vibrated.
The scent of paper and stale coffee permeating the air.
The way a red-haired girl a few seats ahead of me spilled a bag of pens and pencils, the tinkling jingle becoming a deafening echo.
And Cash described something similar when he said he heard his mother through the flames, a whisper to accept the unthinkable and a penance to relive it. Again and again.
In some out-of-body ordeal, this cliffside haven morphs to wistful remembrance. Kisses in the ocean and cuddling at dawn. Flamethrower s’mores, family pranks, cinnamon rolls with a tiny magician, and Big Top awards.
A birthday that hurt less and power restored with an oiled massage.
Beauty in the broken.
I see it all there, frolicking with the breaking waves below and taking flight with the yellow-legged seagulls.
Sparkling with the trickling blood from the fallen pilot.
A crimson river that will lead to nothing but affliction.
The gravity of what’s to come slams into all of us at the same time. Seconds before the bullets fly, we begin to run. I peer over my shoulder, spotting guards about one hundred or one hundred fifty yards back. Pistols raised. Steps resolute.
Cash and Jax fire in return, chaos pours through the comms, and we dash like the wind.
“Past the chopper,” Cash instructs, which doesn’t make a lot of sense because there is nothing past the helicopter except an expanse of land and air and a thirty-foot drop into rocky waters.
He wants us to jump?
When I lift my chin to question him, his ocean blues are latched to Jax. And in the span of three seconds, life shatters and fragments into what once was and what might’ve been.
“Love you, Sly. I’ll always be your way,” he says while gripping my hips and throwing me.
Jax is several feet away, but catches me easily, extending a cryptic warning as he sprints with me to the edge. “Tight like an arrow, yeah?”
To the tune of gunfire and my sobs and erupting bedlam, we soar to the sea.
Arms crossed. Feet pointed. Muscles taut.
Dreams abandoned.
The last clear utterance I hear on the comm before cool water envelops us is, “Man down.”