Dark Secrets(57)

"This is fucking crazy," she said, shaking her head as she flipped through the paperwork. She found that Xander's new team- Espen and Enzo, they had done some really deep digging, all the way from his financial records and back to his childhood. She found herself almost relieved to realize he hadn't, at least, lied to her about that part. He had been an army brat and his parents had died the way he said they did. She even found an old copy of the apartment lease he had with the girl with the dog obsession, whose name turned out to be Elizabeth Frank.

"After the Navesink Bank job failed," K went on, wanting to give her all the details, regardless of whether she wanted to hear them or not, "he went off to Cali. Worked some job on imports. Couldn't find too much on that. Sounds like it was drugs though. But that job blew up and fell apart. He came back to this coast and worked another job that hit the shitter. And then..." he trailed off, waving a hand.

"And then he set his sights on Vin."

Xander nodded. "Don't ask us how we got this shit because hacking into the FBI system is a whole new world of criminal I don't fuck with," he said, shaking his head, "but they were working on this for a while. I mean the feds have been wanting to pin something on the D'Onofrio family for fucking decades. But this operation has been in the works for a while. They sent him to bartending school. Then he worked at a bar for a while for some real experience. Then they made up a fake resume and sent him in, but not before..."

Faith took another steadying breath. "Not before what?"

"Sending in some dipshit to fuck up on the job so they could send in Daniel to replace him."

"Wow," she said, not seeming to be able to muster anything more than that. Wow seemed to cover it.

Just. Fucking. Wow.

But somehow, it made perfect sense, didn't it?

"No wonder he can sneak up on me, can take me in a fight. He's had his life dedicated to training."

"Yeah, he was top of his class at Quantico. He's the real deal. They have a lot invested in him."

"What, exactly, was the mission here? Is he just snooping around, trying to overhear something? Plant bugs? What?"



       
         
       
        

"That's mostly up to him and his case manager..." Xander said, reaching for the file and flipping through, "Max."

Max.

"Oh my God," Faith groaned, putting her elbows up on the table and cradling her head in her hands for a long moment.

"Take it you've met him?" K asked.

"Max is the name of a new associate of Vin's. Good looking Puerto Rican guy. Expensive taste in whiskey. He came in last Sunday."

"Looks like they're both in on it," Xander agreed, shrugging in a very 'what can you do' way.

"What are you going to do with this?" K asked bluntly as Faith tried to focus, tried to not freak out too much, tried to be rational.

"What?" she asked, reaching for her coffee, knowing it wouldn't help her nerves but always finding it helped her concentrate better.

"With this information," he clarified. "What are you going to do? Bring it to Vin?"

"Vin would have him, ah, them killed," she said, her voice hollow.

"You're fucking him, right?" Xander asked suddenly, drawing her attention. It wasn't an accusation. It was just a question. That was the nice thing about Xander- he didn't judge.

"Yes."

"Do you think that's a natural thing or is it because he..."

Fuck.

Faith slammed back against her booth on a low growl.

Or was it because he was trying to get information out of her? Had he run a check on her? Dug into her financials? Her medical records? Did he dig through her apartment when she ran out of there earlier that morning?

Was she just part of the job to him?

"He cares about you," K told her, reading her mind.

"Not enough to be honest with me," she shot back.

"Have you been fully honest with him?"

"Aside from him knowing Vin's men are the ones to fuck up my life, yes. We haven't had a ton of really deep conversations. Things are new. At work, we talk about bullshit stuff like favorite movies and music and food places and all that little shit."

"But you told him what happened to your parents?" K asked, being the only one outside of the D'Onofrios and Daniel who knew even most of her story.

"Yeah."

"That's a big fucking move," he went on, shrugging. "For you. I mean, this fuck didn't really know the whole story until now," he said, jerking the side of his head toward Xander who suddenly seemed a mix of confused and... irate.