“I'm sorry, I just …” I trail off and lift my face up to look at Solène as she comes down to stand next to Gill. He's smiling sadly at me, but that expression shifts when Solène reaches down and takes his hand in hers. My heart catches sharply and I suck in a sudden breath. “I'm sorry, baby. I'm sorry for not telling you, for lying about it, for … just for everything.” Cliff sets his wine down on the coffee table, reaching over to put his hand on top of mine.
I appreciate the support, but I don't need it, not really. I'm actually okay with all of this, really okay. My biggest secret is out and it's no big deal. Well, I'm not naïve—I'm sure we'll have some hiccups down the road—but for today, this is good. This is great even.
“Hey,” Gill says, kneeling down and brushing some dark hair from Solène's forehead, hair that's the same shade as his own. His fingers are so gentle as he touches her, and his eyes … God, those eyes. I've always been a fan of those baby blues. “I know this is all a little weird, and that I haven't been around much, but from now, I'm going to be here, okay? I loved you as my little sister, and I'll love you as my daughter.”
Solène smiles and slides her arms around Gill's neck, hugging him tight.
This is the same man that shot and killed two people just days ago.
Maybe something's wrong with me because … I can't seem to find it in myself to hate him for it.
“Tell me everything.”
I have Aveline cornered, trapped at the edge of the deck, her arms crossed on the wet wood, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She's wearing a pair of baggy acid wash jeans and a black tank, red hair tumbling down her back in loose, wavy curls. When she turns to look at me, her green eyes are sharp and on alert.
“About?” Aveline asks, sliding her cigarette from her mouth with two fingers. I move over to stand next to her, mimicking her position on the railing.
“Gill wants me to go to dinner with him.” I pause and my lips twitch. “Again. This time he swears that we won't be tailed. Is that because of …” I don't finish my sentence. Don't have to. Aveline knows what I'm talking about.
“Maybe,” she says, tapping her cigarette over the edge of the railing. Ashes drift in the cool air, floating like snowflakes down to the bright green grass below. “Karl didn't expect Gill to, uh, take care of things in as public a place as a hotel. Big risk. Difficult cleanup.” I shudder at the thought of what that might entail.
“So those men weren't trying to …?” I have no idea how much I should say aloud, how much is safe.
“Kill you?” Aveline supplies and I smile tightly, my diamond pendant swinging loosely in front of me. “Not at that particular moment in time, no. I think at this point, Karl's still hoping that Gill will leave the Max bandwagon and come back to him. Your brother's worth a hell of a lot more money than a bag of stupid shiny rocks will ever be. He's a fucking cash cow.”
“That good, huh?” I ask with a sigh. The sound gets caught on the wind and whips up into the trees, their evergreen branches dancing with the rhythm of autumn, the promise of winter. “Is it okay to talk about this stuff outside?” Aveline glances sidelong at me and smirks, standing up and sticking her cigarette back between her red lips. She cups her hands around her mouth and shouts loud enough to make me jump.
“Gilleon Marchal is a master thief!” she screams as I stare wide-eyed and openmouthed at her. Aveline shrugs. “This is too big, Karl's net too wide, for any of these suburban yuppies to be able to do anything about it.”
“Huh,” I glance around anyway, trying to see if Gill's nosy neighbor is looking out her window at us. Instead I find that someone's fixed the gap in the hedge trees by rearranging the branches. Thank God. “So Gill, uh, robs a lot of … jewelry stores?” I ask, knowing how stupid that question sounds, how surreal.
“He works jobs, yeah, but mostly he plans them out. And not just jewelry stores—museums, the occasional bank. Jewelry stores are the easiest though because security is usually lack as fuck. They turn off the cameras at night, leave the merch right there in the display cases, right behind easy-to-break glass. No gates on the front, no security guards, dim lighting. Shit, it usually takes about three minutes to rob one of these places blind. Gill and me, we can work a job by ourselves and come out with bank.”
Aveline takes a drag on her cigarette and shakes her head.
“Your brother though,” she says and then pauses, glancing over her shoulder at the side of the house where Gill and I screwed like horny teenagers, “sorry—stepbrother—he's good, almost too good. He can hit places that nobody would ever dream of aiming for.”