Chapter Fourteen
Ten Years Ago
Frankie walked quickly across the back yard to plant herself at my side. “He’s here,” she whispered discreetly. “He just walked in with my Uncle Alek.”
“Francesca,” my dad beamed next to me, excited to be in such proximity to my friend. “You’re looking lovely tonight. Growing up to favor your ma, you know that?”
My cheeks flushed on my friend’s behalf. Francesca hated drawing attention to herself and she hated being put on display for parties like this one. But her uncles would not tolerate her baseball cap and tomboy look tonight. She did look like her mom in her designer mini dress that had a big bow on the right hip—which was a good thing for her since the entire bratva hated her deceased dad. Her hair was down in loose curls and fell almost all the way to her butt. She had even put on makeup tonight, something I’d made her repeat on me when I got over here earlier.
“Th-thanks, Mr. Valero,” she mumbled.
“Call me Leon, honey. How many times do I gotta tell you? Nobody calls me Mr. Valero unless they owe me a lotta money.”
She lifted her face and attempted a smile, “Leon.”
One of her uncles called her name from across the yard, and she snapped to attention. “Please excuse me.”
I watched her weave through party guests, careful not to touch anyone. When we were on a job, she was like a ghost. She could slip through a room unseen, unnoticed. But here, she didn’t stand a chance. She wasn’t just on display. She was the focal point of the room. The poor orphaned princess. Her uncles’ pride and joy. The future of the Volkov dynasty.
She had male cousins. It wasn’t like the syndicate was going to be entirely left to her. Her uncles had wives and sons and other family to step in. But they had also made a promise to Frankie’s mother. They were to give her a future, keep her close to the family, make sure she was taken care of for the rest of her life. She didn’t have a choice. The syndicate was her life.
It would always be her life.
My dad put his arm around me, ducking his head so we wouldn’t be overheard. “That girl okay?”
“She’s fine,” I replied automatically. My dad squeezed my shoulder, demanding truth. “She hates being the center of attention,” I shared, confessing it like it was a secret. “These kinds of things make her uncomfortable.”
He relaxed, letting out a good-natured chuckle. “Yeah, what is it about teenage girls, huh? These things make you uncomfortable too.”
Was it so surprising that being at a house with thieves, murderers, drug dealers, sex traffickers and all manner of lowlife scum would make me, a fifteen-year-old girl, uncomfortable? Apparently.
“I feel out of place,” I said, shrugging off his heavy arm. He smelled like booze and cigarettes and the girl he’d brought with him as his date tonight. “There aren’t that many people here my age.”
“Lucky for you, I’ve heard there’s a job tonight. You can get out of here soon enough.”
Only my dad would be so excited about a job for me. The fact that it would be highly illegal and dangerous didn’t bother him at all, even though I doubted he knew any of the details. He didn’t have my clearance level—something that equally made him proud and drove him crazy. I strained my neck and tilted it to the side, cracking the bones and releasing some stress.
“I haven’t heard anything,” I argued. And I hadn’t. We were supposed to be celebrating Dymetrus’s birthday. The whole gang was here. A girl was supposed to jump out of a cake later and I had been curious about the finer details of that for a week. Was it a real cake? Or a plastic one like what you’d see on TV? Would she be covered in frosting? Would she be only covered in frosting? Because gross.
I wasn’t usually invited to shindigs. The little parts Frankie and I played were usually purposefully overlooked. I was paying a childhood debt, and Frankie got to do whatever Frankie wanted. We reported to Sayer and Atticus and nobody else. They told us what to do, and we did it. That was it. That was our part. They paid us enough to keep us from wanting to take a piece for ourselves. We were Sixes; we were the bratok, soldiers with a specific purpose. But tonight, we got a piece of the cake.
Only I wasn’t going to eat any of it if a woman jumped out of it.
“Here comes the kid. He’ll tell you.” My dad’s attention moved to a cluster of young guys walking toward us. They moved through the crowd as one unit, the other, older guys stepping back, out of their way. Sayer was at the front, Gus and Atticus behind him like the wings of a fighter jet.
It was ridiculous how much respect they commanded, how much influence they had. Gus and Sayer weren’t even out of high school yet. Atticus was an asshole. But they’d somehow built this untouchable reputation without being killers, without dealing in women, drugs or weapons.
Money talked. And Sayer brought in a lot of money.
He caught my eye from across the decorated backyard, jerking his chin in a command for me to follow him. I thought about looking away and pretending I didn’t see him. I could probably pull it off. I wasn’t always looking at Sayer. I looked at other things.
Sometimes.
“That’s your cue, kiddo.” My dad nudged me with his elbow.
Letting out an agitated sigh, I looked at my dad. “Aren’t you supposed to protect me from this kind of stuff?”
He let out a bark of laugh. “Protect you? Honey, I’m proud of you.” And then his eyes truly teared up. The bastard. “Who would’ve thought my daughter would be able to do what you do? I knew taking you on all those jobs when you were young would pay off. I saw the potential in you from day one. Now look at you. Think of your future, Caro. Don’t say I never did nothing for you. Cause you keep this up and you won’t gotta worry about nothing, baby. You’ll be set for life.”
Yeah, right. Life in prison maybe. “Do you know how screwed up that is, Dad?” I asked calmly.
His smile stretched. “I think you meant to say thank you.”
“Unbelievable.” I turned around, knowing better than to keep Sayer and Atticus waiting. “I’ll see you later.”
“Probably not going to be home tonight though,” he called after me, and I decided it was better if I didn’t know why.
I slipped into the crowd the same way Frankie had, silently, stealthily, smoothly, clocking pockets and purses as I went. For being criminals, these people had no idea how to keep track of their crap. There was so much to take—so much there to be stolen.
They assumed they were safe here, surrounded by their brothers and their weapons. But these were the moments we waited for. The game had begun.
My fingers were light as feathers. A roll of cash peeking out of the side pocket of trousers, a money clip just barely visible in a back pocket, by the time I’d reached the other side of the party, I had three hundred bucks. I divided the money and slipped it into the cups of my bra. The extra padding wouldn’t hurt either.
Sayer raised his eyebrows as I approached, having caught the tail end of my heist. I shrugged one shoulder and silently dared him to bring it up.
“That’s a dangerous game, Six.”
I looked away. “No more so than the job tonight.”
“You don’t know what the job is yet.”
“Is it legal?”
His lips twitched. “You have a death wish, is that it?”
We were standing under a tree that had twinkly lights wrapped around each of its branches heavy with the green leaves of summer. There was a band playing some kind of polka music near the house. Women were flirting, and men were laughing. The warm breeze smelled like expensive perfume and July moonlight.
Sayer had dressed up for the night, in a white collared short-sleeve shirt and black shorts. His hair had been styled with actual product and pushed back from his face, tamed into staying in place. He was dangerous. And beautiful. And he was going to ask me to do something that I didn’t want to do.
After I said yes, I would blame the magic of the night and the three hundred bucks hidden inside my bra.
But Sayer had a kind of magic all his own. He stepped closer to me, trailing his finger over my bare shoulder. Dad had said I needed to dress up, that this was a big deal. So Frankie had let me borrow one of her designer things. A strapless emerald green dress that was too short and too tight and too pretty for me—the degenerate daughter of a bookie.
“It’s not a death wish,” I told Sayer. “It’s more like a… get me out of here wish.”
He stepped closer, dropping his voice so we weren’t overheard. “Where would you go, Six? There’s nothing out there that’s better than this. You’d be bored. You’d hate it.”
Frankie said the same thing to me all the time. I don’t know what that said about me. I just knew what I felt and that was hatred for this life, for what we did, for what we stood for. I watched my dad struggle through life at the lowest level. He was either gambling or wishing he was gambling or regretting gambling. He was either asking people for money or making people pay him money or trying to figure out how he was going to pay someone off. He drank too much and smoked too much and slept around way too much.
There had to be more to life than this. There had to be some kind of peace in living a normal, legal, safe life.
I had to believe that. Because I could not live like this forever. I could not be my father. I could not grind out the next thirty years hopping from one job to the next, living in shitty apartments, always looking over my shoulder.
Or worse. What if I got caught? By one of our marks? Or the police?
How the hell would I survive prison?
“I’d love it,” I argued with Sayer. “I’d get a normal job and a bank account and a library card. I’d even go to church.”
His head moved back and forth. He didn’t believe me. “Yeah, where? Where would you live this normal, boring life?”
I thought of the most normal place I could, the most boring, the most unexciting, the most even-paced place in all of existence. “The Midwest,” I said confidently.
He laughed this time, low and truly amused. It made my stomach flip. It made my heart flutter. It made me question all of my dreams about the Midwest and want to throw them away.
“The Midwest? Any place in particular? Or are you just going to grab the next covered wagon and see where you end up?”
“Don’t be an asshole.” But I was trying not to laugh.
“No, it’s cool, Caro. I get it. Why stay here and get rich beyond your wildest dreams, when you could go there and live amongst the corn and cows.”
I smiled against my better judgment. “Exactly.”
“I’m not even sure they have cable.”
“They have cable,” I said confidently. Although I wasn’t one hundred percent sure about that.
“No fast cars.”
“They have those too.”
“No museums.”
“Where do you think the Midwest is? The moon?”
His smile was wicked, his blue, blue eyes full of the devil himself. “I just want you to think this all the way through. I want you to weigh all your options. Make a pros and cons list.”
“I’ll be sure to do that.”
He took another step closer to me, his chest almost touching mine. “You’re too pretty for the Midwest, Caroline. Too daring. Too independent. They wouldn’t know what to do with a girl like you.”
I struggled to think straight. “You think I’m pretty?”
His head dropped so that his lips were at my ear. “I always think you’re pretty, but tonight you’re making it hard for me to breathe.”
Now I couldn’t breathe. He lifted his head, showing me the truth in his eyes, the conviction in his expression. “Promise me you won’t leave, you won’t head off into the sunset until you say goodbye. It would kill me. You know that right?”
“Sayer…”
His jaw ticked, the muscle popping out a warning that he was serious. “Promise me. Don’t just leave. At least say goodbye.”
“I promise,” I said quickly. “Of course. Of course I’ll say goodbye.”
He nodded once, moving his tongue slowly over his bottom lip. His hand lifted, landing along my jaw. His fingertips dug into my hair and his palm curved around my face, holding me tightly. His head dipped, and I knew this was the moment. He was going to kiss me. He was finally going to kiss me!
“Are we going to do this or what?”
Wrong.
This was the moment I was finally going to murder Atticus.
“Yeah,” Sayer called back. “Yeah, we’re going to do this.
An hour later, Gus had dropped us off two blocks away and we were creeping toward a four-story Victorian row house in Georgetown. Atticus let out a low whistle.
“Quite the piece of real estate,” he mumbled.
Sayer ducked, so his head was lower than the hedges in the back yard. “Jealous?”
Atticus shot him a look. “Nah. It’s only a matter of time, Wesley. Only I’ll get it a hell of a lot sooner than fucking Fat Jack. And I’ll know better than to get greedy and piss it away.”
Childhood had made my loyalties stronger than I realized, because I added, “We don’t know anything yet. We’re just supposed to look around. There might not be anything.”
Sayer and Atticus stayed quiet. Their silence said enough though. Nobody but me thought Fat Jack was innocent. The pakhan wanted us to take a look around his house while he was at the party. They wanted evidence before they took action. They wanted us to come up with a reason for his suspicious behavior.
I felt sick.
“We’ll start in the basement,” Atticus whispered as he clipped the lock on the back gate. Somewhere in the neighborhood, Gus used his computer magic to shut off the security cameras posted around the house.
“We’ll start upstairs and meet you in the middle,” Sayer confirmed.
And that’s what we did. The boys let me pick the lock on the back door since I had the gentlest touch, and we separated. Frankie with Atticus. I stayed with Sayer.
Up we went, creeping up three flights of stairs to the master bedroom on the top floor. My nose wrinkled at Fat Jack’s sense of décor. Okay, it wasn’t like my two-bedroom apartment with my dad was anything to brag about. But I never understood why men with money always went for the black silk sheets.
“I should have guessed,” I told Sayer. He raised his eyebrows, having no idea what I was talking about. “A mirror above the bed. Because why wouldn’t a man that looks like Fat Jack want to watch himself get nasty?”
Sayer chuckled darkly. “I don’t know, Six, maybe it’s for educational purposes. Maybe he’s trying to improve his game.”
I wrinkled my nose, struggling not to gag. Fat Jack was three hundred pounds of bubbling anger with a vodka-reddened nose and deep-set dull eyes. He had no soul, no sympathy, no reason to look out for anybody but himself. If he could find girls willing to come back here with him, their needs were the last thing he was concerned about in that bed.
“I’ve never understood the silk sheets though,” I whispered as we made our way around the room, looking for clues and evidence and anything damning. “Aren’t they slippery? I’m picturing Fat Jack like a greased pig in that bed.” I shook my head quickly, trying to rid myself of the mental image. “Scratch that. I’m not picturing Fat Jack at all. Ick.”
I felt Sayer’s gaze on me from across the room. “You’ve never, you know, messed around on silk sheets before?”
Giving him my back, I picked up the edge of a picture frame, my hidden fingers curled under the sleeves of my cardigan. I’d brought it in case I got cold tonight, but it doubled for fingerprint protection in case of last minute jobs.
My cheeks flamed red and I wanted to jump off the balcony just off Fat Jack’s room. Was Sayer serious? Had I ever messed around on silk sheets? The real question was, had I ever messed around at all? No. The answer was definitely no. And it was all his fault.
Not that I felt like a huge chunk of my life was missing because nobody had ever brought me back to their sleazy den of iniquity and slid me around on their slippery bed while they watched their technique in the mirror overhead. But, still. It was the principle of the thing.
Instead of saying any of that to him though, I lied. Because that’s what I did. I was a liar that lied for a living, to stay alive, to pay off some stupid debt to the syndicate. “That’s what I’m saying,” I told him. “I think they’re more work than they’re worth. Not to mention tacky.”
Sayer’s voice was devoid of his previous humor when he said. “I didn’t realize you had so many opinions about silk sheets.”
I glanced at him over my shoulder as I moved to rifle through some papers on a desk in the corner. “It’s not like I’m high maintenance about the whole thing, I just draw the line at self-indulged assholes. That’s all.” Oh my God. What was I even saying? I blamed Sayer. He shouldn’t have made it sound like he had so much experience on silk sheets. It was annoying. And gross. And turned the normal female inside me into a green-eyed jealousy monster.
“Those are some high standards, Six.”
I spun around, glaring at him across the room. He had moved parallel with me, near a dresser in the corner. The room was crowded with our unsaid words and frustrated feelings and the constant push and pull. Or maybe that was just me.
“Do I need high standards?” I asked, knowing it would piss him off.
“Are you serious?”
I shrugged as I walked over to a locked side table near the French doors leading to the balcony. “Oh, you’re one to talk, Mr. Judgmental. Didn’t you go home with Crystal what’s her name last Friday? Obviously you were exercising your incredibly picky decision-making skills.”
“You’re awfully mouthy tonight, Caro.”
He’d moved to stand next to me. I could smell him again, feel the frustration rolling off him. And it took everything in me to keep from gloating. It was nice to get under his skin. He was always under mine and in my head and pushing into my decisions and plans and better reasoning. He was always there, constant in everything I thought or did or wanted. And I was tired of it.
Tired of him.
I squatted down and did a little magic with the locked drawer using a hairpin and an Allen wrench. It popped open, and I smiled at it. I hated this too. This life. This specific skillset I didn’t ask for. Yet, I would take this every day over Sayer. I understood this job, these things. I could see the problem and figure out how to solve it.
Sayer was something else entirely. I didn’t know how to pick him open. I didn’t know how to con him into playing my game. I didn’t know how to take what I wanted from him and leave the rest.
Because it seemed like he just kept taking from me. Or I kept giving to him. Either way, I wasn’t getting anything in return, and I hated it.
“I’m always mouthy.” I popped back up to check out the contents of the drawer and found Sayer even closer than before. I turned to look at him. “But the point remains. My standards are my choice. As are yours.”
Those blue eyes that were my absolute downfall found mine and held on tight. “I didn’t go home with Crystal Kanstanova last Friday, Six. Nor have I ever gone home with her. Think what you want of me, but I do have high standards. And she doesn’t come close to meeting them.”
I sucked in my bottom lip and nibbled on it, ignoring the way the two internal fists that had been squeezing my heart relaxed. But the game between us was still going. I couldn’t let him see how much his words affected me or how desperately I wanted to be the reason he hadn’t taken Crystal home. She’d been all over him last Friday at the club where the bratva spent most of their time. And she dressed like a total slut. I wasn’t saying that to be mean. It was just a fact. She was all nip slips and whale tail. It was like her thing, her signature. “I suppose you want me to acknowledge what an upstanding human you are now?”
Sayer’s eyes darkened. “I want you to acknowledge what’s between us, Caroline. Fucking admit you have a thing for me. I’m tired of chasing you.”
I slammed my finger in the drawer. Hissing a curse, I spun to face him. “Is that what you think you’ve been doing? Chasing me?”
One side of his mouth kicked up. “Since I was twelve years old in an alley I didn’t belong in with three dollars to my name.”
“Sayer,” I whispered, his name like a plea and a prayer, like a desperate demand for more.
“Are you really this blind? You think this was Roman’s idea?” He motioned back and forth between us. “That he wanted a team of kids? Six, I’ve been fighting to be with you since the day you saved my life. My standards are fucking high. I only want the girl that’s totally out of reach, that’s so much better than me it’s embarrassing. I only want the one girl I should let go.” He stepped closer to me. “So she can move to the Midwest and have her corn and cows and normal life.”
I shook my head. “I-I’m not better than you.”
His chin jerked once. “You are. So much better. So much better than anything on this goddamn earth.” He dipped his head so that his forehead rested against mine and he lifted both hands to cup my face. It was the closest we had ever been. Butterflies took flight in my stomach and my appendages started to tingle. I had to close my eyes against the sensation, against the heady bliss of Sayer’s words and his touch and his body so very hot against mine. “And I know you can do better than me and this life and that you probably should get whatever it is you want so badly, but Caro, I’m going to ask you to stay here. Stay with me. Be with me.”
Sayer was three years older than me, eighteen to my meager fifteen. It wasn’t that much of a difference, but it had always felt like the difference between being a grown-up and a little kid. Sayer was this big man in the syndicate. He was older than his age, so much tougher and smarter and wiser than he appeared. And I was just this little girl playing at a chance to be around him. I didn’t want the syndicate life, but I hadn’t had a choice. I didn’t want to be good at stealing and lying and cheating, but I didn’t have a choice. Sayer had every choice in the world and yet he chose this life.
He could have done anything with his life and he picked the syndicate.
That was how I felt now too. I had never had a choice in loving Sayer. I just had. Always. Since the day I met him, he had been it for me. I couldn’t even get myself to pay attention to other guys. It was always Sayer for me.
But he had all the choices in the world. He could have anyone. Be with anyone. And yet, he wanted me.
He wanted me.
“Like as your girlfriend?” I asked because I was fifteen and that was the only thing I could wrap my head around. A distant, more mature part of my brain told me he wasn’t just asking for me to be his girlfriend, that his perspective was bigger than mine, more permanent. But I had never had a boyfriend before, let alone had a boy who said things like that to me. This was new and uncharted territory. Besides, like I said, Sayer was the only one I wanted, the only one I cared about. I didn’t stand a chance.
Sayer’s chuckle cascaded over my skin, warming me and pulling goosebumps up at the same time, making my heart race and my blood rush in my veins. “Yeah, Six. You want to be my girlfriend?”
I nodded, giggling a flirty sound I had never made before. “Y-yes. Yes, please.”
He caught my words with his lips pressed against mine. I gasped at the sensation, those too-soft lips a heady contrast with the hardness of his body, the rough feel of his hands, the grit of his personality. His mouth moved against mine slowly, carefully.
Sayer might have been my first boyfriend, but he wasn’t my only kiss—I had managed to get a few of those in since the first time he kissed me when I was ten. For practice’s sake. Boys from school under the bleachers or behind the track mats in the gym. I had no idea what I was doing with someone like Sayer, but I at least wasn’t a total amateur when it came to kissing.
Or at least that’s what I thought.
But kissing Sayer wasn’t just kissing a boy—it was kissing a man. He was all of my dreams and fantasies and desires packaged into one perfectly gorgeous, perfectly dangerous man of my dreams, and I could have spent the entire night just learning the contours of his lips and how they fit against mine.
His teeth caught my bottom lip and then his tongue was there to soothe the nip, coaxing me to open my mouth wider and let him explore me more completely. He tasted like spearmint and everything I’d ever wanted. With my eyes shut tight and my hands tentatively clutching his crisp shirt, I let him lead the kiss just praying I was not making this a horrible experience for him.
Was this going to be the shortest relationship in the history of relationships? Was my bad kissing going to send him running? It was all too much.
I pulled back, gasping for breath and my scattering confidence. His head dropped to the curve of my neck, his breath heating the bare skin there, making me shiver.
He felt the chill run through me and his hands were immediately around my waist, tugging me against his warmth. “Are you cold?” he whispered.
“N-no.”
His head pulled back so he could see my face. “Repulsed then?”
His candid question pulled a nervous laugh out of me. “Intimidated,” I whispered. “You’re terrifying.”
He brushed his nose against mine. “You’re delicious.” Then his mouth was on mine again, and this time it wasn’t slow or soft or careful. This time his kiss was hungry. Demanding.
His mouth moved over mine quickly, our lips and tongues tangling together with need for each other, unrestrained want. My hands stopped being shy, smoothing over his chest and stomach, wrapping around his neck and pressing my body against his.
He didn’t hold his back either, letting them explore the curves of my waist, the side of my breast, the top of my ass. He didn’t go straight to ripping my clothes off, but the feeling was there, the desire. On both sides.
It had felt like we’d been playing this game for five years. This fire between us had been building and building and building and we’d just been adding fuel without bothering to contain it or tame it. And now there was no stopping it. We’d built this pyre, and now we would have to burn at its mercy.
Which was fine with me.
I’d gladly give into the flame to be with Sayer, to stay with him.
When he pulled back this time, we were both flushed, our lips swollen, our eyes dark. His smile was satisfied, cockier than I had ever seen it before.
I struggled to swallow against the lump of emotion in my throat. “Wow,” I whispered.
“Knew it was going to be good, Caro. I shouldn’t have waited so fucking long.”
Blinking against the blinding beauty that was painful in its intensity, I had one clear, resounding thought. I’m going to lose my virginity to this guy.
And the thought after that—He’s going to get me to give up running away. And I don’t think I care.
I would have gladly handed it over that night had we not been in the middle of Fat Jack’s bedroom in the middle of a job.
I stepped away from Sayer, anxious to untangle myself from those dangerous thoughts and my reckless heart. This was what we both wanted. For now. There was no way we would last. We were young. I was really young. And we wanted different things.
This would be good for both of us. I would get over my insane infatuation. And so would Sayer. We’d let this run its course and then we could go our separate ways.
It was almost like this had to happen for us to be able to grow up. Sayer had needed me when we were kids and he needed this now so he could thank me or get over me or whatever. And I needed to see this through so I could move on too. I needed to get Sayer out of my system so that someday I could at least find a way to be attracted to other guys. Sayer couldn’t be my only option forever.
This would be good for us.
And until we were over each other, we would have fun exploring the childhood crushes we’d had on each other. I could get rid of my V-card in the process to someone I trusted. He could trust me not to cheat on him or give him an STD. Win-win.
“There’s something behind the—” I left Sayer and walked over to the wall behind the master bed where a map of the world had been artfully hung in a chestnut frame. I stepped up onto the bed, ignoring the wrinkled sheets and pillows I was ruining.
I pushed the picture back against the wall, releasing the spring. The picture sprung forward, revealing a safe.
“Oh, shit,” Sayer murmured, coming to stand beside me. “How are we going to open that?”
It would have been a serious problem if we’d have had to. I could pick a standard lock, but doctoring a safe was an entirely different beast. Besides, this wasn’t a Walmart brand. This was a pain in the ass.
But thankfully, Fat Jack was a moron. “Like this.” My fingertips still hidden behind the sleeve of my sweater, I pulled the unlocked safe open.
Sayer’s surprised snicker was all I needed to feel amazing, but what we found inside the safe was enough to give us serious credit with the bosses.
His laugh quickly turned into cursing the asshole that lived here. “Holy shit,” Sayer rasped. “FBI. Is he fucking serious? The brothers are going to string him up by his toes and castrate the bastard. This is bad.”
My skin felt itchy all of a sudden. I closed my eyes and remembered all the commercial vans lining the streets as we’d made our way here. “We need to go.” I grabbed the files, tapping them into a hasty pile. “Sayer, now.”
We shared a look and then jumped into motion. We grabbed Frankie and Atticus from the main floor and hightailed it out of the house, sprinting through back yards and down side streets until we felt safe we weren’t being followed.
We headed back to the party and handed over the information. We spent the rest of the night laughing and kissing and sneaking vodka drinks and ignoring the fact that after tonight, we would never see Fat Jack alive again.