Ryan Harper was full of surprises. I hadn’t expected him to stick up for me to his father. Nor had I expected him to come clean with his dad about the diamond heist. Though, who would his father tell? Richard Harper was not the kind to get his children in trouble.

Ryan was a bit at a loss for where to go after the confrontation with his father, so I took him back to my place. I’m not sure he’d ever ridden the subway before as the entire process seemed to both amaze and disgust him.

When we got back to my place, my bag in tow, Lynx was sitting on the sofa watching television. He turned toward me, a smile on his face, but was surprised to see Ryan with me. He gave me a “what the hell?” look, but stood up and walked over to greet us.

“Lynx, this is Ryan,” I said. “Ryan, my brother Lynx.”

I set my bag on the ground next to the chair, and closed the door.

“Good to meet you,” Ryan said, holding out a hand, and Lynx shook it.

“It was really nice of you to hire my sister to go on that trip at you and Lily’s old school.”

Ryan looked at me a second, and then back at Lynx. “I was glad she could go on such short notice.”

I needed to cut this off. I didn’t intend on telling Lynx the entire truth, but I didn’t want to compound the lie.

“If you don’t mind, Ryan and I are going to go talk a little bit. Debrief about the trip.”

He stared at me again, as if he was confused. “Umm, okay,” he said after a minute.

I waved Ryan toward my room. We walked inside to find my queen-sized bed, a dresser, a flat screen mounted to the wall, and a night stand. There were some paintings on the wall. One depicted a scene at a Baptist church. The other was a collage of several Hindi gods. There was an old soft chair in the corner. It had been my mother’s. It seemed the obvious place to sit but I still thought of it as my mother’s chair, so I directed Ryan to the bed.

He grinned at me lasciviously. “You’re a naughty girl,” he whispered.

I plopped down next to him. “No, I’m not,” I said. “I just don’t sit in that chair.”

“Sacred chair?”

“My mom’s chair,” I said. “I like to just look at it, imagine her sitting in it, helping me when I’m worried.”

He put an arm around me. “That’s nice.”

“I didn’t bring you here to talk about that,” I said. “I just wanted to thank you for sticking up for me with your father.”

He shrugged. “It’s the least I could’ve done”

“The least you could’ve done would’ve been to say nothing.”

“I couldn’t say nothing after all you’ve done for me.”

I patted his leg. “Well, I just wanted to make sure you’d be alright, and you had a plan. You said your father cut you off. Do you have a place to stay?”

“For about a week,” he said. “After that, I’m homeless.”

“Then I have a proposition for you,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Yes,” he said. “Anytime a woman as beautiful as you says, ‘I have a proposition for you,’ the right answer is yes.”

I laughed. “Good, then I’ll get your first-born son.”

“Should I be concerned you keep coming back to that?”

“Nah,” I teased. “I just don’t know many jokes. I have to recycle them.”

“Good to know,” he said, easing into seriousness. “So, what is your proposition?”

“We’re going to be gone a month and I was going to have Mrs. Argon check on the apartment, but if you need a place to stay as you get settled, you can stay here for a month. Lynx and I are leaving next week.”

He scrunched his mouth to the side in thought. “And when you get back,” he said. “I’m out on my keister.”

“Only as much as you are now.”

“Good point,” he said.

“Alright,” I told him. “You should head home. I’ll explain to Lynx about you house sitting for us.”

“House sitting. Hmmm. Any rules?”

“Don’t go in Lynx’s room,” I said, knowing that would be a problem for Lynx. “I looked around the room. “Don’t sit in that chair. Other than that, we’re good.”

* * *

AFTER I LEFT ONYX, I knew what I had to do.

Actually, I’d known what I had to do since I’d been in India. Since I’d had to be involved with Pauly’s little operation, I knew what I had to do. I had to grow up. The first step had been making an effort to fix my own mess.

And that had worked, somewhat. I had the extension, and part of my debt knocked down by Onyx. I smiled. She’d tried to rescue me even as I’d tried to rescue myself. Only, I’d turned the tables on her. Or at least evened things out. I agreed to Pauly’s terms. She’d get her full payment, but the difference would come out of what I owed him, so I’m up to owing roughly half a million dollars. However, I did get him to agree to making an anonymous donation of 50 grand to Onyx’s summer program. That was the least I could do for her, and something he seemed surprised as hell I’d asked about but also willing to do. “You got cojones, kid, so yeah, I’ll help those kids.”

Now I just had to earn half a million dollars in six months. And it wouldn’t be by gambling, either. That was how I got myself into this hole.

I had taken the subway back to my apartment. I’d known there was a line here, but I tended to Uber or cab. My parents never took the subway. Even with New York traffic, they thought it was something beneath them. I’d gotten into the habit, despite my abhorrence for their standoffishness. But, I figured it out after a couple of mistaken line switches. I went home and made the first of what would be dozens of calls to friends I’d gone to college with. I needed a job, and I would catch up first, lay out feelers, and hopefully someone would bite.

I went to bed, having had five calls with people I knew, though none had job opportunities. They may have all simply disliked me. Or if not dislike, at least still seen me as the spoiled brat I was then. Didn’t matter. I would be deterred.

I went to bed, and the next day, I made half a dozen more calls. One guy told me he thought he’d heard about an opening. He’d let me know more and said I should email him my resume. I did. This led me to the second thing I needed to do. I called my parents and asked if I could come over. My mother said yes. I wasn’t sure if my father agreed with her, after the way I’d treated him. Though, he’d deserved it, so maybe he understood.

When I got to the apartment, the housekeeper, let me in. I found my parents in the living room. My father was in the Eames chair and my mother was seated cattycorner on the sofa.

My father stared at me, his brown eyes watching me curiously. My mother looked at me, too, but hers was the face of weariness in expectation of disappointment. She expected very little from me. It always hurt that she had no faith in my abilities.

I kept my chin up, though as I walked over and stood so that I could see them both. “I have a proposition for you,” I said.

My mother, crossed her legs, leaned forward. “One involving mobsters?”

I blew out, rubbed at my temple. “I made a mistake,” I said. “A terrible mistake, one probably fueled by a combination of grief and recklessness. And I’m owning up that mistake.”

“What is your proposition, son?” my father aske, his voice curt.

“I’d like a loan from my trust fund of $500,000. I will pay it back in monthly installments once I have a job.”

“A job where?” my mother asked. “You know you’ve been fired.”

“I know,” I told her, curbing the urge to snipe. Calmly, I said, “I’ve put out some feelers to people I went to school with. I think with the right calls, I can get a job in a few weeks.”

“Because jobs grow on trees?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No, they don’t,” I admitted. “But, I’m putting in the work, and I think I can get it done.”

“Or if a loan is not alright, how about an advance. I’m entitled to full access to the remainder of the trust when I’m 30.”

My mother scoffed. “Ryan, you got access to $100,000 when you turned 21. You got access to $200,000 at 25. And it’s all gone. I don’t even know what you’ve spent it on.”

“Junk,” I said. “I’ve wasted it, alright. But that’s not me anymore. The me of now has finally learned from my mistakes, and I don’t want to be $500,000 in debt to a mobster, so I’d like a loan, which I will pay back. But I’d like a loan to be out from under the thumb of a dangerous man.”

My father scrunched his nose to the side. “What about the thing you did for him?”

“Just cleared part of my debt, and gave me six months interest free to get the rest of the money together.”

My father stroked the hair above his ear, gently. “I think you’ve made a reasonable proposal,” he started to say.

My mother cleared her throat and my father stopped speaking. “Ryan,” she said, her voice softer. “I want what’s best for you,” she said. “But so often you have been wasteful, and then claimed to have found the way, if only we’ll help with financial support. What about this time will be different?”

“You don’t have any guarantees. Nothing but my word. And I’m giving it to you. I will pay back the loan, and find a job.”

She put a hand to her chin, and stared at me. “Who have you contacted about a job?”

I told her the names of the people. A couple of them she’d know. They, too, were children of high society. Even if she didn’t know them exactly, she’d know of their parents.

She seemed surprised. “That’s a good list,” she said, a small smile forming. “I’m not as kind as your mobster. We’ll do a loan against your trust fund. But you’ll repay it with interest. Not too high. Four percent.”

I nodded. I couldn’t complain about that.

“It’s good that you’re taking responsibility,” she said. “I hope it holds.”

I suppose that was the best I was going to get from her. I nodded, and said thank you. Then I turned to my father. “Can I talk to you alone for a second?”

He nodded, stood, and waved me to follow him. He walked to his study, a place that was more his taste than my mother’s. Not sleek modernism, but old school man’s study. Thick, wooden furniture oiled and polished. Dark and, were this another era, it would be filled with cigar smoke. Only, mother doesn’t let him smoke cigars anymore. And it’s probably for the best, as my grandfather died of lung cancer.

He offered me a seat in the leather chair opposite his desk. I declined. “I just wanted to apologize about yesterday. I’m not an employee of Harper Shipping, and I shouldn’t have commandeered that room. I hope you won’t blame Michelle for giving it to me.”

“Michelle called me, so I don’t blame her. I was glad to know where you were, finally.”

I hadn’t realized. “You told her that I was missing.”

“I told her to let me know if you came by. You always seemed to like that office.”

I laughed. “Not really, but I always liked her.”

“She was always kind to you.”

I nodded, but we were getting off track. “I also wanted to apologize for suggesting you didn’t treat Lily well. That wasn’t right. You loved Lily.”

My father shook his head. “No,” he said. “You were right. I wasn’t a very good father to either of you, and I have to live with that. But, like you, I can try to correct my mistakes. I can try to be a better father now.”

I supposed that was what we both wanted. A chance to redeem ourselves. I nodded.

“And son, I have to ask what is going on with that Onyx woman? Why are you involved with her?” Then he shook his head. “No, I can see... I saw her, I understand the attraction physically, but she’s got you involved with mobsters.”

I shook my head and held up a hand. “Dad, that’s not it,” I said. “Don’t talk about her like that, like she’s just some hot piece of ass who I’m lusting over. Someone who’s bringing me to the dark side. She didn’t get me involved with mobsters. I did that. She helped me cut my debt in half.”

“By stealing?”

“By doing a job that the mobster wanted done. By doing it against her better judgment to help me out.”

“Helping you would have been coming to us.”

“For what it’s worth, the first thing she told me to do was to go home to you. To ask for your help, to get you to bail me out again.”

His eyes widened, as if he didn’t believe.

I nodded. “Yes, that’s what she told me, and I almost did. But, you’d cut me off, and I didn’t want to crawl back and when I explained it, she understood. Coming to you then would be you bailing me out of every problem I’ve ever had — again. What she did was help me, for once, edge my way out of things, and realize just how fucking hard it is sometimes. To realize that even after I did all that shit, I still wasn’t done. That you can dig yourself into a big hole and that digging out will take time. That’s why I asked for a loan, because I know I have to dig out myself and that’s going to take time. But, digging out legitimately is hard to do with mobsters, so I’m taking the easy money from you to get rid of him, but I’m willing to do the digging long-term with you.”

My father gave me his best approximation of stern. “But what if you’d gotten caught?”

“Then I would have had to pay the price. And for once, I would have done so. And maybe I should have gotten caught. If I were doing it just for me, maybe it would have felt stupid, but it wasn’t just me. It was a two-person job, and I couldn’t let her down. So, I stepped up, and I didn’t ruin it the way I usually do.”

“You don’t ruin things, son,” my father said.

I shrugged. “Sometimes I do. Sometimes I did, I guess I should say.”

My father put a hand to his chin and studied me. “So, she did this illegal thing entirely out of the goodness of her own heart, to help you. She had no other motive?”

I grimaced. “Of course, she had another motive. She needed money, too. Only, she didn’t have a trust fund to seek money from. Or wealthy parents, or even alive parents. Both of her parents are dead, and if she’d had even a tenth of the money I’ve wasted in my life, she wouldn’t have needed help. She wouldn’t have done the job.”

My father shook his head. “I don’t trust her, son.”

I looked him in the eye, and didn’t hesitate when I spoke. “Well, you’re wrong not to trust her. Lily trusted her, and you know as well as I do that Lily didn’t turn over her trust lightly. And if Lily had been alive, I think both Onyx and I would have taken a different path. She would have asked Lily for help, instead of doing this job for Pauly. And me, I would probably not even be in this trouble.”

My father leaned on the wall of the study. “So, in terms of this trouble, this gambling debt. Is gambling a problem for you?”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “And I’m not a gambler who just says that. I mean, I liked the thrill of going in and plunking down a chunk of cash, knowing anything could happen. But more than anything, I was just sad. I was alone. I wanted to feel something, something more than the dead I felt with Lily gone. Pauly, the guy I owe the money to, said I had a death wish.  I think, in retrospect, he was right. The gambling on long shots, the big losses, that was a way for me to make my life as dangerous as possible. It worked. But only as I realized that I was in deep shit, did it finally dawn on me that what I’d been doing was stupid, that I didn’t have some kind of death wish. I had a pretty good life.”

“Yes,” my father said. “You have lived a good life. I’ve tried to make sure of it.”

“I appreciate that,” I told him.

“And what does Onyx Neel need mafia money for?”

“She would have gladly accepted any money, mafia or not,” I shot back. “But, her reasons are private, not for me to say. But they’re good reasons. She’s a good person. She works as a teacher dad, and she’s changing lives. You should find out more about her before you judge her.”

He didn’t respond.

That was better than him suggesting I was wrong. I took this as my cue to exit. “I should go, dad.”

“Wait,” he said. His voice was a whisper when he spoke next. “I can call the landlord at your loft and pay the next few months.” He looked at the shut door. “We won’t have to tell your mother.”

Good ole dad. I shook my head. “Mom is right. I need to do this on my own. I’ve got a new place to stay temporarily. I’ll be good.”

He stared at me as if he didn’t quite believe. “You don’t have to pretend with me,” he said.

“I’m not, Dad,” I admitted. “For once, I’m taking things into my own hands, and I’ll live or die by my abilities. And right now, I’ve got an apartment for next month. If I need help, though, I’ll ask.”

I turned and walked out.