My meeting with Pauly hadn’t gone as planned. I didn’t tell Lynx the bad news. Instead I told him Pauly promised to get me some simple behind-the-scenes work, and would likely loan me the money. We just had to work out the details. That wasn’t quite a lie. Pauly had said I could do some certification for him, but the loan part was a stretch.

I couldn’t bear to tell Lynx the truth. Not when there were still other options. Today was the last day of school before the break. That meant I would have 10 days without lesson plans and students to figure out how to make this happen. Dr. Colandrea was already trying to work out the details of when we could travel to France. My passport was up to date, but Lynx’s had expired. He’d have to get an expedited one in person. But after that, we could go, assuming I figured out the money issue.

Ryan Harper would hopefully be an option. He’d asked me on a date—weirdly, I admit—but it still seemed to be a date. If I could get him to loan me the money, it would be perfect. Well, not perfect. I’d still owe him a hundred and twenty-five grand. But it wouldn’t have the same kind of strings attached to money owed to Pauly. It wouldn’t have that constant threat of being pulled into some job I didn’t want to do, or having Lynx pulled into some crap. One like that insane Surat mission. Well, I couldn’t say for sure it was insane. My father had mentioned a possible job back home. A long, long time ago. And maybe it wasn’t so bad. Pauly had suggested it wasn’t that hard. Clearly, he was obviously a biased source. I was curious about it, though. You’d need an inside man, one you could trust to pull off something like that. Pauly must have had one if he was willing to even consider it. Part of me liked the notion of going back to my father’s homeland again. But a bigger part of me didn’t want to go back to India. It wasn’t just the idea of Pauly’s job being dangerous. It was also the fact that Lily had died there. It marred the place for me somehow.

I went to bed that night telling myself everything would work out. I woke up the next morning still trying to convince myself. I went to work and had a great last day. I tried to be friendly to Dr. Dodson, show her I was adjusting my attitude. Not because I was, but because I was going to have to ask for leave to go with Lynx. Though, I knew I’d quit the job if it came to it. I just didn’t want it to come to that.

By the time I finished work, stopped at home to change and then got over to Club Diamante, it was 7:05. Shit. I hated being late. I was never late. In fact, bad things only happened to me when I ran late. I was in a foul humor when I finally showed up at the black kiosk where the hostess stood. She checked her tablet, when I told her I was meeting Mr. Harper. After a glance at the screen, she nodded to me, and told me to follow her.

We walked to the back of the club, one of the nooks that offered a private table. That was nice, but it also suggested he wasn’t just being weird when he asked me out. He really did seem to want privacy. I got a flutter of nerves in my belly. Why did he want a private meeting here?

He was seated at the table when tonight’s hostess and I walked up. He stood to greet me, taking my hand and pulling it up to plant a kiss on it. It was very gentlemanly, and sent a different kind of flutter to my tummy. A good one. I hadn’t expected that. Maybe I was reading too much into his seating location. A person on a date could want this kind of privacy, too. But, these tables were harder to get. They tended to be reserved for the bigwigs. People who had been around a while, like Pauly. Though, with the right payment, newer club members could reserve them.

“I’m glad you came,” he said.

“I’m glad you invited me,” I replied as I took my seat.

He sat across from me and leaned in. “I’ve never really eaten here,” he admitted. “What looks good on the menu?”

It had been a while since I’d looked at the menu. Pauly had ordered for me last night. “I’m not sure,” I said, trying to be friendly. He and I opened our menus to peruse the offerings. He settled on a lamb chop, and I decided I’d have the same. I liked lamb and people tended to like it when you complimented their choices. What better compliment than ordering the same thing?

We made our way gingerly through dinner. He was friendly enough, and asked a lot about my teaching. We managed to avoid the elephant of the subject that was Lily for a bit, though his laugh reminded me of hers. High and boisterous and warm enough to fill a room.

When the plates were cleared, he seemed in a good enough mood that I thought I could broach the subject of a loan. That’s when he leaned forward and said, “There is something I wanted to talk to you about.”

I raised an eyebrow but didn’t speak.

He looked down at the black marble table, the fingers of his left hand tracing the smooth surface. “I was hoping you could do me a favor.”

“A favor?” I couldn’t imagine anything I could do for him. “What kind of a favor?”

His blue eyes stopped their table gazing and stared directly at me. He looked like a scared little boy in this moment, and then, in one breath, he blurted out, “I need you to do that job Pauly asked you to.”

“What?!” I said, my voice too loud, my eyes wide with shock. I had to have just hallucinated. He couldn’t have asked me what my brain told me he’d asked.

“I owe Pauly some money,” he said, his voice so low I could barely hear him. I leaned in closer. “A lot of money, and I can’t pay it back. He said if I could convince you to do him this favor, he’d give me more time.”

I shook my head. “Unbelievable, Harper,” I whispered furiously. “Lily said you were better than the rest of them, but she was clearly wrong.”

I couldn’t believe he’d brought me here to ask that. But I should have known. He’d gone with Pauly last night. That shouldn’t have set right with me. I’d thought it was odd, but I shouldn’t have dismissed it as inconsequential. I should have parsed out in my head all the reasons Ryan Harper could want a meeting with Pauly Giordanno. Always figure out all the players and their motives. That’s the number one thing smart people do. My mother taught me that. Only I’d been too obsessed with my own problems to think properly. I stood up.

“No, please,” he begged. “You know what he’s going to do to me if I don’t get him his money, don’t you?”

Part of me wanted to turn and walk right out, but I’ve never been able to resist unanswered questions, and I had too many at this point to leave. I sat back down, and leaned forward. “If you’re so concerned about what he’s going to do to you, then pay him,” I said. “Why don’t you pay him? You have a trust fund. A big one.”

He shook his head. “My parents cut me off,” he whined. “They cut off everything, and told me I needed to do better, that my life was spiraling downward, that ever since Lily died, I’ve been flailing and they weren’t going to support my self-destructive lifestyle.”

I hadn’t expected that. He and Lily weren’t super close, but they were close enough, close enough that her death could easily have sent him spinning. I felt a pang of guilt that I was there with her when he wasn’t.

“But if you told them why you needed the money, they’d give it to you,” I said.

He closed his eyes, blew out, looking half defeated. “Maybe. If they believed I was telling the truth, if they believed I hadn’t made it up to get them to cave on cutting me off,” he said. “But it would just prove their point, and I don’t want them to be right.”

“So, I should get myself thrown in jail so your parents don’t have to be right?”

He cringed when I said that, his entire body wincing at my words, and then his face went from begging to curiosity. “What is it that Pauly wants you to do?”

“That’s none of your business,” I told him. Nothing I did was any of his business. I couldn’t believe I’d come here hoping he’d fix my problems. Instead, he was adding to them.

“I don’t want you to get hurt, alright,” he said. “That’s not my goal. I just thought you could help me out. And why would he suggest a job that could result in prison? He said I’d have to go to. Why would he suggest me for that job?”

My eyes widened in shock, as he said it. Both of us? What the hell was Pauly thinking? Why would I take this guy with me? And then it hit me. If anything went wrong, Papa Harper would pay a pretty penny to fix the legal problems for baby Harper and then Pauly might still be able to get his diamonds back. Brilliant. Of course, I’d be fucked royally. Though, that was Pauly for you. Always cover his interests, and everyone else would have to fend for themselves.

“Tell your parents,” I said to him. I wasn’t going to cave. “They’ll bail you out.”

He shook his head. “No,” he spat. “I’m not telling them anything. I’ll take my lumps.”

I stared, trying to figure out if he was crazy. “You do know what he’s going to do to you, right?” I whispered, even though we were pretty far away from prying ears.

“Yes, he’s going to kill me,” he said.

“No,” I retorted. “He’s going to beat the living shit out of you. Dead men don’t pay. So, tell your parents and pay the man. There’s no need to have Pauly bash that pretty-boy face of yours”

“Why not?” he asked, his voice full of self-pity, and perhaps even a touch of self-loathing. “It’s what I deserve and my parents already think the worst of me. It won’t be unexpected.”

He was making it harder for me to go. He seemed resigned now to accepting his fate. I hadn’t expected that, and really it was the exact opposite of what I wanted. Despite Lily’s hostility toward her parents, she did love them. And she wouldn’t want them to suffer just a year after losing their daughter. She wouldn’t want them to have to see their son beaten to a bloody pulp. “Your parents don’t want you hurt,” I said. “Think of what it would do to them.”

“The same as me telling them now why I need money. It’s the same difference, only I’d be getting what’s due me. Pauly thinks I have a death wish, you know. Maybe he’s right.”

A death wish. My eyes scrutinized him furiously. The tousled hair, the high cheek bones, the shiny teeth gave the appearance of handsome and fun loving, but the eyes, the eyes told the truth. They were desolate, lost and alone. He was like a man in the middle of the ocean clinging to a life raft. And then a conversation I had with Lily came to mind. It was our senior year at Harvard and she’d just gotten off the phone with him. Girl trouble of some sort and he’d been down.

“Ryan’s a bit like Mom,” Lily had said to me when she’d gotten off the phone “He can have his moods, these times when he thinks everything is against him, the entire world. You won’t change his mind no matter how hard you explain. You just have to hold his hand for a while, tell him everything’s alright and be right alongside him for the ride. It’s a bit of drama at times, but Ryan’s a good guy at heart.”

My gaze still traced the edges of him, the aura of him. He needed a life raft. He needed someone to hold his hand. And Lily would have been that person. But Lily was dead. A trip I suggested, a freak accident in the street, and she was no more. She couldn’t hold his hand and tell him it would be alright. She couldn’t be the life raft that kept him afloat. Did that mean I had to do it? Logically speaking, there was only one answer.

I reached out and put my hand on top of his. “I’ll do the job for Pauly,” I said, regretting the words the second they left my mouth. But knowing that Lily would want me to do this. This was a job for siblings. His and mine.

“Really?” he said, a hopeful smile forming.

“Really,” I said. “But you have to promise me that whatever you did to get this indebted to Pauly will stop.”

He nodded, way too quickly. The nod of the addict who promises to quit if you just give him a hit today. I wasn’t going to put too much faith in this promise. In fact, none at all, but it’s an 18-hour flight to Surat, so I’d have time to really talk to him in the near future, to get a promise worth something.