Patrick was lounging on the bed, at war with himself over whether he should keep working on this painting or if he should just let it be and work on his sketching again, when he got a knock on the door.

He was immediately on high alert. Even though he only knew of one person who would be knocking on his door at this hour, he couldn’t afford to relax. Who knew if Keene had somehow recognized him—as impossible as that seemed—or if someone else had noticed him, or if an acquaintance had found out he was in town and was stopping by for help with something, or… any number of things, really.

When he peered through the peephole, however, it was just Will.

Patrick swung the door open, irritated. “You’re not supposed to be here. What if Keene saw you?”

“That’s why I waited until it was two in the morning. What are you doing awake?” Will asked, shouldering his way in. Patrick closed the door behind him and immediately noticed that Will looked disheveled. Will generally looked laid back, and casual, but this was different. It was like he’d been tearing his hair out for the past few hours.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Patrick admitted. He didn’t say that he’d been unable to sleep since their sort-of fight the night Keene had arrived. Will didn’t need to know about that. “Why are you here? Are you okay?”

Will shook his head, and Patrick could see circles under his eyes and that his hair was all messy, like he’d been running his hands through it. Will’s shirt was wrinkled and he had that tired smell to him, the one that people got when they needed to sleep but couldn’t. “Keene knows who I am,” he croaked.

Patrick stared, for one wild moment uncomprehending. Of course Keene knew who Will was, that’s what they had set this up to be—and then it hit him.

“He ran a background check on you, didn’t he?”

Will nodded.

Patrick slammed his hand into the wall. “Fuck!”

He should have known, he should have seen this coming, of course Keene was going to run a background check, of course he was going to try and figure out who this dealer was, and Will didn’t have enough of an established false identity, he hadn’t covered his tracks in the world and Patrick had known that going in but he hadn’t thought… he hadn’t thought…

He’d been stupid. Stupid like Aunt Laura had been stupid. God dammit.

Patrick breathed slowly in and out. They had to figure this out. They would figure this out. There was no other option. He wasn’t giving this up.

“He wants me to give him the information I have,” Will explained. He sounded worn out, like he’d been walking for hours. Maybe he had. Maybe he’d just been pacing up and down the streets of Monte Carlo, alone and frustrated. Patrick didn’t like that thought, Will being alone to work through his fears like that.

“He won’t turn you in?”

“If I don’t help him break the bank and give him the information I got in the robbery, he will,” Will said. “But he said he’s willing to pay me for the information and give me part of the cut if I help him break the bank, like we originally planned.”

“But he might turn you into the police anyway, to keep from having to pay you.”

Will nodded. “Even if we pull this one on him, even if we take him for all he’s worth like we planned, he still knows who I am and he can still have me arrested.”

“Not if you get out of the country fast enough.”

“Who’s to say that I will? And if they take me then they might somehow take you. Patrick, we can’t risk that. You’re the Jackal, if they figure that out…”

“They won’t figure it out.”

“But they could. Nothing’s impossible.”

“We can still pull this off, Will.” Patrick started pacing. He could figure this out. “We’ll need to time it very carefully, have a seat ready for you on a plane, somewhere out of Europe, obviously, you won’t be able to come back here for a while, but there’s plenty of opportunity for a man of your talents in Asia, first of all, and that’s just off the top of my head. I can put out some feelers…”

Will shook his head. “No. I’m not going to endanger you, Patrick. They’ll get me, and if they get me, that means they might get you. I’m not risking that.”

“That’s honorable and appreciated, but I’m not giving this up. I can’t. I don’t have time to find another partner for this, it has to be now or I have to wait a whole year to try again, and I can’t go about it the same way because Keene will notice the similarities and will know that something’s up which means I have to find an entirely new way to get to him—”

“Oh my days,” Will growled. “Patrick, I get that this is important, okay? What he did to you, that ain’t right, innit, but no revenge is worth risking yourself. You’re on the top of Interpol’s most wanted list and you’ve been at the top for fifty years, which you still won’t tell me how you managed that, by the way, since you’re only twenty-eight, but fuck—buggering—just, they will destroy you if they get their hands on you. You’re a goldmine of information on the criminal world, yeah? I know you’re bredren with them mafia boys and all but do you think they’ll let you live if you get in the slammer? They’ll kill you before you can say Bob’s your uncle, you won’t even get to go to trial—and let’s pretend, hey, let’s pretend that you do go to trial. They’ll parade you around like you’re a bloody circus show ‘cause they’re going to be pissing themselves ‘cause they finally caught you. An’ after they’ve finished humiliating you, they’ll lock you up for the rest of your life. I know he screwed you over, pengting, and that’s long, it really is, but it ain’t worth your life. None of this is worth your life.”

Patrick laughed, and the sound rang hollow in his ears. “Yes, it is. It’s very much worth my life.”

“’Cause the bastard almost got you arrested once? Patrick, people double-cross each other all the time in our line of work. He’s a shady fucker, but what are you gonna do? So he inconvenienced you, sounds like you made it out all right, your business hasn’t suffered, you ain’t in jail…” Will trailed off and his eyes narrowed, glinting green in the light from the bedside lamp. “What is this really about?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Like fuck you don’t. You’re sensible. Always knew that about you. Thought you was an accountant or something, when I first saw you. A rich one but, still. You look like a boring old toff, yeah? An’ I was kind of right. You’re a bit like that. You ain’t gonna take a risk unless it’s a calculated one. You’re not going to throw everything away, everything you’ve built. Not for this kind of revenge you been selling me. So what is it? What’s the real reason you want to take this bloke down?”

“It’s the reason that I told you, okay? Nothing else. Keene’s got you spooked so you’re imagining things.”

Will shook his head, his voice going gentle. “Darling, when are you going to learn that I know you? Yeah? You can’t fool me. It’s real cute that you think you can. I know when you’re getting all prickly it’s ‘cause you’re playing at pushing me away. I know you like me even if you won’t say it. An’ I know, there’s something more going on here, innit. There’s something you ain’t telling me.”

“If I haven’t told you something, then it’s for your own good.” Patrick could feel panic starting to claw at the inside of his throat. “All you need to know is that we have to continue. We’re stuck.”

“And if I get turned in and you get caught ‘cause of it?”

“That’s a risk that I’m willing to take.”

“Why?” Will all but roared, and Patrick could hear desperation in Will’s voice, the same kind of desperation that Patrick was feeling in his throat, lodging there like a lump, threatening to choke him.

Will crossed the room to him and grabbed him, hands at Patrick’s shoulders, holding him more gently than Patrick would have expected. “I won’t be the one to drag you down. I won’t.”

“The only way I’ll get caught is if you get caught and you tell on me.”

“I ain’t a snitch,” Will growled. “I wouldn’t, especially not on you. But you don’t know what the police might dig up. They’ll want to know how I got the job at the casino in the first place. They’ll want to know how I got the apartment. They’ll look, pengting, and once they start looking, they’ll see I had a partner. One with money. One who funded me. And they’ll get a description of you and they’ll learn Mallory owns the apartment and what her profession is and who her friends are, and who the manager who hired me thinks you are, and who the locals here think you are, and it’ll all fall apart.”

“Then I’ll disappear. I’ve vanished before, I can do it again. This isn’t the first time someone’s thought they could catch the Jackal and failed.” Patrick’s voice came out hushed, the way it always seemed to when he was talking to Will like this. The way Will’s hands cradled him made him feel safe, made him want to bury his face into Will’s chest and let Will wrap his arms around him and just never leave this hotel room ever again.

“You were this close to a jail cell once, thanks to Keene,” Will pointed out. His voice was low too, and his eyes kept searching Patrick’s face. What he was looking for, Patrick didn’t know. “Keene almost beat you, once. I don’t like the thought of him beating you again. He’s a right scary bloke. He’d turn you in for the fun of it.”

“I’m not backing out.”

“And why not? Tell me the truth.”

“There’s no truth to tell.”

“Do you not trust me? Is that it?” Will sounded both angry and heartbroken. “What have I got to do to prove to you I’m here for you? I’d swim the bloody channel for you, Patrick. You know everything about me. Why am I not allowed to know the truth from you about something that could get me in jail? Why am I not allowed? Do you really think that little of me?”

Patrick shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“Oh, now you’re using proper English.”

“I can use proper English whenever I fancy, darling,” Will sniped in his posh accent, still holding onto Patrick’s arms.

Patrick fought off Will’s hold and walked away, facing the window. The city was so peaceful at night, filled with gorgeous architecture. He could see why people chose to move here. It looked like a fairy tale come true, like you could live your life in idle wealth, a modern-day Cinderella story. Patrick had seen the other side, though. He knew how lonely most of those rich people were, how empty their lives became. They had nothing to do, no goal in mind, nothing to live for. They just… existed. Drifting. Lost.

He tried not to think about how much that applied to his life right now.

“I can’t tell you, all right? It’s not—I trust you, Will, of course I do, but I can’t tell you this. I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know how,” Patrick admitted, the words shooting out of him before he could stop to think about what it meant.

He felt Will go still, and he turned back to look at him. Will looked… sad, but not like Will himself was sad. More like he was sad for someone else. For Patrick.

“Darling,” he whispered, and that word, and the others—love, pengting—had always grated at Patrick because they were flirtatious, intimate, hinted at something he couldn’t let them have, but now as Will said it in that hushed, heavy way, it made it sound like so much more. It sounded like everything. “Come here.”

Patrick, not even knowing for certain how or why, obeyed. He walked back over to Will, who guided him to sit down on the edge of the bed. Will sat beside him, his gaze tracing the lines of Patrick’s face.

“Just start talking,” Will said, after the silence had stretched out long enough. “Just start, and you’ll see, the words’ll come.”

Patrick had no idea where to even begin, but maybe that was the problem. Maybe he was too worried about how and where to start. If he just started, like Will said, maybe it would all come out right.

“I’m not the first Jackal, I’m the second,” he admitted. “The first Jackal was a woman. My aunt. Laura. She raised me after my parents died, taught me everything I know. I traveled the world with her. You name it, we visited it. I’ve seen the World’s Largest Ball of Twine and Machu Picchu.”

Will chuckled. “I’m just imagining tiny you getting to see those things, and it’s right adorable.”

Patrick rolled his eyes. “Trust me, I was a dorky kid, not adorable at all.”

“Sure. An’ you ain’t adorable now, either, right.”

Patrick ignored him, which only made Will grin wider. “She was the only family that I had. She’s how I got all of my connections. She taught me how to paint, how to forge… you name it, I learned it from her. And she was so good at what she did. You think I’m good but Laura, she was, just—it was amazing. She was so goddamn talented. Everyone wanted to work with her or for her or hire her. It was just amazing. And she was the life of every party. She could charm anyone.

“Then, when I was seventeen, she met this guy. I don’t know how they met, exactly. We didn’t really talk about the whole sex part of our lives. I mean, she gave me the talk and everything, and she knew I was gay, but it’s not like she told me all about her dates or whatever. She’d go out to parties a lot, these really fancy parties. She knew all kinds of rich people, criminals but also royalty and business people and celebrities and fashion designers, I mean, Laura knew everyone, and everyone knew her. She was the kind of person that you just wanted to be best friends with. I don’t know how she ended up with an asshole nephew like me who can’t handle a party unless he’s pretending to be someone else, but, there you go. I think that’s part of why she was so good at conning people. I’m good because I’m not really comfortable in my own skin. I feel like I always mess up and say the wrong thing. When I’m pretending to be someone else, that’s when I feel comfortable, because nobody can see who I really am and so nobody can judge me. But Laura was always herself. She knew who she was and she liked who she was, and I think that gave her cons the extra… oomph, I guess, that mine don’t have. Not that I’m bad at it or anything, but I’m much better at straight-up theft. Jewels and art and stuff.

“So she met this guy, somehow, I think at a party, and they hit it off. She starts seeing him all the time. We stayed in Paris for weeks because this guy was there. I didn’t know much about him and I didn’t care as long as he was good to my aunt. He bought her all kinds of gifts. I was always teasing her about it. She’d had all kinds of guys hanging on her every word and they’d always tried to buy her gifs and she’d get angry about it. She’d say that she wasn’t some prize to be bought and if they really cared about her they’d find a way to show it that didn’t involve them throwing money at her. But she let this guy buy things for her all the time. She told me it was because when you were in love, you made exceptions for all kinds of things you’d thought were hard and fast rules before.

“I don’t think I made it any easier because of the guy I was seeing at the time.”

Will snorted, smiling, and Patrick found himself smiling too. “She used to give me such a hard time about it, because here I was teasing her when I had my own French romance going on. There was one time, we both came back to the apartment we shared at the same time, the two of us doing the walk of shame. She burst out laughing. It was hilarious. Everything was hilarious with her. She’d take an uncomfortable situation and make it funny.

“So after about nine months of her seeing this guy and meeting up with him in various places, the guy asks if she can do a job for him.”

“Wait, he knew who she was?” Will looked shocked. “Who was this guy? How did she know that she could trust him?”

“That’s what I said.” Patrick looked down at his hands, remembering the fights he and Aunt Laura had about that. Keene hadn’t known who she was until she had told him. If only she’d kept her identity a secret, this would all have been avoided. But she’d trusted Keene, because she had loved him.

“She told him who she was, because she was in love with him, and she was convinced that he loved her. I tried telling her that I didn’t like the guy, but I was a little… blinded.” Patrick swallowed hard, remembering some of the things he had said during his fights with Aunt Laura. “I’d never had to share Aunt Laura with anyone before. I mean, she had a lot of friends, and there were other criminals that we worked with, and clients and such, but she’d never really had someone this permanent in her life. It felt like I was getting replaced, and it terrified me. I think maybe if I’d had friends or something it would have been easier, but I was a real loner. Even my romantic relationships didn’t last long, so here I was, lonely, and feeling abandoned, and I kind of let that get to me.”

Will put his hand on Patrick’s knee, a warm, comforting weight. He didn’t say anything, though, just letting Patrick keep talking.

“So anyway, this guy hires her to do a job. I told her not to do it, that we shouldn’t be mixing personal and business, but she insisted. She wanted to do it for him. He spun her this tale about how the guy we were stealing from was a total asshole, blah, blah, blah. She ate it all up. I think—she was such a free spirit, I think she liked that this guy was so methodical and serious. And he wasn’t really scrupulous, you know. That appealed to her too. This billionaire bad boy.

“We prepare to do the job, and she goes in as the guy’s secretary.”

He heard Will’s sharp intake of breath and knew that he had figured it out. “You didn’t get screwed over on that job. Your aunt did.”

Patrick nodded. “Yeah. It was her.”

He explained how it had all gone down and how Laura had managed to escape jail by doing the favor of the art theft.

“It was the worst feeling in the world. My aunt was arrested and I couldn’t do anything. She’d kept me out of it for the most part, I was just playing the mail room boy, and when the police came for her I just… What could I do? I didn’t know what to do and she insisted that I not do anything. I was helpless and I hated it. The one person in the world that I loved and I was unable to help her.

“Then we got out of it, and she had to make good on her favor. We go in to steal the painting and swap it out with a forgery.” Patrick could feel his throat closing up and his eyes getting hot. He didn’t want to cry. He didn’t. But he didn’t know if he could stop the tears, either.

“She was sick, so sick, but she hadn’t told me. She didn’t want me to worry and argue with her about seeking treatment. And the thing is, I could tell that something was wrong. I could tell that things were off, that she wasn’t doing as well as she should be. She was napping all the time, and her eating habits had changed. She started talking more and more about me going independent, taking on some jobs by myself, branching out. She talked about the future more, about what I should do, how to continue the Jackal legacy. She loved that stupid name, by the way. I hated it, I thought it was so cliché. I still do. But she thought it was so cool, like a spy movie or something.

“And like I said, I knew that something was wrong. But I didn’t know what, and I thought it was just heartbreak. I had never been in love, but I could pretend what I would feel like if Aunt Laura betrayed me, and I knew what it had felt like when my parents had died, and I thought, it’s probably something like that. I bet heartbreak feels like that. So that’s what I thought it was, and I thought that with some time and distance she’d start to get better.

“But then we did the job and she… she collapsed. Right there. I told her not to carry the painting, that it was too heavy, but she was so stubborn. Will, you have no idea how stubborn she was.”

“I have a bit of an idea,” Will said fondly, his eyes going soft as he smiled. “She managed to pass that trait down to you quite well.”

“Yeah, well, if you think I’m bad…” Patrick shook his head, laughing. “So she picks up the painting to carry it, and here’s the worst part—when she collapsed and dropped the painting, my first thought was that she’d slipped or something, and I was terrified that the painting was ruined. My only family just collapsed and I’m worried about a piece of artwork.”

He still hated himself for that. When it had happened his heart had leapt into his throat, but he hadn’t been watching Aunt Laura—he’d been watching the painting.

“The painting was fine, but she… her breathing it was… and her face, just so pale, like all the blood was gone out of it, and I realized…” Patrick hastily wiped at his eyes, stopping the tears before they could spill. “I realized that something was horribly wrong with her. I got—I don’t know how I got the job done, but I did. I swapped the paintings without setting off the alarm, I carried her out to the car, I carried the real painting out to the car, boxed it, delivered it, and then I drove her to the hospital.”

“Why didn’t you drive her to the hospital first?”

Patrick snorted. “Are you kidding me? She’d have killed me if I jeopardized the job in any way. Once I took her to the hospital I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave, there’d be forms and shit to fill out and I wouldn’t want to leave her, and the client couldn’t come and pick up the painting there. So I just dropped it off at the storage unit first.”

“What did she have?”

“A rare stomach cancer. I forget what it’s called, it starts with a ‘p.’ Same kind that got Audrey Hepburn, actually. Aunt Laura would get a kick out of that. She loved Audrey Hepburn. Her favorite movie was How to Steal a Million. It had, uh… it had grown pretty slowly, was the thing. We weren’t the best about visiting doctors and keeping up on our check-ups, seeing as we were international criminals and all that. It turned into—it was coating her organs, I guess, is the way to put it.”

“That sounds horrifying.”

“It was.” Patrick shook his head, trying to stop himself from turning into a complete idiot and crying. He hadn’t cried in front of anyone since… well, since the doctor had broken the news to him about Laura’s condition in the hospital. “We got her to surgery but after that there was chemotherapy, and she was just too weak for it. If we’d gotten her taken care of sooner then maybe, but it would have taken months of treatment and Aunt Laura would have hated that.”

“I can well imagine.”

“So there was nothing to do. She was so weak. You can’t—seeing her, she was, just a shell of herself, so tiny and frail and not at all like my aunt. Not like her at all.”

Will wrapped an arm around Patrick’s shoulders and pulled him in, not making a sound or offering up any words, just quietly holding him. Patrick took deep breaths, trying to keep himself together.

“She hated to go,” he admitted. He could hear his voice breaking, and he hated that. “She hated to leave. She was so scared for me. She kept coming up with things to remind me of, things I had to be careful about, don’t trust this person, trust that person, don’t do this, do that. She hated to leave me alone.”

“You were only eighteen, of course she hated it. You were a kid.”

“I didn’t feel like one,” Patrick admitted. “I felt old. So, so old. Like I was too old. And young. At the same time. It just wasn’t fair, that’s all that I knew. It just wasn’t fair.”

“Keene didn’t kill her, did he?” Will asked.

“No. I mean, I feel like he did. She almost got put in jail and she had to take the job with the painting to pay off her debt to the guy who got her out. It kind of feels like he caused that, even though I know she was already sick and would have died anyway. But the stress of that last job, it didn’t help. She was working so hard, trying to do this for Keene, and then she was desperately trying to pay off her favor, and I think it made it all worse for her. I think she would have lasted longer if she hadn’t been running around for him all those months, playing secretary and feeding him information.”

“That’s why you have to do this,” Will said, voice slow and reverent as if he was thinking out loud. “He betrayed the one person you had. He helped her die faster.”

Patrick nodded, and gave into the impulse to lay his head on Will’s shoulder. “I know, it’s kind of stupid. But she would have found a way to get back at him if she’d had a chance. And you just—you can’t do that to someone. You can’t betray someone that loves you like that. I’d never seen her feel about anyone the way that she seemed to feel about him and he used it against her. The moment she told him who she was, I think he was planning this, and I don’t understand that. I don’t understand how anyone could be so selfish towards someone else, use them and leave them like that.”

“No, I agree, he deserves whatever he gets,” Will said. “But would your aunt want you to risk yourself like this? I think she’d say to give me the boot, yeah?”

“No, she wouldn’t.” Patrick huffed. “She’d love you, for one thing. She’d think you were perfect for me.”

“Oh, would she?” Patrick couldn’t see Will’s face because his head was on his shoulder, but he could hear the smile in Will’s voice. “Good to know, love.”

“Don’t get too cocky, she would’ve taken you down a peg, too. Down several pegs, actually. But she wouldn’t have backed down from this, I don’t think. She liked the risks. I was always the cautious one. She was the one who was rappelling off the side of a goddamn building to break into somebody’s apartment. I was the one on the ground having a heart attack for her.”

Will snorted, amused.

“She would have wanted us to keep going with this, I think.”

“How do you know that she really would want that, and that it ain’t just your revenge talking. I know how you feel, pengting. If I could find the guy what hit my mum, hit n’ run, y’know, I’d shank him. No questions asked. But my mum would’ve hated that. She never wanted me in jail, y’see, and that would put me straight in the slammer. You gotta think about what the people you love would want you to do in their name. An’ at the end of the day, what they want is for you to be safe and okay and happy. She wouldn’t want you exposing yourself like this to get one up for her.”

“Maybe so, but I—I can’t help but feel like I failed her, all those years ago. Maybe if I’d been calmer, maybe if I’d dug up better information on Keene and his habits, maybe if I’d stepped in at some point, something, I would have been able to prevent it all from happening. I feel like I owe it to her to take him down now.”

“Strip him of a few billion, then?”

“Humiliate him, beat him at his own game, and yeah, steal a few billion. Give it to charity. I’m thinking cancer research. You can help me pick the charities out.”

Will gave him a squeeze. “See? Hedgehog. All soft underneath, you are.”

Patrick snorted. “I’m not, not really…despite what you seem to think.”

“I think that a lot of shit makes sense now. I’d be scared if it were me, too. Having someone in your life again after you lost someone is hard, innit? But you can’t be all by yourself.”

“It’s worked out pretty well for me these past ten years.”

“Ten years. And you ain’t never had no boyfriend or nothing?”

Patrick shook his head.

“No wonder you’re all pent up. You ain’t had no one to share yourself with. An’ I don’t mean sex, pengting, so you can stop stiffening up like that. Am I the first person you’ve spent all this time with since your aunt kicked it?”

Patrick nodded.

“Well, that’s it, then.”

“No, that’s not it.” Patrick sat up so that he could look at Will. “If anything, my aunt’s mistake taught me not to let someone in like that. We can’t afford to, not in our profession.”

“I don’t think you’re likely to drop dead of cancer, blud.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Are you comparing me to Keene, then?” Will’s face looked thunderous. “Are you saying I’ll betray you? ‘Cause that’s long, man. You’re safe, I’m safe. We’re safe.”

“I’m not saying that you would.”

“Sure sounds like it. You won’t make us into a proper ‘us’ ‘cause of what happened to your aunt. But ain’t I proven to you that I won’t turn on you?”

“I can’t take that risk. I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because nothing is worth what happened when she had her heart broken. She was devastated, Will. Completely devastated. I’m not saying she died of a broken heart but I guarantee you it helped her die faster. She was so upset. She’d never been so in love with someone before, she’d never been so serious with someone before, and she couldn’t handle it—and I know I can’t handle it.”

“I won’t break your heart!”

“You don’t know that!” Patrick all but shouted, and he realized that at some point they had both gotten to their feet and were inches apart, tension in the lines of their bodies, and not the good kind. “I couldn’t go through what she went through. Even just watching her. I couldn’t do that.”

“You won’t have to. Not with me. Swear down.”

“You say that now, but you don’t know the future.”

“I know that I want you in it. Has it occurred to you that you’re all I’ve got, too? I ain’t got no mates. No family. And before you go there—this… thing, this isn’t just ‘cause you’re the only one around. I think I’d feel this way—I know I’d feel this way, no matter what. Even if I ran into you in one of them clubs back home, or some other place, I know I’d still want to be with you. Do you get that? We can be there for each other.”

“No, we can’t. After this job, we have to split up. It’ll keep the police off of our heels. You have to get out of Europe, at the very least. Go to Mombasa or something.”

“You ain’t shipping me off to Africa.”

“I’ll ship you wherever the hell will keep you safest until your trail cools down and Keene stops trying to come after both of us, which he will if he ever figures out that we conned him.”

“This ain’t—”

“Isn’t. I know you know proper grammar.”

Will sighed in exasperation. “Isn’t. This isn’t worth the risk to you. We need to just cut and run, and I think your aunt would agree with me.”

“No. I have to do this, so that I can stop feeling guilty.”

“That’s a bit selfish of you, doing what you want instead of doing what you know she would want.”

“I’m a selfish person.”

“A selfish person who takes what he wants, all right, then why don’t you take what you want? I’m right here. I know you want me, you haven’t once said that you didn’t. You keep coming up with excuses why not but they’re flimsy as shit and I don’t care to hear them anymore. I want to be with you, and I want to keep running cons with you, and I want to hold you in bed at night, and I want to kiss you whenever the fuck I feel like it, and I want to keep buying you sandwiches and watch you paint. And you want that too.”

“Maybe I do,” Patrick admitted, “but it’s not always good to get what you want.”

Will snorted. “Fat load of bollocks, that is.”

“We’re doing this job and we’re finishing it and we’re taking that bastard for all he’s worth so that he finally knows what it’s like to get screwed over and to lose something. I’ll figure out what to do about you giving him the account information from the robbery. We’ll find a way to take care of this. And then we’ll split, and I’ll find you somewhere safe to go, and you can lie low and take some local jobs and it’ll be fine.”

“So glad you’re working out my life for me. Maybe you could tell me what to eat for breakfast and where to send my dry cleaning.”

“I’m trying to do what’s best for us.”

“And have you thought that maybe what’s best for us isn’t what you think it is? That maybe being together is going to make us happier than being apart? You’re just denying yourself and that never goes well.”

“I said no, Will. Respect that.”

“I would, if I thought you had good reasons for it.” Will snapped. “You know what? Fine. I’m not going to waste my time when you clearly don’t think I’m worth the risk. I think you’re worth the risk. I think you’re worth a hell of a lot more than you think you’re worth. But I know what I’m worth too, and if I’m not good enough for you to take a chance on, then fine.”

He turned and stomped towards the door, but paused with his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll do my part. We’ll destroy him, like we planned. For your aunt. But don’t bother talking to me otherwise.”

“I thought that was my line.”

The look Will gave him was furious, and for the first time, Patrick could easily imagine Will holding his own in a rough fight back in the neighborhood where he grew up. Will could probably smash a man’s head in, if he wanted to. “When this is over, I’ll go as far away from you as you want. Maybe that’ll finally make you happy.”

He didn’t slam the door behind him, because it was two in the morning, but it was a close thing. When the door closed it was like Patrick’s puppet strings had been cut and he collapsed onto the bed, angry and upset and hurt and terrified and, once again, alone.