He left after a year here. I stayed.
“He came by a few months ago.” She holds me at arm’s length but doesn’t let go of my shoulders. “Or maybe it was longer. But recently. He’s doing good. Did you stay in touch with him?”
“No. But I should have.” I’m not ashamed to admit that to Mellie since she’ll understand. But I wish the answer was different.
“I’ll give you his email address,” she says. “Do you still make things?”
I don’t understand. “Make things?”
“Yeah, you were always building stuff. Out of whatever you could get your hands on. Soda cans, silverware, even plastic straws. I wish I’d kept some of the things you made.”
I wish she had too. I wish I had. I vaguely remember that now, shaping bits of scrap to fit my imagination. I remember working in shop class more though. Maybe because I could do bigger and better things there.
“No.” One corner of my mouth curves up. “I don’t have the time. But I wish I did.”
“Well, you’re busy. Did you ever get married? Have any kids?”
“No.” Anjelica’s face appears in my mind. I think… I think I’d be happy with whatever she wanted—marriage, kids, all of it—as long as she wanted to spend her life with me. “Not yet.”
Another thing to ask her about once I see her again, tell her everything, ask her for another chance. And confess everything to the rest of the Bastards. I know she needs me to do that. I need to do that for myself too.
“No wife, no kids,” I say. “How are your boys?”
A wide smile creases her face. “They have boys of their own now. And a girl. Yep, I’m a grandma. Best job I ever had.”
I’m genuinely happy for her. That’s what this floating warmth in my chest is. “That’s great. Tell them I said hi.”
They don’t know me from Adam, but this is how you make conversation.
“I will.” She sighs, studying my face. “I’m real glad you came today. I’m retiring in a month—if you’d waited much longer, I wouldn’t have gotten to see you.”
I pull her in for one last embrace. “Then thank God I came today.”
She gives me her email and Davey’s, I give her mine, and after one last hug, Mellie has to get back to work. And I have to let my reluctant tour guide get back to work too.
As she escorts me to the front door, the woman asks, “Is it much different from when you were here?”
“Some things are very much the same.” I realize I don’t even know this woman’s name and she’s just witnessed one of the more intimate moments of my life. But I’m finding I’m okay with that.
Another thing to tell Anjelica.
“Thank you,” I say as she opens the front door for me. “This meant a lot to me.”
She smiles proudly. “We try our best to be a home for our boys. I know it’s hard and we can never take the place of a family, but it means a lot to us when you guys come back and let us know you’re doing okay.”
I nod. “I am.”
I’m okay, but I could be better. And now it’s time to go to the person who will make it all perfect.
Chapter 25
It’s time for the usual Monday-morning partners’ meeting, except it doesn’t feel so usual.
Yancy can’t get the teleconference equipment to work, so Elliot and Paul can’t call in. Logan is home because the baby is sick, which leaves just three of us—Mark, Finn, and myself.
Dev still hasn’t reappeared. If he wanted to break my heart, it’s working. I’m sick with worry. It’s been five days. Five whole days. I can’t take much more of this.
The other two look just as bad. Mark’s got dark circles under his eyes, and Finn can’t stop playing with his pen. No one says anything.
Finally I sigh. “Nobody’s heard anything? At all?” My voice cracks on the last word.
“If we had, you’d be the first to know,” Mark says gently. “He’s gone off-grid before.”
It’s cold comfort and Mark knows it.
“At least Fuchs is still where we left him.” Finn’s staring at the table, his pen rolling through his fingers.
“I don’t care about Fuchs,” I say. “Dev’s never disappeared like this.”
Mark steeples his fingers. “Do you think… I know you don’t want to betray his trust, but if you could tell us what was going on, it might help.”
It might. I’ve been wrestling with whether to tell them everything all week. If we had more clues, like we did with Fuchs, we might find him.
What did I tell Dev? Go back to the beginning. But he’ll never go back to his own beginnings. The promise of his parents was a lie, and that was the only thing from his past he cares about. The rest is nothing to him—he’ll never go back to it.
So where is he?
Mark’s watching me, waiting for an answer. So’s Finn.
I’m torn. Torn between my loyalty to Dev and my worry for him. And my loyalty to the Bastards. Any way I choose, someone’s going to be upset.
Dev’s not here. Maybe it’s time to decide for him.
I open my mouth. I’m going to tell them everything. I think.
Before I can, Yancy comes back. “I got the video link working.”
Finn frowns. “I thought we were just going to leave it.”
“Oh no.” Yancy gestures toward the door. “He— That is—”
“I told her to get it working,” a deep voice says from the doorway.
I look up. Dev’s there and my heart… Oh, my heart. If I thought it hurt before, it’s nothing compared to actually seeing him. He came back.
He looks sad, solemn. But alive and intact. I want to kiss him for coming back and yell at him for disappearing.
I want so many things with and from him.
Mark is rising out of his chair. “Where the fuck have you been? We’ve all been freaking out over you. And Anjie…” He gestures to me, his mouth a grim line.
“You can’t keep doing this, man.” Finn shakes his head. “It’s fucked up. And we’re all sick of it.”
“So am I.”
That brings us all up short.
“You are?” Mark asks.
Dev nods. “It’s time to do this. Elliot and Paul should be calling in any moment, and Logan ought to be— Here he is.”
Logan comes in behind Dev, looking exhausted. “This better be good. I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours.”
Dev says nothing, merely looks at me. When our gazes connect, it’s like a current snaps between us. No matter what happens, we’ll always react like this to each other. We always have.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call.” His voice is pitched only to me. “I would have, but I wanted to go back to the beginning. On my own, without you having to push me. And when I came back, I realized I had to do this for you before I could do anything else.”
“What exactly are you doing?” I ask quietly.
“What you always wanted me to. What I should have from the very beginning.”
He takes his seat then, just as Elliot and Paul flash up on the screen.
“Everything okay?” Paul asks. “I thought the video feed wasn’t working.”
“I fixed it,” Dev says.
They both blink in shock when they hear his voice.
“You came back,” Elliot says.
“Of course.” He steeples his fingers. The entire room is focused on him. Even Yancy. “I have to tell you all something. About why I acquired Corvus. It wasn’t… it wasn’t to unseat Fuchs or to dismantle the company. I didn’t care about that.”
Their expressions have gone stony, and I don’t blame them. Fuchs has personally hurt all of them, gone after what they most care about—Dev is making it sound like he doesn’t care about what happened to them.
“You’re speaking in the past tense,” Elliot points out.
“We’ll get to that. For now, just know that the Corvus archives are open to all of you. Completely. Take whatever you need, whatever might help. We can discus
s later how we’ll all work together to dismantle the company.”
Some of the tension leaves the room. But not all.
“So why?” Finn crosses his arms. “Why buy Corvus? You wanted into the security business?”
Dev shakes his head. “No, I don’t care about Corvus’s mission either. I never told you this, but back when we were first starting Bastard Capital, Arne came to me with a job offer. He knew I wrote the core of the algorithm, and he wanted my skills. He… offered something I wanted very badly if I’d join him.”
Dev’s gaze is remote, like he’s lost in memory. And a touch sad. His expression is definitely not blank—he’s invested in what he’s saying. He’s here, emotionally present.
“What was it?” Mark asks. “That Fuchs offered you?”
I hold my breath, because until he says it, I can’t quite believe he’s going to do it. After all this time, after wishing so badly he would… he still might not do it. The words haven’t left his mouth yet.
“The identity of my parents.”
The way he says it is stark, bare, but it lands like a grenade. My heart starts tripping over itself.
“Your… your parents?” Logan’s mouth falls open. “You never knew them?”
He’s too far away, but I so wish I could reach for Dev’s hand, give him some comfort, some reassurance. This can’t be easy for him no matter how tightly he’s holding himself together.
“No.” There’s a hairline crack in that. “I was left at a fire station when I was only a few days old. No sign at all of who I was or who my parents were. Nothing was ever found. My name came from the firemen who found me.”
“Fuck.” Mark looks like he’s been punched in the gut. “Fuck, man. I’m so sorry.”
I stiffen, because that’s pity and exactly what Dev never wanted. But he merely shrugs.
“Thanks. I had a few foster families when I was very young, but I spent most of my childhood in the Sacramento Children’s Home.”
His voice seems to be getting stronger. Certainly he’s speaking with less hesitation, like the story is coming easier to him.
Mark rubs his chin. “That’s… that’s rough, man.”
There’s a sense of weight in the air, all of us carrying our horror and shock at Dev’s story. Sharing the load of it. Taking it from Dev’s shoulders.
“It was,” Dev says. “But I made it to college, and eventually I met you guys. It was like… like I’d always imagined a family might be like. But I’d learned not to talk about my past—people get weird when they find out you spent time in a group home—and I never thought I could bring it up. It was a family, but I didn’t know how to be in a family.”
Mark sucks in a sharp breath, and Finn can’t stop clearing his throat. They all look like they’re fighting back tears.
“We, uh, we feel the same,” Logan says. “About the stuff you said.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, grow up, all of you. You love each other. You’re grown men—you can say it!”
They all look at me in shock.
“Isn’t that what I said?” Logan seems genuinely baffled.
Dev’s wearing a small smile. “No, I get it. And I, uh, feel the same about everything I said. I should have told you guys everything from the beginning instead of being a closemouthed asshole.”
“Yeah,” Finn says. “You should have been an openmouthed asshole.”
I can feel them start to knit back together in that moment. The emotions got out, they all got close to crying… and now the insults are back. If the insults are back, everything will be fine.
I sit back in my chair and release a shaky breath. It’s happening, everything I ever wanted for Dev. He finally did it.
“So that’s why you were so determined to get into the Corvus archives,” Mark says. “You thought you’d find what Fuchs had on your parents.”
Dev nods. “I wasn’t going to give him what he wanted, but I had to get their names.”
“And that’s why you were looking for Fuchs,” Elliot says. “You thought he’d tell you where to find it in the archives.”
“We found him, yes.” Dev’s gaze focuses on the wall. “But he’d lied. He never had the identity of my parents. He only said it because he knew it was what I most wanted in the world.”
There’s a long beat of silence.
Finn is the first to break it. “They… they might still be out there. I can find mostly everything.”
Dev shakes his head. “No, they’re not. I’ve spent the past few days coming to terms with that. And revisiting my past. I’m…” His eyes lock with mine. “I’m fine with it. I never had their names, and I don’t need them to be happy.”
Meaning… he needs me to be happy? My cheeks are cold and hot all at once. He can’t do this now… can he?
He must see all the questions in my eyes because he silently mouths Later to me. I catch the word, hold it close to my heart, right over the phoenix there.
We’ve waited so long for this—later is a promise I can believe in.
Chapter 26
Anjelica slipped out an hour ago, leaving the rest of us on our own. I guess she figured we needed some Bastard-only time, although she’s as much a part of us as everyone in this room.
Mark has broken out some whiskey, and Elliot and Paul are still on the video chat. It’s almost like the old days when the six of us were in that stuffy, shitty garage. Which we’re reminiscing about.
“Do you remember that Thanksgiving we had in that place?” Mark asks.
Logan immediately starts laughing. “And we thought we’d cook for ourselves? Yeah, I remember.”
I remember it too. It was the first Thanksgiving I spent with something like a family. Which maybe isn’t fair—at the children’s home we always got a proper Thanksgiving feast, thanks to Mellie—but it was definitely the first that felt like I thought a Thanksgiving did to everyone else.
“How did we manage to cook only half the turkey?” Finn muses.
I laugh because it was the weirdest thing—half the turkey was just fine, and the other half was pink as hell. And it was straight down the turkey’s midline, like that side of the oven was ice cold.
“The mashed potatoes were really good though,” Paul says. “I can’t remember who made those.”
I lift my hand. “I did. I learned from the lady who ran the kitchen at the home.”
There’s the barest hiccup, like they’re all recalling Hey, that’s right, we just learned Dev grew up in a group home, but then it’s over.
“And Finn bought a pie for each of us,” Mark says.
“Pie’s the best part,” Finn says. “And nobody could agree on what they wanted. So I got one of each.”
That’s right—I had an entire peach pie all to myself. It seemed pretty decadent, and I ate every bite that day, just because I could. The turkey might have been ruined, but that pie was delicious.
“We should do that again,” Logan says. “Have Thanksgiving all together.”
“Can we cook the turkey this time though?” I ask.
Finn snickers. “If you insist. Might ruin the magic though.”
“We already know Finn’s bringing the pies,” Paul says.
We laugh together, bound by our shared memories. Anjelica was right—I never should have let the distance grow between them and me. I should have told them from the very beginning. They wouldn’t have cared. They don’t care.
But I guess I needed time to learn that. Learn to trust, really trust someone. And I suppose I needed to lose the illusion of my parents before I could.
Suddenly I miss her. Hanging out is great and I’ve missed it… but I miss her too.
As if the guys can sense that, the mood changes.
“So what are we going to do about Fuchs?” Mark asks.
“I joke a lot about shallow graves and the desert,” Finn says, “but I’m not joking now.”
“Except we’d be the first suspects if they ever found him.” Typical Elliot, pointing out th
e legal pitfalls.
“I’m willing to take the chance,” Logan says.
“I could fight an extradition,” Paul says.
That’s when I get the idea. “I know what to do.” I turn to Elliot. “Have Emily turn him in. It’ll help with her case, won’t it?”
He blinks as he ponders that. “It should. They want him more than they do her. He won’t go to jail, but I know there are some very irritated people at the NSA and the CIA who want to talk to him about his data leaks. And Congress wants to haul him in for some testimony.” He nods. “It can only help.”
“Then do it,” I say. “And whatever Emily needs from the archives, it’s hers. She knows better than I do what’s in there.”
Elliot actually smiles. “Thanks. That means a lot.”
I’m happy I can help. I really am. “Sure thing.”
“I can ask Emily about what there might be about your parents,” Elliot offers. “If it’s all right with you.”
I shake my head. “Feel free, but there’s nothing there.” The more I say it, the more serene I feel about the whole thing. As if I’m finally done mourning the parents I never knew. “She’s got bigger things to worry about.”
Elliot looks behind him. “Speaking of that, I should head out soon.”
“Me too,” Mark says.
That’s right—they all have people to go home to. And so do I now.
Logan picks up his phone, smiling when he sees what’s there. “Aurelie’s finally sleeping.”
“Aren’t you supposed to sleep when they do?” Mark asks.
“That’s what they say. It’s harder than it sounds though.”
Mark makes a noise in his throat. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough. January’s pregnant.”
I’m insanely happy for him and jealous all at once. I’ve never really thought about being a dad. It seemed as unlikely as going to the moon. But thinking about a future with Anjelica has me recalculating distances that once seemed impossible.
I have to get to her. I have to talk to her.
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