by Huss, JA
Everything.
CHAPTER ELEVEN - DANNY
I met Alec at a boxing gym that ran an after-school program for hood kids like me. I had Christine in school by then. I took care of a little problem the liquor store owner down on Seventh had with thieving kids and instead of paying me in money I got him to take Christine over to the junior high school and register her as an incoming homeschool kid.
You wouldn’t think something like that would work but then again, if you’ve been in the system as long as I have, you would. And it did.
We were living in a pay-by-the-week motel down on Juniper Avenue and by this time it was starting to feel like home. Which sucked and felt pretty good all at once. At least it was ours. We had heat, hot water, TV with a few cable channels, and free wi-fi that mostly worked.
I managed to graduate a semester early the previous December. That was the deal I made with Christine. Or, rather, the deal she made with me. She’d go back to school if I finished.
So fuck it. I signed up for one of those remedial night schools for asshole thugs, did the work in between jobs, and there you go. My part of the deal was done. I’m sure she came up with that idea because she thought I’d never do it, but she was wrong. And even though I had to drag her out of bed every goddamned morning and threaten her with anything from slave labor to jumping on a bus heading down south to live on the beach and leaving her behind, she did get up every day and go.
So that’s where she was when I wandered into the boxing gym that fall morning.
I was a sort of regular. I knew pretty much everyone, so the guy in the ring trading jabs with a big guy called Curtis caught my eye immediately.
Even then—all sweaty, eye swelling shut from the blows he took from Curtis’ meaty fists, breathing hard like he was about to collapse—I knew he didn’t belong here.
He was wearing blue slacks for one thing. Shirtless though.
I knew he and I were about the same age but his body, like mine, had filled out early. He wasn’t thick the way Curtis was. Or the way I was. He was lean, but the muscles were there. He was cut like a goddamned sculpture. And his skin was golden. Like he grew up on a beach and even though he and I were in the same drab, gray city now, that wasn’t where he belonged.
I guess the word to describe him was exotic. At least that’s the one that ran through my head at the time. And pretty. Not like a girl, either. There’s nothing feminine about Alec. He was pretty like Christine’s blue beetle. The beautiful hard exterior was just the beginning of what makes up Alec van den Berg. And the minute that thought popped into my head I knew she’d want to poke him. See what’s so special inside him that he gets to be blue.
I wanted to know too.
I wandered over to the ring to get a better view of the fight and spied a pile of clothes on the ground next to a pair of expensive leather shoes. There was a white dress shirt, a tartan maroon tie, and a blue jacket. Not a hoodie like I was wearing, but a real fucking jacket. The kind that goes with a suit. Which explained the blue slacks.
The clothes were on the floor like they were worthless, but the emblem on the pocket of the blazer said St. Francis of Assisi Upper School on it.
What the fuck was this kid doing in our gym?
That’s the next thing that went through my head.
But just as quick, I forgot about it. Because there was this loud, sickening crack and I thought, Well, that’s the end of this dumbass.
But when I looked up to see what I missed, it was Curtis on the floor of the ring. Blood pouring out of his mouth, broken tooth stuck to his lip.
I squinted my eyes and looked at this new kid again.
He’s blue on the inside too, that’s what I thought next.
He was jumping then. Kinda circling Curtis, yelling at him to get the fuck up and finish what he started. His knuckles weren’t even taped, so they were tore up from the blows he’d delivered. Bloody and sick, missing bits of skin.
Bare-knuckle boxing was forbidden in the gym. The rules on the sign hanging on the wall even said so. But that never stopped us.
Seconds later there were like a dozen people in the ring. Some kneeling on the ground trying to rouse Curtis, some blocking the new kid from approaching, two firmly gripping his shoulders, holding him back.
That’s when I looked into his eyes and made a decision.
I liked this asshole. Because those eyes weren’t the eyes of a kid who went to St. Francis of Assisi Upper School.
They were my eyes. They were blue, even if they weren’t.
He was pretty and I wanted him.
Fast forward a couple of years and my life had taken a turn. Because that was the night we were in the fuckin’ alley waiting on Christine to come out with the diamond and heard the gunshot inside the house.
That was the first time she ever killed anyone.
But it wasn’t the last.
Over the next few years we did dozens of heists. All over the fuckin’ world. Private planes became familiar modes of transportation. We ate caviar on crackers that taste like air, drank bottles of champagne that cost more than six months’ worth of weekly motel rent, wore bespoke clothes, and shot more guns in more countries than we ever knew existed.
All in the name of money.
Ah, but that’s not exactly true. Yeah, the money was the end game. But the excitement, the adventure, the fuckin’ adrenaline. The feeling we’d get afterward. The way we’d laugh, all scrunched up together on some luxurious couch. The want we felt for each other. The knowing that this was the true meaning of pretty.
That’s why we did it.
And even though the three of us spent years living the dream, the way it ended… well, that was the shit nightmares were made of.
CHAPTER TWLEVE - ALEC
BEFORE
Prague’s cold, damp, winter air is filling my lungs as I run, and I’m drinking it in. I have Christine by the hand, pulling her along, glancing to the side to make sure she’s keeping up. She is. She’s the only one I’ve met in my life who can.
Danny’s almost a full block behind. It’s not that he’s not fast. He most assuredly is. He’s a strong runner, in fact. He moves quickly and efficiently. But Danny’s built more for distance than speed.
Christine and I go fast and hard. Danny moves slower. But I suppose what that will ultimately mean is that he’ll still be running and moving forward long after I’ve broken the barriers of sound and light and burst into flame.
It’s no one’s fault, I reckon. People just are the way they are. Constructed to serve whatever purpose it is they were put here to serve.
I’m beginning to realize that Danny’s purpose is to be our conscience. The thing that keeps our merry band from spinning off the edge of the planet and out into space where all of us would be lost. Adrift in the soundless black of the cosmos. Where no one would ever hear us, and we couldn’t find our ways home.
Conversely, my purpose is to keep driving. Faster. More desperate. Keep soldiering forward ever further in pursuit of what’s mine.
Which is, as I once was told, everything.
When I was very, very young, I fell from a tree I was climbing on our property in—I actually don’t remember which property it was. It may have been in the States? Or we might have been back home? I don’t recall that detail anymore. All I recollect is that I scraped my knees and elbows and hands. Started crying. Because, as noted, I was very, very young. And I ran inside to see if I could find one of the house staff to patch me up.
But instead of finding house staff, I found my dad. He had just walked in the front door, so when I burst in, he turned and saw me. I was quite shaken, I remember. Not only did it hurt, but the wind had gotten knocked out of me.
Dad saw me sobbing, trying to get out the words of what had happened, and he rushed over and knelt beside me. He wiped the tears from my eyes and shushed me until I calmed.
I don’t know where Mom was.
After I quieted, I remember vividly him saying,
“Listen, hey, shhhh, listen to me, man. There’s nothing to cry about. Yeah? Nothing ever to cry about.” Then he gestured wide with his hands and said, “Nothing at all. Look… this world. The world we live in? It’s yours.”
I imagine the expression on my face was quite confused, because then he furrowed his brow, brought his eyes close to mine, and said it again, “Hear what I’m telling you, man. The world. All of it. Is yours. K? It belongs to you. There’s nothing to cry about. Ever. There’s no harm that can come to you. Nothing that can ever happen to you that you can’t handle. Nothing that you can’t control. OK? Nothing. You hear?”
My crying finally slowed to a stop and I looked up at him and nodded my tiny head.
“Do you believe me?” he asked.
I sniffed a bit, stilling myself and holding my small chin high, squaring myself off like the brave little man I was, and nodded again. I think I smiled at him a bit. I know he smiled at me. I remember that more clearly than just about any memory I’ve ever had.
And then he slapped me as hard as he could across the face.
And when my eyes got big and my breath caught in my throat, he slapped me again.
And then he stared at me. Daring me to let the tears start falling once more.
When they didn’t—when I fought back the shock and the pain and stuffed it down—his smile widened, he said, “Good man,” and then disappeared off into the recesses of whichever house it was.
The memory lands on me quite by accident just before we fling open the door of the flat we’ve been renting for this particular escapade, and Christine and I tumble inside. We’re not high, but it very much feels like we are. The rush of adrenaline coursing through both of us amplifies the need we already feel.
In the less than handful of years since I met the two of them and we started adventuring together, I’ve watched Christine grow from an irrepressibly spirited and spunky girl into an impossibly sexy and capable woman. And since I first began tasting her, I’ve needed to have her as often as possible. And so I have.
Because the world is mine.
Because she is mine.
I have her body suit ripped open and her back against the wall by the time Danny comes huffing through the door.
“What the fuck?” he gasps out.
Christine and I ignore him as we continue pawing at each other savagely.
He comes up behind me and puts his hand on my shoulder.
I don’t think he does it to be aggressive as much as to draw focus. So, while not his intention, it is his mistake.
My fist, someone else’s blood already drying on my knuckles, is made wet anew with the spray of blood from Danny’s nose as it makes contact.
I don’t know the last time I felt regret.
I don’t know if I ever have before.
Kak.
As he stumbles away shouting, “Fuck! What the fuck is happening?” I go over to him, my hands up.
“Fok, bru! Are you all right?”
When I reach him and kneel down to see how badly I bliksemed him, the memory of my dad kneeling down to me is once again called into my mind. But Danny, of course, is not crying. Unlike me, I don’t think Daniel Ryan Fortnight has ever cried once in his life.
No. He is definitely not prone to tears. But he is prone to vengeance. He rears back and slams his forearm between my legs and right into my ballas.
The searing, burning, vomit-inducing pain I feel right up into my stomach drives me into a rage and a clear, white heat takes me over as I grab him by the hair and slam his already broken face into the wood-planked floor.
Somewhere, a long, long way off, I hear the sound of Christine screaming. Not in fear. Never in fear. But in anger. I think I feel her on my back, but it’s all quite muddy. I do know that Danny has now grabbed my wrist and twisted it backward in a manner that my wrist is not intended to be bent.
The three of us are now tangled together at odd and violent angles. Struggling and pulling and pushing. Arms and legs entwined, slick blood and—even though it’s winter out—wet, sticky sweat making us slide off one another as we collide, and grunt, and fight, and strain.
And I’m sure that it means there’s probably something about me that’s not quite right—even more so than I’m already aware of—but my already hardened cock gets even harder.
But I know I will find no release tonight.
Because tonight will not end in reconciliation and understanding.
Just like the urgent need that had been building between me and Christine for years, this fracturing apart of all three of us was building right alongside it. Cloaked in the shadows, but no less needy and emergent.
Once this battle is over, tonight will be the last night all three of us are together.
How long that separation will last is hard to predict at present.
But somewhere inside I want to believe that it won’t be forever.
NOW
The recollection of the event plays in my mind over and over again.
Being obsessive is something I’m dead proud of about myself. It keeps me sharp, it keeps me focused, and it ensures that I don’t miss anything. Which, given the danger of both my responsibilities and my hobbies, is most valuable.
I’m replaying the memory for the fiftieth time when a sound causes me to shake my head a tiny bit and bring myself back to the present.
It’s the sound of Danny moaning as he stirs in bed, rolling his arm away from Christine and propping himself to a sit. His eyes flutter open and then he blinks to try to—I assume—understand what it is he sees.
Which is me, sitting in the chair across the room, watching them sleep.
“Morning, bru. Good to see you, man.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - DANNY
He’s the same and altogether different. Still golden. Still arrogant. Still somewhere he’s not supposed to be. Which, in this case, is my fuckin’ bedroom.
I know what he expects of me.
Danny is all temper.
Danny is all muscle.
Danny is the one who hits first and thinks later.
But he doesn’t know me anymore. He never knew me.
The half a second it takes for these words to form in my head as some cloudy moment of self-realization brings instant clarity. An idea of how to handle him has me raising a single finger to my lips.
“Shhhhh,” I hiss.
He tilts his head, confused. Not the reaction he was expecting.
Christine is still sleeping. Her familiar light snore feels like home to me. My eyes dart to her, then back at Alec. He raises his chin, a sort of half nod of understanding, and stands up.
When I don’t move he shrugs with his hands. What the fuck, bru? that’s what he’s asking me.
I give him the same half nod back and he understands.
The shorthand gestures we developed while we were global diamond thieves comes rushing back. And even though I’m using it to get him the fuck out of this bedroom—get him the fuck away from Christine—I think we both have the same nostalgic feeling coursing in our hot blood for days gone by. Jobs that were done and done well. A whole other life than the ones we’re living separately now.
He leaves the bedroom without comment and I’m left here, in bed with the only girl I ever wanted to be in bed with.
We could be us, back then, in this moment.
In the Cristal Suite at the Le Place d’Armes Hotel in Luxembourg City. Still drunk on adrenaline from yesterday’s job well done. Breakfast would be waiting in the dining room. A full spread of eggs, and bacon, and pastries laid out on the table. And carafes of bad European coffee.
I smile, thinking about the coffee. I was always complaining about the coffee. No matter where we were, no matter what everyone told me about the fuckin’ beans, or the machine that made it, or the barista who mixed everything together… American coffee was the one thing I always missed. And you could tell them you wanted an American coffee, but it never mattered. It was always just the same dark, bitt
er European shit with fat-free milk mixed in.
Fucking Europe.
I kinda miss the bad coffee.
No, that’s not it.
I kinda miss… us.
Get your shit together, Fortnight. You’ve got Brasil waiting on a delivery.
That’s enough to get me moving. I slowly, gently, lift myself out of the bed Christine and I are sharing. I don’t want her to see him. Ever, if I can help it. I want this conversation with Alec to happen downstairs in the garage. I want it to be over with before she wakes up. Before she realizes we’re back together again.
I don’t want the word us, as it pertains to our long-ago triangle, to ever enter her mind.
I grab yesterday’s jeans off the floor and step out of the bedroom, closing the door behind me.
Alec’s eyes are wandering over the contents of my apartment—perhaps wondering there’s anything of value to steal from me—realizing there isn’t.
But then they land on the silver box and as I step into my jeans and pull them on, I feel him hold his breath as he takes a few steps over to the couch and picks it up. Turning it around in his hand. Single fingertip tracing the etched triangle on the top. His sidelong glare over his shoulder says more than words ever could.
What the fuck are you doing with this?
I point to the door, head that direction—grabbing my leather off the back of the chair as I pass—and open it. It’s my turn to glare at him over my shoulder. He’s still holding the box. Still standing in the same spot.
But our silent conversation holds. And he turns, walks over to me—past me—through the door, and I follow him out as I shoulder into my jacket, zippers jingling in the silent, gray, pre-dawn morning.
His expensive shoes tap on the metal stairs, my bare feet silent and cold as I follow him down to the floor of the garage.
“OK,” he says, turning to face me. “Explain.”
He’s holding up the silver box. Whatever’s happening with Christine is not what he’s referring to. Everything in the present gets sidelined to all the shit from the past. Because I am not supposed to have this diamond.