The Mastermind E-Book

Amy Lane

• Herausgeber: Dreamspinner Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

A Long Con Adventure Once upon a time in Rome, Felix Salinger got caught picking his first pocket and Danny Mitchell saved his bacon. The two of them were inseparable… until they weren't. Twenty years after that first meeting, Danny returns to Chicago, the city he shared with Felix and their perfect, secret family, to save him again. Felix's news network—the business that broke them apart—is under fire from an unscrupulous employee pointing the finger at Felix. An official investigation could topple their house of cards. The only way to prove Felix is innocent is to pull off their biggest con yet. But though Felix still has the gift of grift, his reunion with Danny is bittersweet. Their ten-year separation left holes in their hearts that no amount of stolen property can fill. A green crew of young thieves looks to them for guidance as they negotiate old jewels and new threats to pull off the perfect heist—but the hardest job is proving that love is the only thing of value they've ever had.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Blurb

Dedication

Coming Up Close

The Pines of Rome

Grazie

Dawn at the Horizon

Saddle Up

Parenting Fails

The Plan

Chess on Two Fronts

Situational Awareness

Spinning

Spun-up

Rookie Moves. Plural.

Running the Carnival

Enter the Clowns

All in One Tent

Shopping and Lunch

Kindred Hearts

The Payoff

Temporary Sunset

Orange: Amy's Dark Contemporary

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About the Author

By Amy Lane

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Copyright

The Mastermind

By Amy Lane

A Long Con Adventure

Once upon a time in Rome, Felix Salinger got caught picking his first pocket and Danny Mitchell saved his bacon. The two of them were inseparable… until they weren’t.

Twenty years after that first meeting, Danny returns to Chicago, the city he shared with Felix and their perfect, secret family, to save him again. Felix’s news network—the business that broke them apart—is under fire from an unscrupulous employee pointing the finger at Felix. An official investigation could topple their house of cards. The only way to prove Felix is innocent is to pull off their biggest con yet.

But though Felix still has the gift of grift, his reunion with Danny is bittersweet. Their ten-year separation left holes in their hearts that no amount of stolen property can fill. A green crew of young thieves looks to them for guidance as they negotiate old jewels and new threats to pull off the perfect heist—but the hardest job is proving that love is the only thing of value they’ve ever had.

Mary and Rayna for being my buddies always—but also Elizabeth, forever, and Damon and anyone who has ever needed a hero to beat the odds. And Mate for being mine.

Coming Up Close

DANNY LOVED and hated Chicago. Loved it because it was his hometown, and if he wore the black overcoat and the natty little fedora, he had just enough gray at his temples to look like he owned the place, particularly when he walked down La Salle toward the river.

Something about the way the wind gusted, as if it was trying to carve out his entrails, made him feel a little like a warrior—and he liked that. He’d take any help he could get feeling young these days.

He’d been happy here once.

In the past.

That’s why he hated it.

He paused at the corner, looking to his right. The first floor of the polished gray granite building was a lobby, but the second floor held a bank of very exclusive PO Boxes where he had his mail forwarded.

Every three months, Danny checked the box, even if he had to fly in from somewhere to do it.

He’d promised. Yeah, the promise had been over twenty years ago, but dammit, he kept his word.

And even if he didn’t usually, he would have kept to his self-imposed schedule this time. Too much history, no matter how painful, was calling his name.

He waved to the receptionist, then took the palm-print-operated elevator up to the second floor and emerged into a vault of a room surrounded on all sides by PO Boxes that required a key, a code, and a thumbprint.

Of course, Danny’s thumbprint wasn’t associated with his real name—he was too smart for that—but it was his real thumb, of course, and that always made him uneasy. Still, he paid a great deal of money for the privacy and discretion of this hidden floor of this particularly notable building, and he liked to think that his pricy Italian snow boots made pricy Italian clicking noises as he crossed the polished granite floor.

“Mr. Biondi!” said Carina Weiss, the sleek and chic mother of three who sat at the reception podium in the middle of the room. “So good to see you. Would you like your usual booth?”

“Indeed.” He gave a gracious nod.

“Your young protégé is already ahead of you,” she said with a knowing smile, nodding at the lockbox on the stand in front of her.

Danny’s eyes widened. “Indeed?” Protégé? Uhm, no. Ten years of boy toys and no-strings-attached liaisons, maybe, but nobody worth a title—certainly not a “protégé.” And a protégé worthy of the woman’s arched eyebrows and a catlike smile?

Definitely not.

But in order to get into this room and retrieve his mailbox, his “protégé” must have had the requisite ID. His palm print and his signature must have been in the system, and Mr. Protégé must have known Danny’s keycodes as well. Still, even if he’d been able to access the PO Box, only Danny could get into the locked container that held the mail.

Danny was very interested to see who this man must be.

He followed Carina to the row of bare, soundproofed rooms, wondering what was in his mail that warranted this interesting new development.

“Here you go,” Carina said cheerfully. “Mr. Biondi, Mr. Contrell, I hope your business proceeds smoothly.”

And with that, she set the box on the table for Danny to open with his own key and departed, leaving Danny and the very familiar stranger in the room together.

Danny managed to keep his professional, silk-smooth smile on until the door closed and the click of Carina’s heels could no longer be heard.

Then he let his delight show through.

“Josh! Oh my God, look at you. You’re practically grown.”

The slender, stylish young man with the expensively cut hair, black leather topcoat, and black cashmere turtleneck and slacks, hopped up from his calculated sprawl at the table and rushed into Danny’s arms for a warm, hard, and very filial hug.

“Uncle Danny!” he cried. “Oh my God, he told me you’d be here, probably today, and I barely had time to prepare.”

Danny pulled back and gave him the gimlet eye. “You got access to my mailbox? How in the world—” This was supposed to be an absolutely unhackable PO Box—a thieves’ Casablanca of mail, as it were.

Josh grinned, his brown eyes sparkling. “Oh, I was taught by the best. Between you and the Fox, this place didn’t stand a chance.”

Danny tried to look disapproving. “Did you do the hacking or—”

“I got a friend to do the hacking,” Josh admitted. “And what about the look? Do you like it?”

Josh spread his arms and did a slick pirouette, his black half boots complementing the entire ensemble.

“Did Fox help you with that?” he asked fondly, suppressing the inevitable pang in his chest whenever Felix “the Fox” Salinger was mentioned. He’d damn the man for making Josh a part of his life, but God, Josh had just been such a joy. Seeing his “nephew” once every three months had been one of the driving forces bringing him back to this room four times a year—but Danny was usually the one doing the sneaking. Josh wasn’t even supposed to know where he got his mail.

“No.” Josh sobered. “He’s been… busy.”

Danny swallowed against the lump in his throat. “Yeah. I’ve seen the news.” A blaze of fury—tamped down for the last week since the story had broken—tried to leap from his chest. “Josh, look. Whatever they say in the news, you mustn’t believe it. Felix isn’t capable of any of those things. You know that, right?”

Josh nodded, sober as a judge. “Yeah. That’s why I’m here, actually.” He glanced around the soundproofed room. “I figure this place is safe, and I stopped off at a department store, so the clothes are clean right down to the boots. I changed out my wallet and activated a new credit card. My friend’s brother even swept me for bugs.” He paused. “I need to talk to you about something.”

Danny sank into one of the black leather chairs, puzzled. “Well, if I’d known we were going to get serious, I would have eaten beforehand,” he said, his stomach rumbling.

Josh laughed softly. “I’ll take you out afterward, and you can meet all my friends. We’ll have pizza.”

“Deep dish?” Danny asked, mostly to buy time.

“In Chicago? Is there any other kind?”

Danny shook his head. “He’s… he’s okay, isn’t he? Your father?”

Josh’s expression turned suddenly very adult. “I’ve known for quite some time that he’s not my father—and you’re not my uncle. It’s okay, Uncle Danny. Mom explained it to me when I was twelve. That doesn’t mean I love him any less. Or you.”

Danny’s eyebrows went up. That hadn’t made the letters. “You’ve been keeping that secret since you were twelve? And you never once mentioned it to me?” Josh’s correspondence—and his own furtive visits to see the young man do things like perform in plays and graduate from school—had been his link to the city and the life he’d once known. Josh confided almost everything to his Uncle Danny, but this was one hell of a secret.

“I was dumb,” Josh said frankly. “I thought… I thought if you and Fox knew I knew, you’d come and take him away from me—and Fox is the only dad I’ve ever known. But when Grandpa finally died, and Mom and Fox divorced, Fox stayed in our lives—hell, he and Mom still live in the house in Glencoe. And it suddenly hit me that they’d both been having discreet affairs, probably since I was born.” He met Danny’s eyes squarely. “Or for him, one long hidden affair—with you.”

Danny had thought he was beyond shame, but the heat that swept his neck and cheeks certainly had that flavor, didn’t it?

“Ten years,” Danny said, his throat dry. He wondered if he could get Carina to bring him some water. Some pizza. A time machine. “Ten. I couldn’t… I couldn’t….” He looked away. “I just couldn’t.”

“I know,” Josh said softly. “But you didn’t leave my life either, and eventually that penetrated my thick skull, you know?”

Danny’s mouth twisted, and he tasted bitterness. “You… you’re the best thing he and I ever did together.”

“You can have more time to do better,” Josh said soberly. “But first we need to get him out of the mess he’s in. I’ve got some ideas, but I haven’t been doing this for twenty years like you have.”

“Almost thirty,” Danny corrected grimly. “I started when I was twelve, you know.”

Josh’s eyes lit up. “No, really? How?”

“I told a bully that he’d be cursed with bugs in his pockets if he kept stealing our lunch money. Then I got the kid who liked bugs to bring me a box of them, and me and my friends took turns sneaking them into the pockets of his coat whenever he wasn’t looking.” They’d tripped him in hallways, dropped them in his hair when he was concentrating on classwork—whatever it took. “For a week that kid couldn’t sit down to eat without a worm falling out of his sleeve or a cockroach crawling out of his pocket. He finally broke in math class one day, confessed everything, and started throwing money on the ground to pay us back.”

Danny gave a smile that Fox had always called “predatory” but Danny had always felt was more “self-satisfied.”

“Poor kid. I understand he grew up with anxiety issues. Unfortunate.”

Josh snorted softly. “Yeah, that’s a real fuckin’ tragedy, Uncle Danny. But however you started, you were an expert at it by the time you met Fox, and you’ve made a living on the grift for your entire adult life. And now we can use it to help the only dad I’ve ever known. Are you game?”

Danny nodded. “But first you have to tell me what happened—what really happened—okay?”

Danny knew what really happened. Anybody with half a brain who knew Felix could figure out that what happened in the press was all spin. A woman who’d worked for Felix had accused him of discriminating against her because she was female, of using her work and calling it his own—and she’d done it in tears, on television. The outrageous lies and blatant spin that resulted in his spectacularly painful flameout in the press had been played over and over again on the news. But while Josh covered the basics, he let his mind wander, just a bit. An indulgence, really.

An image.

Two boys grifting through Europe, absolutely sure the world would never tear them apart.

Two boys madly in love.

Past

FELIX, TALL, lithe, blond as a god, running down the cobblestone streets in Rome, one step ahead of the mark he’djust pickpocketed, his red scarf streaming behind him like a banner.

Danny had been pocketing his breakfast as he’d watched the boy tear-assing down the road, and he’d been so delighted watching an amateur thief in his brazen glory that he’d forgotten himself and actually paid for the pastry he’d grabbed before he realized he could have simply walked away.

Oh no. The boy was fast—no doubt about that—and nimble. He dodged a family with cameras, and a clowder of cats, and didn’t crash into a single tourist. This close to the Coliseum, there were plenty, but they were on a side street, and Danny was pretty sure if the kid kept running like that, he was going to hit a cross street against the green light and die messily in traffic.

Even running full tilt, Danny had seen the pale, aristocratic features, the hectic flush across his cheeks, the flyaway blond hair. As he’d sprinted past Danny’s café, the scarf had fluttered from around his neck to the ground, a slash of crimson against the tan bricks.

It would be a shame if that kid died on the streets of Rome.

Before he even knew what he was doing, he’d walked out of the café and was surveying the Vespas, bicycles, and Fiats parked on the street. He chose a Vespa without pausing in his step and used a small metal bar to unlock the ignition while he kickstarted the thing. It was easier for him to steal a vehicle than to actually own one, and he took off down the street before the owner could spot him from the café.

It wasn’t like Danny wasn’t going to abandon the mini-motorcycle a couple of blocks away, right?

He stepped on the pedal hard, listening to the engine buzzing like a laboring mosquito. It didn’t bother him; they always sounded like that, and no matter how slow the Vespa felt like it was going, the truth was, he was going faster than the boy who had dropped his scarf in the street and, even more importantly, faster than the big angry tourist shouting obscenities as he chased the boy who had dropped his scarf in the street.

In fact, Danny was going fast enough that he felt compelled to use the little motorcycle’s quick start and stop capabilities to pick up the scarf.

He easily passed the tourist, who ignored him because the mosquito cycles were all over Rome. When he drew abreast of the boy, he slowed down a bit and called to him.

“I see you have lost your scarf!”

The boy shot him a look that was part annoyance and part amusement. “How inconvenient,” he shouted, still running. “How nice of you to return it.”

“But if I return it,” Danny hollered, “you will only get yourself killed!”

“Then,” the boy said, pulling in a breath, “you may keep it.”

“If you come with me, you might not die,” Danny said, turning his head enough to flash his dimples. At twenty, that was all he needed to do to a lot of boys. This one was no exception.

“Then I shall have to come with you!” the boy told him. Behind them they heard a shout as the tourist picked up speed. Danny stopped the motorcycle just long enough for the boy to hop on behind him, taking the scarf so Danny might better drive the little mosquito cycle along the crowded streets.

Danny gassed the thing as he headed for a tight left turn, and behind him he heard his passenger cry, “Let go!” The tourist had nearly caught up and had grabbed the scarf. Danny grinned as his passenger ripped the scarf—a fine cashmere; Danny had felt it—right out of the man’s hands.

Even the gods probably heard them laughing as Danny gunned the Vespa and powered the thing toward a far corner of the city, where the cafés weren’t quite so crowded and he might get to know the boy with the red scarf a little better.

“UNCLE DANNY?”

Danny pulled himself back to the here and now, to the sterile, gray, soundproof room with the boy he loved like a son sitting across from him.

“Sorry,” he said with a faint smile. “Lost in the past. But don’t worry, I heard what you were saying.”

“Prove it,” Josh said skeptically.

“Felix was grooming this Marnie Courtland woman to take over his news programs,” Danny said, although that was common knowledge. When Josh’s grandfather had passed away, he’d left his cable affiliates to Felix to run—Felix had been doing it anyway. Hell, it’s why Felix and Julia had kept up the pretense of the marriage. Not for Josh, obviously. He was fine. But Felix had worked hard to make a life for Julia, and the old man had been set in his ways. He wouldn’t leave the station to Julia, so Felix had earned it by virtue of hard work, charm, and that certain lack of scruples that had made him and Danny so compatible in the first place. Once the old man had gone, about two years after Felix and Danny’s final, horrible breakup, Felix had taken the little group of cable network stations—a news station, a movie station, a cable action show station—and built an empire.

An empire Marnie Courtland was about to bring toppling down on his head.

“She was the principle news anchor of his highest rated news show,” Josh said, the loathing dripping from his voice. “Progressive, tough, fair-minded—she had the perfect reputation. Dad taught her everything he’d learned working his way up and then gave her free rein. Only he started to get complaints.”

Danny’s eyebrows went up. “Explain?”

“Well, she apparently skipped that ethics class that journalists are supposed to take. She pressured sources, threatened to blackmail the people who had evidence that disproved her story, and left a paper trail of some truly batshit, unhinged emails and direct messages that people brought to Dad because he was the man in charge of the network.”

“His circus,” Danny said, because that’s how Felix had referred to it during those covert, hidden, lost years when they met once every couple of months for the weekends that kept Danny barely fed enough on Felix’s presence, his love, his skin. The years of being a dirty little secret and of drinking to cover the pain.

“Yes, and his monkeys.” Josh’s lips twisted sardonically. “He said that a lot. But he had proof—has proof—that she’s a freakshow nightmare of bad behavior and bullying.”

“But he’d mentored her from the beginning,” Danny said. “So he felt responsible.” Just because he’d broken up with Felix hadn’t meant he’d stopped watching him work. Marnie Courtland’s onscreen presence, her turns of phrase, her woman-on-the-street approach, all of it had the earmarks of Felix’s time in the anchor’s seat. Fox had spent a good ten years there, and had made the news station particularly his own by hard work and by learning a trade he’d only pretended to have in order to land the job. Bitterly, Danny remembered how they’d laughed while planning the original grift on Josh’s mom. They’d tell her Felix was a journalism major. All the rich Americans in Europe were journalism majors: lots of syllables, not a lot of job opportunities. It was perfect.

Little did they know the grift would put Felix in a position with Josh’s grandfather that would let him work his way through the ranks as a junior reporter and then an anchor and then a program director, turning Hiram Dormer’s most neglected businesses into a Chicago entertainment staple.

“Yeah,” Josh said, his betrayal palpable. “He did. Like he’d made this monster, so it was up to him to sort of gentle it into the real world.”

“Unlike the original Frankenstein,” Danny said, lips twisting. It had been their only paperback that first summer, and sometimes he wished they’d had something longer—hell, Pride and Prejudice would have at least made them laugh. But Frankenstein it had been, and apparently Felix had learned the lesson too well.

“I hate that fuckin’ book,” Josh said brutally. “Anyway, so Dad pulls her into his office, tells her straight up that people have the goods on her and she might want to get ahead of the situation, issue apologies, call in a lawyer, and she says, ‘You mean you’re not going to back me?’”

Danny’s eyes went wide. “That’s… ovarian. Very, very ovarian.”

Josh smirked. “Well, I hope I can be that ovarian if I ever get busted, because my balls would have been shriveling into little hairy raisins at that point. But not her. Dad said, ‘Marnie, what you were doing was illegal!’” Josh scrubbed his face with his hands. “You have to hear him tell this story,” he said brokenly, “because I’ve heard it a dozen times. He told Mom, me, his lawyers, friends. And every time he tells it, his voice just… wobbles, and he’s surprised. Every damned time he tells it. He tells her she was wrong—she’d been caught blackmailing people, bullying them, threatening them with her social media platform, and he doesn’t want that behavior representing his news network or his company as a whole. And she looks him dead in the eye, musses up her hair, and screams, ‘Harassment!’ Then she runs through the newsroom screaming, ‘Felix Salinger threatened my job if I told the truth! He’s been plagiarizing my work for years—he uses and harasses every woman who works for him.’”

Danny snorted, hating to even hear it, because it was so antithetical to everything Felix had ever stood for.

“Yeah, I know,” Josh muttered. “She was standing right on the soundstage where they were filming live. She finished it up by sobbing, ‘I just couldn’t take the lies anymore.’”

“I saw that part,” Danny said, his voice hard. “Just like the rest of the world. Sixty thousand times. Didn’t believe it once.”

Josh’s face crumpled a little, and he almost wrecked his perfect outfit by wiping his eyes on his sleeve. Danny produced a handkerchief from one of his pockets and handed it over, his own eyes burning.

The story had broken two weeks ago, and the media frenzy had only gotten worse. Marnie had gotten up in front of national TV and told the world that Felix Salinger was a backbiting misogynist, a harasser, a bully, and Felix—Felix had twenty-year-old secrets to hide, including the biggest one of all.

He wasn’t Josh’s father.

Josh’s entire inheritance—and all of his and Julia’s social standing—would come into question if that came out, and Danny knew Felix. Just because he was a criminal didn’t mean he was a bad man. And he’d do anything to ensure Josh’s future and protect Julia’s good name.

“He can’t go up against her,” Danny said, massaging his temples with his fingertips. “If people look into his past, before his interaction with Marnie, they’d find… oh so many things.”

“I’d give up everything,” Josh said, looking miserable. “I’d give up the money, the property, the house. But… but it’s not even mine to give up.”

“It’s your mother’s,” Danny said softly. Even when things had been at their worst—when Danny had felt like every breath filled his lungs with broken glass—he’d never blamed Julia Dormer-Salinger. Her father had been a monster—he’d left the works to Felix, who had turned the three stations into a network empire and insured her fortune for life. But if Felix lost his money and prestige, so did Julia. They could lose everything. “She doesn’t deserve to lose her home.” And even if she could keep the house, the things in Chicago that made it home—her work with the businesses, her work with charity foundations, her friends and acquaintances—those things would be gone.

“No,” Josh said. “She’s offered. She’s gathered her lawyers together—they have all Dad’s evidence, by the way. He’s got a rock-solid case for slander, malicious mischief, filing a false report. But Marnie’s created such a… a media juggernaut. It’s going to take a doomsday device to blow her up before she takes out the entire network. But her story was her only story. Now that Dad’s no longer running things at the station, they’ve got nobody bringing in contacts, and nobody will work with her—they all know she’s poison. The network is going to go bankrupt, and my parents are going to lose—”

“Everything,” Danny said.

“Dad already lost you,” Josh told him. “I… I don’t want him to lose what he’s worked so hard to build.”

“Me neither.” God, Danny didn’t. Felix. That bright, laughing boy with the sense of mischief and the champagne tastes. He’d given up so much for Josh’s legacy.

He’d given up Danny.

Danny had wanted him to have the world. The least he could do was help him out of a jam.

“What do you want to do about it?” Danny asked, because it was obviously what Josh needed to hear.

Josh’s face lit up like Times Square.

“I’ve got a plan,” he said eagerly.

Danny raised an eyebrow. This was the child who had once left their hotel room in Prague when he’d been seven, panhandled for bus fair, and spent a day at a museum while Danny, Felix, and Julia had been having heart attacks trying to find him.

“Of course you do.”

The Pines of Rome

FELIX SIPPED his Macallan moodily, staring out the second-floor window of his Glencoe mansion, noting that the outside lights were still on. The comforting yellow glow illuminated the slashing silver of an early spring storm. Locals were probably just glad it wasn’t snow, but Felix didn’t mind the snow.

He minded that this day wasn’t over yet.

Wasn’t it nine o’clock yet? Wasn’t it ten? Wasn’t it tomorrow yet? Next week? Next month? Sometime when he could recover and didn’t have to see his face splashed across every news network on the planet as the world’s biggest misogynist?

His neck muscles started cranking tightly, and he took a bigger swig of the scotch, trying to relax.

“You know what you need?” Julia asked, padding into his bedroom uninvited. Well, they’d lived like brother and sister for over twenty years. She slept in this house when she was in Chicago, the same way he slept in her townhouse when he was in New York.

“A time machine?” he asked bitterly.

“Sex,” she said frankly. “You haven’t had a lover in a really long time.”

Ten years, he wanted to say. Physically it wasn’t true, but emotionally?

“Now is not the time,” he said softly, taking another sip of his scotch.

“He’s in town, Felix. You should ask him.”

“No,” Felix said.

“Felix—”

He yanked his attention from the rain. “How do you want me to start that conversation, Jules? ‘Hey, remember how I wouldn’t walk away from my sham marriage because I wanted to run an empire? Well, the whole thing got yanked around my ears in a colossal act of karma, and now I’m fucked. Want to come commit some illegal acts to prove I’m innocent of harassing every woman I’ve come in contact with? It won’t fix the last ten years, but I can get some fucking retribution.’” He killed the rest of the tumbler and poured himself another healthy dose from the decanter at his dressing table. “I think no.”

“Well your pitch is terrible,” Julia said. She was dressed simply in off-the-rack flannel pajamas with an oversized sweatshirt—one of his—down to her knees. Her feet were bare except for bright pink polish on each toe and a whimsical little jewel in the center of the first little piggy. She looked hardly out of college, someone in their salad days, not like a mother about to pass forty. Not like someone who could have bought and sold this pricy house ten or twenty times with just one bank account—if Marnie didn’t take it all, damn her. Not like a ruthless businesswoman who had taken her father’s holdings and—against the old man’s wishes half the time—expanded them.

Not like an heiress.

Like a friend.

His friend walked up to him and put her arm around his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder.

“You need to work on your pitch,” she prompted again.

“Yeah? What would you suggest?” God, he missed Danny.

“How about ‘Hey—I know we ended things badly, and that was my fault. But I’ve never stopped loving you after all these years, and I’d love to be back in your life. But I’ve got this pesky legal situation that’s haunting me, and I’d appreciate your help.’”

Felix swallowed. “You really think that would work?”

“It’s Danny,” she said softly. “I watched him come back to you again and again. He’s never left our son’s life. Danny’s a good man.”

Felix snorted. Danny was a thief and a con man and would have laughed uproariously at that last statement.

But that didn’t change the fact that it was true.

IMMEDIATELY AFTER saving Felix’s bacon on the streets of Rome, Danny took Felix on a tour of Rome’s poorest neighborhood—and saved his soul.

Felix had been bored. His parents were wealthy but indifferent, and Felix had gone to Europe for an adventure. The dickwad American tourist stalking along the streets yelling at people who didn’t speak English had appealed to his sense of fun.

Felix didn’t need the money, but boy that asshole sure did need the setdown.

Danny pulled the Vespa into a tiny corner street and left it, tugging on Felix’s hand.

“Where are we going?” Felix asked. “And who are you?”

Danny turned to him with a gamine smile. He had a little gap between his front two teeth, but that didn’t stop the entire smile from lighting up his narrow face. His chin was pointed like a fox’s, and his eyebrows—which he’d later pluck and groom extensively—arched with wicked intent.

“I’m Danny. Who’re you?”

“Felix Salinger,” Felix said hesitantly.

“Like the writer?” To his credit, the boy looked suitably impressed.

“No.” Felix shook his head. “Like the Salingers from LA, who have a lot of money and let me take a vacation to Europe.”

Danny wrinkled his nose. “That’s a lousy pitch. No, if you get busted, you gotta be like ‘Yeah, like the writer’s great-grandson. I love that book, don’t you?’”

Felix let out a bark of laughter and tried not to twist his ankle on the broken pavement. “Where are we going?” He felt a yank on his back pocket and whirled around to grab an urchin—complete with lice and a sour smell—by the shoulder. “Give that back!” he snapped, reaching for the wallet he’d rightfully stolen.

The kid jabbered at him in Italian, and to his surprise, Danny answered. The kid argued for a moment, and then Danny shouted, “Enough, Berto, or I tell your mama!”

The kid recoiled, wounded. “No fair,” he replied in thick English. “Is no fair you tell my mama!”

“This one, he’s under my protection, okay?”

Berto gave a disgusted sniff and leveled a look of pure bathos at Felix. “Not even his wallet.”

Danny snorted and turned to Felix. “It’s only fair he shares the spoils, then, okay?”

Felix was about to argue. This kid wasn’t getting what he’d worked for! Then he got a look at the kid—a good look. Yeah, the little beggar was crafty, and he was a thief. But his clothes were threadbare, and as Felix watched, Danny pulled a loaf of bread from the front of his oversized sweater, ripped it in half, and offered the other half of it to Berto… who practically tore it out of his hand.

“Grazie!” Berto mumbled through a full mouth.

Felix let go of the wallet. “Keep it,” he grumbled. “But be careful. The asshole who used to own it is mean.”

Berto nodded and gulped down an enormous mouthful. “He’ll never know where it went,” he said, eyes big.

“Berto,” Danny said sternly as the kid turned to take off.

Berto stopped as though shot. “Sorry, Lightfingers,” he mumbled. Like Danny, he was wearing an oversized sweater, and from the folds of the front, he pulled out Felix’s actual wallet.

“You dropped it,” Berto said through another mouthful, sputtering crumbs.

“Of course I did,” Felix murmured. “Thank you so much for returning it.”

“Berto?” Danny repeated.

Berto scowled and pulled the cash and credit cards out of the pocket of his ragged jeans. “You also dropped these,” he said, with admirable dignity for a kid who looked about seven and smelled like pee.

“Indebted,” Felix ground out from between his teeth.

Berto gave him an unrepentant grin and skipped off into the crowd, and Danny shook his head. “God, you’re an easy mark. I can’t believe you had the balls to lift a wallet when you’re such a sitting duck.”

Felix might have been stung by the words, but this guy had not only saved his wallet—and his money—but he’d also been kind to the street urchin who’d stolen it in the first place. Felix had spent his whole life being told how to act like he had money—and now this adorable pixieish boy was showing him how to act like he had class.

Besides, he had no room to throw a hissy fit when he’d almost been left in a foreign country with no money and no ID.

“What would you suggest?” Felix asked. “I stole that wallet because the guy was an ass, grabbing girls’ butts, talking about all the foreign tits for sale. He was gross. I don’t plan to make a living at it.”

“Good, because you’re shitty at it,” Danny said, rolling his eyes. He grabbed Felix’s hand again and pulled him through the crowd. “But you’re not completely useless. Okay, do you know where we are?”

Felix looked around. “Not the tourist part of the city?” he hazarded, realizing they were toward the outskirts, near the hills.

“Nope. Now something super interesting happens here. You saw Berto? See all these kids around here?”

Felix glanced around and noticed that a lot of them were staring at him with a predatory gleam in their eyes—right up until they saw Danny.

“Yeah?”

“Their parents all work for those people.” Danny gestured with his chin to a series of opulent villas about half a mile up the road from the street they were wandering. The road itself was lined with umbrella pine trees, and the scent of pine nuts was sharp and mouthwatering. “Those people are very rich. And you, it appears, are also very rich.”

Felix eyed the closest mansion, which would probably house the entire block of big houses he’d grown up on. “Not that rich,” he said honestly. “I’m like… less rich.”

Danny snorted. “Yeah, but they don’t know that. Now hurry!”

“Where are we going?”

“Well, one of those rich bastards comes down that hill about once a day to drop his spoiled kid off in the shopping district.”

“So?”

Danny rolled his eyes like Felix was almost too brain-dead to breathe. “So! ‘Gee, mister, I’m so glad I saw you. I lost my wallet and all my money. My parents live in a ritzy place in the States, and if you give me some cash, I can have them wire you a refund.’”

“I’m not going to do that!” Felix protested, repelled.

Danny sighed, his shoulders slumping. “Yeah, I figured. Whatever.” He turned away then and stalked through the crowds of children and residents, and Felix had the sudden fear he might lose this new and interesting person right when he’d found him.

“Hey, wait!” Felix caught up with him and tried not to flinch from Danny’s reproachful look as he drew alongside.

“Why’s it so important? That you screw this rich bastard with the spoiled kid?”

Danny shrugged. “It’s not,” he said. “Forget I mentioned it. Come on, though; there’s a café down by the corner that’s not nearly as crowded as the ones in the shopping district, and the food’s better.” His grin came back then, brilliant and enticing. “Trust me!”

Felix would find out later why Danny hated Julia’s father—“that rich bastard”—so much, and the reason hadn’t been pretty.

But not that day.

That day, Danny bought him a meal of pesto bread and sweet wine, and the two of them sat in the shade of some rich people’s mountain and looked out onto the bustling ancient city. Felix told Danny everything he knew about Rome’s history, and Danny told Felix everything he knew about how to make enough money to live.

“But why don’t you… I don’t know? Get a job?” Felix asked, as Danny explained the finer points of a short sting. “Wouldn’t it be easier?”

Danny’s eyes—hazel, almond shaped, with just the slightest upward tilt at the ends—lit with unholy fire. “Yeah, but it’s not as fun.”

Felix fell into that fire so willingly and quickly he wasn’t aware he’d even stepped into the pit.

That evening, Danny pulled him into a tiny garret apartment that held a twin-sized bed with a plain linen duvet that was mostly clean, a chest of drawers that appeared to hold most of Danny’s possessions, and a bathroom.

“What are we doing here?” Felix asked, although he thought he knew. His experience so far had been with girls—and it had been disappointing in the extreme.

But every time Danny’s pointed features lit with that puckish joy, Felix found himself more and more wanting to taste his full mouth, wanting to run his hands under that loose sweatshirt to feel the lean body beneath.

And Danny hadn’t let go of his hand since they’d left the café.

He wasn’t just holding Felix’s hand to direct him. Their fingers were entwined, and every now and then, during a still moment as they were waiting to cross a street, Danny would rub Felix’s knuckles with his thumb.

And the shiver in Felix’s belly would resonate a little bit harder. At this moment, it was an avalanche in his chest.

No, Felix may have been a little naïve, but he wasn’t entirely unaware of what was going to happen.

Danny closed the door behind them and turned the lock, then spun around to Felix with dancing eyes.

“You tell me,” Danny said breathlessly. “You just followed a thief into his bedroom. What do you think he’s going to steal?”

Felix’s eyes felt heavy, his breath quickened, and he thought of all the things he wanted to do with this wiry little thief and all of the places he wanted to put his mouth. But at the same time, he knew that once he tasted Danny, once they’d put their hands on each other, what had started as a morning’s adventure and turned into an afternoon’s interlude would suddenly be something much bigger than that.

The stirring in his stomach was nothing less than extraordinary.

“Everything,” Felix whispered, taking a step closer to Danny, then another. “You’re going to take everything.”

Danny reached out and tugged on his belt, pulling him close until they were groin-to-groin. Felix let out a whimper as he realized he and Danny had both gone half-hard under their zippers.

His entire body ached, and there wasn’t enough air in the world.

“If you’re sweet to me,” Danny said, leaning forward until their mouths almost touched, “I’ll give it back again.”

Felix wrapped his arms around Danny’s shoulders and hauled him in for a kiss, hard and hungry, more passion than he’d ever shown another partner, more desire than he knew existed in the world.

Danny’s hands slid beneath the waistband of Felix’s slacks, and Danny kneaded his ass, fearless and without mercy.

“Don’t want it back,” Felix gasped, shaking. He slid his hands up Danny’s cheeks and scraped his fingers through thick handfuls of curly chestnut hair. “It’s all yours. Take it.”

Danny kissed him again, the thread of the conversation lost. He whirled Felix around until his back was against the door and dropped to his knees, pulling Felix’s pants down as he went. Felix’s cock flopped forward gracelessly, and Felix could do nothing but stare as Danny opened his mouth and engulfed it without finesse.

Later they would learn to tease, to play, to edge, even. They’d learn the finer points of making love. But in this moment, Danny’s mouth on Felix’s cock was everything, and he couldn’t imagine improving on the moment in any possible way.

He cried out, cracking his head back against the door, and knotted his fingers in Danny’s hair, not so much to control Danny but to anchor himself. Danny grasped Felix’s hips and thrust forward, taking Felix’s cock to the back of his throat, and then slid backward, using his lips and tongue to make the journey excruciating. Forward and back, forward and back, and Felix’s body dropped away, along with his past history and the morals he’d thought he had, until all that was left was Danny’s touch, his breath, the way he’d dropped to his knees with generosity and abandon.

His mouth on Felix’s cock became the end and beginning of Felix’s world.

It seemed like forever—though it was probably minutes—before Felix convulsed and came, crying out as Danny swallowed all of him down. When his body was done, he slid down the back of the door and welcomed Danny’s kiss, the way Danny sprawled on top of him happily, as if this moment, Felix’s come dripping down his chin, was the best possible outcome he could have imagined for his day.

“You like that?” Danny asked, those Peter Pan eyes alight and glowing.

“Does anybody say no after that?” Felix mumbled, a little dazed.

“Not so far.” Danny’s grin cranked up a notch or two. “But your answer matters most.”

Felix smoothed Danny’s hair back from his face and kissed the corner of his mouth, licked off the come. “Why?”

That grin faded, but the eyes—their intensity—remained. “Because you know my name is Danny,” he said soberly. “Danny Michael Mitchell. Everyone else here thinks I’m Lightfingers. I made that name up. You know my name.”

Felix’s mouth parted in wonder. He still planned to ravish Daniel Michael Mitchell until he was made of spunk, but in that moment, with his name, with his honesty, Felix realized that while he’d given this boy everything, Danny really had given it back.

Danny had given him the world.

FELIX DRAINED his second glass of scotch and made a hurt sound as he looked at the tumbler. Julia took it gently from his fingertips and poured some more, taking a sip before handing it back.

“He’ll help you,” she said softly.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“Because he’s here,” Danny said behind them. Felix’s heart stopped, but Julia laughed.

“The front door was locked,” she chided.

“Really?” Danny asked, ingenuousness dripping from his voice.

“The alarm was set,” she said.

“Imagine that.”

She hugged him fondly. “But some people you just can’t keep out,” she said and kissed his cheek. He hugged her back, and Felix grimaced. No, they hadn’t always gotten along—but in the end, Julia, Felix, and Danny had all wanted the same thing: what was best for Josh.

It had made them unlikely allies.

It might even have made them family.

But it didn’t make it any easier for Felix to face Danny now.

“Scotch?” he asked, because looking at the decanter and glasses would be easier than looking into those fox-light eyes.

“No,” Danny said. “Thank you.”

Felix’s eyes widened, and he actually saw Danny. Oh God, same guy. Same Peter Pan eyes, same chestnut curls and pointed chin. Some gray in the hair now, some wisdom lines around the eyes, but he still looked—Felix swallowed—so good.

“You used to love scotch,” he rasped.

Danny—Danny—turned his head and glanced away. “Well, I drank a lot of it ten years ago, and now I don’t drink anymore.”

Felix dropped his own tumbler onto the tray with a clatter, Macallan sloshing over the side. “I….” Danny. “I’m sorry.” So inadequate. Ten years ago… and that dreadful, dreadful fight.

“It was not your doing,” Danny said, with that abundance of kindness he’d always shown. “And definitely not why I’m here today.”

Felix ran his hand through his hair, reached for the half-full tumbler, then let his hand drop. “Why… why?”

“Drink the scotch, Fox,” Danny said gently. “I’d be falling off the wagon too, if I’d had the month you’ve had.” Oh, that nickname! Danny had given it to him, because in their grifting days, he’d said nobody evaded capture like Felix the Fox.

Felix tossed the scotch down, and the burn finally penetrated the numbness that had overtaken him during that terrible moment when Marnie had mussed her hair and screamed, “You’re a harasser and a bully, and I’ll make sure everyone knows it!” and Felix had guessed her endgame. He started to cough like a novice, and Danny’s hand thumping on his back was actually a comfort.

“Didn’t expect a con in an honest man’s business, did you?” Danny asked softly.

Felix closed his eyes, remembering how Marnie had played him, flattered him, told him that she owed her success all to him. Felix had remembered when he’d felt like leading this network into success had meant everything, and he’d bought her lies because he missed the days when he’d had that kind of confidence, the kind of chutzpah she’d exuded. But then, when he’d realized that she’d been posting stories in bad faith, she had turned on him on a dime.

“No,” he whispered. He turned and sank down on the bed, his knees not holding him anymore. An insidious voice whispered that it was weak to let Danny see him like this, that Danny had left him and Felix couldn’t trust him anymore.

The creak of the bedsprings next to him drowned out that little voice, and Danny’s arm around his shoulders was the solace he hadn’t dared ask for.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and while it wasn’t an apology for ten years ago—or the ten years before that—it didn’t seem to matter to Danny. He tightened that hold until Felix had no choice but to lay his head against Danny’s shoulder and cry.

Grazie

FELIX MUST have been drinking for some time, because he fell asleep on Danny’s shoulder, and Danny was grateful. Felix was a light sleeper on the best of days, and when he was stressed or upset, he would go for a week without lying down and shutting his eyes.

He’d done that when his parents had threatened to disown him if he didn’t leave Danny and come home from Europe to go back to school.

He hadn’t slept, he hadn’t eaten. Danny had finally gotten him drunk on a bottle of the cheapest wine he could find, just so he would shut his eyes.

When Felix had awakened, he’d been dehydrated and headachy—and absolutely lucid.

He’d written his parents and told them that he’d rather make his own way in the world than be dependent on their judgment for a dime. Danny had been so proud of him then; his lover was confident, independent, wouldn’t let money ever dictate what he did with his life.

His disappointment when that had proved to be something of an overstatement had been… acute.

But when a guy is young, it’s harder to forgive people for just being human. Felix’s basic qualities—kindness, intelligence, decisiveness, seeing the big picture—had remained. The fact that Danny was the one without the strength to put up with being the hidden mistress didn’t change that. It had taken Danny a long time to come to that conclusion—and even longer to forgive Felix.

And longest of all to forgive himself.