“I do,” Liam said.“I once tracked down a gang of car thieves—nicked ’em right after your friend Chuck left the crew, ’cause they were violent sadists, and Chuck wanted no part of that.”
“Did you drive their cars?”Felix asked pointedly.
“Oh aye.Even wrecked one, but I don’t recommend it.”
Josh snickered weakly.“Dad, give it up.He’s a grown-assed man, and he has letters behind his name.Give him the keys.”
“Do we have to have the yelling tonight?”Felix asked pointedly.“Do we?Just because I was at the car show with Carl for plausible deniability doesn’t mean I wasn’t on comms.”
Josh winced, and Liam could suddenly see pain etched in the corners of his eyes.“No, Dad,” he murmured.“No yelling tonight.Just, you know, trust him.He’ll get me to the apartment in one piece, and we’ll be home tomorrow.”
Felix sighed and bent to give his son a gentle kiss on the top of the head.“No yelling tomorrow either,” he said.“I’m not sure if anybody’s told you, but the job went really well.Yes, there were glitches, but I seem to remember that thing in January that turned into a WWF melee, and this went considerably better.”
There were pained chuckles around the table;everybodyhad visited the hospital after that one, Chuck, Carl, and Hunter included, and they were the team’s bruisers.
“Seconded,” Danny said with a smile.
“Thirded?”Leon added.And his smile was considerably broader.“Although I could be biased because I got to be part of this one.”
“A pivotal part, as it were,” Felix said, and Liam tilted his head, taking in Felix’s expression.There was something in there… something Felix wasn’t telling them, and Liam had to trust, once again, that Felix would tell them if something was seriously wrong with Julia.
Leon’s phone buzzed again, and he turned it over with exasperation before his expression lightened.“Oh!Julia says I can come pick her up now.”
“And I’m about done,” Josh said.“Let me go hug my mom and we can leave.”
FELIX STOODback and watched them exit, lingering for a moment so he could wrap his arm around Danny’s shoulders and take a breath.
“So?”Danny asked, sounding excited.
Felix turned to him with a grin.“Oh yeah, you pegged it.She’s so knocked up.”
“Iknew it!”Danny chortled.“So tell me, how’d it go?”
Felix paused for a moment, remembering the pure relief on Julia’s face when Felix had entered her exam room with a smuggled sandwich.
“Hungry are we?”he’d needled gently.
“Stupid of me,” she’d replied, taking the sandwich greedily.
“So….”He’d given her a sideways glance, urging her to tell him so he didn’t have to intrude.
She’d smacked his arm.“You’ve guessed already,” she muttered, and her hands, cradling the sandwich she’d begun to devour, dropped into her lap.“Of course you have.”
“Danny guessed first,” Felix said, because Danny had always been smarter.“He remembered when you and I first arrived here.Remember the train station?”
He’d sat next to her, as familiar as a brother, and she’d hidden her face against his shoulder.“Oh God, yes.How could I forget?”
The plan—Danny’s plan—had been for the two of them to elope to America.They’d made appointments with a justice of the peace by phone from Rome.Escaping had been fraught—truly fraught—because Julia’s fatherwouldhave killed her for defying him, and for being pregnant in the first place, and for depriving him of the match he’d hoped to make with one of his many mob contacts so he could solidify his holdings.Felix left the house that morning, claiming the relatives he’d purportedly been supposed to visit had called to give him access to their villa.Knowing that Hiram Dormer took Julia to the marketplace every day (the better to parade her in front of his cronies and their sons), Felix had stolen some small tchotchkes for Danny to sell for tickets.
As far as they all knew, Dormer had never missed the tchotchkes, and it had taken him half an hour to realize that his daughter—who had asked to be allowed to shop and try on clothes—had escaped out the back of one of her favorite boutiques.
By the time Julia’s father had realized she was missing, she and Felix were on the way to the airport.
By the time he realized she was no longer in Rome, they were married, and she was drawing on her mother’s trust to buy the mansion and send wedding announcements to every news outlet in Chicago.
Danny remained behind, leaving false trails and paying people to claim they’d seen Julia Dormer when they hadn’t.He and Felix kept in touch with burner phones, so Danny had been there when Felix had called him, panicked and tearful, because Julia had passed out at the train station and been taken to the hospital.Felix—who had been establishing his false credentials as a businessman, the better to impress Dormer when he arrived to find his daughter’s marriage a fait accompli—had been called as her first contact, and suddenly it had occurred to him what he, Danny, and Julia were doing.
“I’m the father, Danny!I’m the goddamned father, and this girl passed out and—”
