Page 33 of The Triangle

He stares at me. He looks good, I guess. Still lean. Same golden skin. Same piercing amber eyes. Still wearing those nice suits. Still… him.

If he came from South Africa I’m impressed. Jet lag always had me looking like shit when I landed in a new time zone.

“Enough,” he says. “How?”

He’s still referring to the diamond. I shrug. And smile. Because it’s hard to con a con man. And we did it.

“We stole it back,” I say. Evenly. No emotion. No touch of pride in my words, even though I feel it.

“When?”

I laugh. “You never noticed? Not like you to overlook something like a missing fucking diamond.”

“How?” It comes out genuinely perplexed. “How did you—?”

“Never mind the diamond. What the fuck did you do to Christine?”

“Me?” It’s his turn to laugh. “Bru, I was in a fokken firefight when I got news of Christine’s tumble. Almost ten thousand miles away. It wasn’t me.”

“Bullshit,” I sneer. “You had her on a job, didn’t you? You told her to kill David. You’ve been using her.”

“Using her?” He laughs. “And who the fok is David?”

I nod. Back to the silent language. That nod says, OK. That’s how you’re gonna play this? Fine.

“You know what? I don’t even wanna know what you’re up to. Not even a little bit. All I care about is Christine.”

“That makes two of us, man.”

I lose a little bit of my calm exterior. Point my finger at his face. “You never cared about her. All you ever cared about was what she’d do for you. You dragged us in, used us up, and then you—”

He slaps my finger away and points back. “You’re the one who walked out.”

“You were fucking her,” I snarl.

“She was fucking me!”

I don’t picture how it ended. Never. I always go back to the day it started. To the gym. His bloody knuckles. To the night outside in the alley. To the gunshot. To the moment when I fucked everything up by letting this asshole in.

“But,” he says, some of the excitement in his voice dissipated, “to be fair, she wanted to fuck us both. And you were never good at sharing.” His eyes wander to my bare chest. They linger there too long. “It’s not too late, ya know.”

“Fuck you.”

“I wish you would. Just fokken get over it, Danny. Accept that this is our future. And you can run—hell, you did run—but looks like we’re right back where we left off if you ask me.”

“I’m not asking you. I’m not here to ask you anything. I’m here to tell you something. Give you one last shot to move along and never look back.” It feels generous. Because I already told Brasil I’d deliver Alec to him. I already made a deal to sell him out. And I should just shut up, let that shit play through.

But whatever. The warning is already out.

“You expect me to leave?” Alec says. “Now? When we’re in the middle of all this shit?” He pans his arms wide, like it’s us against the world.

That’s how he did it back then too. Us against the world.

It’s something Christine and I had together. We were us against the world. And then Alec shouldered his way into our lives and joined our team without even asking. Disrupted all the plans we had. Ruined all the futures we imagined.

She wouldn’t be killing people for money if this asshole hadn’t given her that gun that night in the alley.

But, that annoying, truth-telling, reality-checking voice in my head says. But you’d still be this Danny, Danny. You’d still be working for Brasil. You’d still be right where you are now. Alec never poked the pretty out of you. You were never special to begin with.