Page 82 of Stolen Trophy


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In those words, I hear everything he doesn’t say. He was a small kid, likely a smart one, and bullies targeted him, but everything changed when he grew up and turned into the man he is now. He started bullying the bullies, and now he does the same as an adult, just on a bigger scale. He’s wildly intelligent when it comes to technology. Hell, if Charles’ wife wouldn’t have opened the safe, he would have been able to crack it in only thirty seconds. It would have been child’s play.

“When did you know you loved tech stuff?” I ask as I take a bite of my cereal.

He studies me before he carefully says, “I always did. Even as a child, I’d take things apart and put them back together. It drove my mum wild, but she never punished me for it.”

“Is she still around?” The woman who raised Archer would be interesting indeed, but the moment Archer freezes, I know the answer.

He clears his throat. “No.”

There’s no more explanation, and I don’t push, knowing it’s probably for the best. Whatever happened to Archer’s mother, it’s still a wound, still a loss. I don’t blame him. I still mourn my own mother.

Eric points at Gage with his spoon. “Your turn, big guy.”

Gage grunts and continues to eat his cereal. “Nothing to say.”

“You mean you don’t want to talk about how Archer found you in juvie after having attacked a teacher?” Booker asks pointedly.

Gage curls his lips up. “He had it coming. He was blackmailing girls for their grades with dirty pictures and other shit.”

“Or how about that time you were in juvie for being caught stealing?” Eric adds. “Three times.”

Gage hesitates and glances at me. “I was hungry.”

“How old were you,” I ask, “when you left this house?”

He frowns. “Fifteen.”

I suck in a breath. He was barely a kid, and he’d been out on the streets just like I was, except I had a home until my mum died. Gage had run from his, escaping his father, and yet here he is, giving money away to the needy and playing Robin Hood.

Because he’s clearly uncomfortable with all the attention on him, I take another bite of cereal and freely give a piece of myself.

“My mum did her best, but there’s only so much a single mum with no way out can do. She worked three jobs, and it still wasn’t enough. I never asked, but I knew she sometimes did worse things to make sure I had food. Sometimes, not even that could get a paltry meal for us. We used to joke and say we were fasting, getting ready for the runway.” I chuckle. “But really, we’d just starve for a few days. Those were the hard ones.”

I take another bite of cereal. I don’t look up, afraid of what I’ll see there.

“I promised her I was going to get us out, but I was still a kid at the time, and on the streets, I didn’t have much sway, so I learned how to protect myself, how to manipulate the men before they could manipulate me. I made a lot of mistakes, took a few hits, and got robbed of the little bit I managed to get plenty of times, but my mum always told me to keep fighting and not to let the streets win. She said getting back up proved I was stronger than just taking the punches.” I take a deep breath. “When I came up with the idea for the tea shop, it was in the middle of the night. I remember we didn’t have power right then because Mum hadn’t been able to pay the bill. I scribbled the ideas on the back of old letters with a pen that was running dry, but I got it all out. Before I could do anything with it, though, Mum got sick.”

Eric’s hand comes out of nowhere and lands on my knee beneath the table, offering comfort. I smile gratefully at him.

“The cancer was aggressive. Between learning she had it and the time she died, I don’t think it was even a few months. I just know she kept telling me to fight, to keep going. ‘Don’t stop, Birdie. Don’t let them win.’ Up until her death, she drilled those words into my mind. So, with no home and nothing but a bag of clothing, I managed to clean up just enough to go to the bank.”

“You pitched them a business plan,” Archer surmises, watching me.

Nodding, I cover Eric’s hand with mine. “They liked it. Though I was still a liability, still young, they gave me a chance, and it paid off. The first shop opened, a tea shop centred around women, and it took off. Within a year, we began to expand, and within five, I became a well-known name. It wasn’t just the pretty locations or the food and drinks they came for, it was the slice of home and safety they found there, with like-minded people from all walks of life. It became a community. The money came flowing in, and I hired as many people from my past as possible, giving them a chance when no one else would. It was hard to let go of control, but one location turned into two and then into five, and I stopped having to work as hard. So I turned around and started giving back where I was able to, trying to help the kids on the streets. It was never enough.”

“And it never will be,” Gage murmurs. “It’ll never feel like you’re doing enough.”

Our eyes meet and hold for a few long seconds as a sense of understanding passes between us. Gage isn’t so different from me after all.

“Well, I need some more cereal,” Booker announces, standing up to grab the box. “Anyone else?”

We all raise our hands, and I laugh softly. After everything, this companionship, this friendship, and this family is what I needed.

“I want to keep helping,” I say once we’ve refilled our bowls. “I want to do what I can, if you’ll let me. Perhaps we can come up with a better plan next time. I literally have an in with the elite.”

Archer smiles gently. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Who’d have thought the princess loved thievery so much,” Booker teases with a grin.

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