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“I’ll tell you. Should have from the start. Because if there’s one thing I learned from my time with your father, it’s that honesty isn’t always the best policy, but it sure is better than the alternative.”
Bricker remains silent, his expression guarded. “My phone’s downstairs,” he says.
I’d offer mine, but there’s only a fifty-fifty chance that Delligatti would answer a call coming from my number. “You stay here. I’ll bring it up.”
I don’t want him moving more than he has to, not before he sees a doctor. God knows what other damage Pony might have done to him. So I head down, find his phone, and I sit by him as he calls Delligatti and asks him to give the rest of a crew a heads up and instructions to spread the word that Pony’s our mole—and our new target.
Delligatti’s reaction is a whole lot of swearing and then a whole lot of violent talk, which I can’t help but approve of. I plan to do violence myself, if I get my hands on that treacherous little shit.
“Okay,” Bricker says, hitting End Call at last. “You heard. They’ll head here to group up once word is out. In the meantime…talk.”
Talk. Tell him everything.
I’ve never told anyoneeverything, but Bricker is owed the truth.
“Your dad and I, we met in Chino when I was in there for a stretch—I was only about Nico’s age, early twenties. Fabi saved my life while I was in there. Literally, I mean. We became friends, the way you make friends inside. Not necessarily the kind of people you’d spend time with in the real world, but inside…” I shrug. “It’s different. We both got out around the same time, and we met up again—for old time’s sake, I thought. But Fabi had a proposition that we team up. We agreed on a set number of jobs, set dollar amount, and absolutely no casualties, because neither of us wanted to do hard time. Just the two of us, and we’d hire a wheelman, different guy each time, to throw off the law. And that’s what we did for a few years. Everything ran like clockwork. We lasted because we stuck hard to the rules—absolute loyalty to each other and to our creed, and to give it all away when we hit our ceiling. We were supposed to part ways and never see other again for the rest of our lives. But Fabi broke that final rule, and contacted me with a crazy idea. One last job…”
CHAPTER43
MAX
While I talk,I keep cleaning Bricker up, wiping all that blood off his precious skin. It’s a peculiar sensation, cleaning the blood off him, and not a sensation that I like. My hands are so cold I’m surprised he doesn’t complain, and they have a shake to them that I can’t suppress.
I’ve seen men bleed before, patched them up more times than I can count, but never like this. Never when Ifeltlike this.
And never while talking about the one thing in my past I regret so much.
“Fabi talked like this job was supposed to be our grand finale. But I shut him down straight away. Told him we already agreed the last one wouldbethe last, and why the hell was he contacting me when we’d agreed to go cold. And you know me, Bricker. I don’t like risk. I told him I couldn’t be a part of it.”
His brow furrows as he processes my words. I wait to see if he has any questions.
He doesn’t.
“First National was the target,” I go on. “I knew they were aligned with PacSyn. The consequences of fucking up would be…severe.” My fingers brush against his wound as I work, and he winces. “Sorry,” I mutter.
“Keep going.”
“You know as well as I do, stealing from the Pacific Syndicate paints a bullseye on your back,” I say. “I told Fabi he’d be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. Told him to think about his girl and his kid. But he wouldn’t listen to me.”
“So you left him to do it alone?”
I swallow hard, wiping away the last traces of blood from his hand, then keeping his hand in mine. “Fabi liked the thrill, that was the problem. I treated it like a job, but over the years, he got addicted to the rush. Ihopedhe wouldn’t go through with it. But I wasn’t surprised when he did.”
I can feel the walls I’ve so carefully constructed over the years crumbling down around me, leaving me exposed and vulnerable, all my emotional security measures short-circuiting, flashing danger.
And all I can think about is how much I want to hold Bricker close and never let him go.
“So despite my refusal, Fabi went on with the heist. He hired a fast-talking, second-rate security specialist to replace me, and…well, I guess you know what happened. They didn’t stand a chance. The wheelman and the other guy with him were both shot and killed. Fabi was lucky to be taken alive.” I pause and look down at his hand in mine. He hasn’t pulled it away. Yet.
“Must’ve felt nice to be proved right,” Bricker says, so neutral that I can’t even tell if it’s a dig.
I scoff. “Are you kidding me? I never felt worse in my life. Iknewit was my fault, Bricker. I should have been there, or at the very least, I should have helped him. Laid out some plans for him. Maybe if I had, things would have turned out differently.”
“Maybe,” he echoes hollowly, his gaze drifting away from mine.
As the silence stretches between us, I feel an urge to fill the void with words—explanations, excuses, regrets. But none of those words will change anything. And before I can try to speak, Bricker does.
“You made a choice, Max.” His voice trembles, just a little. “But my father made his own choice first, and it was a—well, a real fucking dumb one. Now that I know you, I can’t believe heeverran a job without you. That washismistake. He should’ve listened to you.”
