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“I know you’re wickedly intelligent, ruthless, daring, fearless. I know you don’t need anyone. I know you are the rightful heir to your father’s crown, single-handedly pulling off the biggest heist in decades.”
“You figured I’d make it on my own, with nothing and no one.” She ground her teeth before snapping out, “Congratulations on being right.”
“I figured you’d come back, and when you didn’t, I searched for you. I searched for years, and only after I’d given up, there you were on my video feed, unrecognizable except for your glorious laugh.” He took a step toward her; she took a step back. “I know you, Aria. I know you loved what we did in that alley, and if I threw you on that bed and stripped you naked, you’d love it again.”
There was a moment, a look in her eyes where that possibility was achingly real. Then she said, “Get out before I kill you.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Like you didn’t take everything that should’ve been mine.”
“I didn’t. It’s all still there. The house, the money, the rare collections. I put them in a trust for you.”
She jerked back a step as if he’d struck her. “What?”
“I took your father’s client list. I took his connections. I borrowed his name to get jobs, but I’d earned at least that. I didn’t take anything that belonged to you. It’s all still there waiting for you to claim it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to. I can show you.” He put his hand to his pocket for his cell. He could call up documents to prove it.
“You’re going to show me exquisite forgeries. Who do you think you’re talking to? Dear old Dad might have taken you as his protégé, taught you all the tricks, but I listened at doors and went out and found new teachers and learned them anyway.”
It wasn’t a lie and the paperwork was real, but he’d never convince her this way. “I’ll provide the bank account codes. There is a caretaker appointed to look after the house and another to retain the collections. They will recognize your authority immediately.”
“Why would you do that? You never needed to work. Never needed to take another risk again. Your secrets died with him, and an angry, disinherited daughter wouldn’t be able to do much to change that. You could’ve sold the house, the art, the antiquities.”
“They weren’t mine to sell.”
“You’re a thief.”
“I loved you. I thought you’d come back and we’d work it out together, but you disappeared. While I was signing papers I barely understood, you ran.”
“You never loved me. You just liked the idea of fucking with Dad by fucking me.”
He sighed. “That’s not true.” In her heart she had to know that.
“You’re a thief, a conman and a liar.”
“Why am I here? Why didn’t I take Sweet Celestia? You’d never have known it was me.”
She slapped her hands on her hips. “You’re running some scam and it’s so diabolical I can’t work out what it is. But I will. Get out.”
He sat on the bed instead. He’d take fight over flight. He’d take a bullet to be in the same room with her. “I only just found you again.”
“I don’t know what this romantic notion you have of me is. Whatever we were to each other it was a long time and a lot of lies ago. Get. Out.”
“Tell me you didn’t want more in that alley. Tell me you didn’t want skin on skin, soft on hard, my mouth all over you.”
She crossed the room and o
pened the door wide. “Get out.” But the flush was back on her face.
“You were the most ferocious thing I’d ever seen. Didn’t matter how daring the robbery, how high the risk of getting caught, the only thing that scared me was you.”
She let the door close, but stayed across the room.
“When he made me live in half that mansion house and not talk to you, I thought it was some kind of test, and in the beginning I was too afraid he’d turn me in to fuck with his rules. But you were worth every risk. My biggest score was you, when all we ever did was pretend not to see each other in the kitchen. And when I figured out he kept us apart to be cruel to you, it was all I could do to wait for you to turn eighteen before I took you from him.”
