Six

Jack and Gage were waiting at Rose’s garage when we arrived. They’d brought a stack of pizzas, a few bottles of pop, and an organic kale salad and kombucha tea for Cristian.

After everyone had caught up, I told them about Angelini’s visit. Jack glared at me while I was talking, his lips pressed tight together, hands shoved in his pockets in his trademark pissed-off pose. I knew he was annoyed that I hadn’t called him the minute Angelini left my office, but my trust in him was broken and I couldn’t take the risk that he might disappear before everyone had a chance to weigh in about what we should do.

Gage was out of his chair and slamming his fist into random objects in the garage as soon as I was done. He was lean and muscled, with the most sculpted jawline I’d ever seen, tawny brown hair, and sharp blue eyes that only softened when Chloe was around. Gage wasn’t a big talker, but both Olivia and Chloe adored him, and there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for his girls. Any threat to them sent him into a protective frenzy.

“I still can’t believe this is real,” Cristian said, stretched out on one of Rose’s folding chairs. “It almost seems too crazy to believe.”

“As crazy as stealing a necklace from the safe of a mob boss while organizing his daughter’s wedding and then helping her escape a forced marriage to a rival mob boss’s son?” I gestured to the whiteboard, which still held the remnants of the plan for our last heist.

“Where is the necklace now?” Cristian asked. “Does anyone know?”

“It’s in India,” I said. “Jack stole it after we returned it to the museum and—”

“Reacquired,” he corrected.

“Whatever.” I shot him a glare. He knew there was nothing I liked less than being interrupted when I was meeting with the crew. “He then repatriated it to India, and it is now in a museum in Delhi.”

“The simple solution seems to be to go to Delhi and steal it back,” Anil said. “Does everyone have a valid passport?”

Jack shook his head. “It’s not simple at all. Pulling off a heist in your hometown is one thing. Traveling to a foreign country to pull off a heist when you have no resources, no contacts, no equipment, and no information is something else entirely.”

“Maybe we should consider alternatives before we book plane tickets to India so we can break into a highly secure museum, steal a cultural artifact worth $30 million, illegally smuggle it out of the country and into the US, and give it to a leader of organized crime,” Chloe suggested. “Just thinking out loud here.”

“Garcia confirmed Angelini was who he said he was,” I said. “I managed to text him for help, and he showed up while Angelini was still there. From what he said, the mob doesn’t consider alternative options.”

“You texted Garcia for help?” Jack gritted out. “Garcia? Not me?”

“He has a gun.”

“So do I.”

“He’s steady and reliable,” I said. “He doesn’t disappear for eight months. He doesn’t go on business trips that require burner phones and secret codes. He doesn’t refuse to tell me what he does for a living. I texted HELP and I knew he’d come. I wasn’t sure about you.”

“You don’t think I would have come if you’d texted me for help?” Indignation laced Jack’s tone.

“For all I knew, you were being tossed out a window in Rio, tortured by the Italian Mafia in Tuscany, or you were in the North Sea trapped in a Russian submarine.”

“The Italian Mafia are based in Sicily,” he corrected me. “Tuscany doesn’t have the port access they need for the drug trade.”

I folded my arms and sighed. “You missed the point entirely.”

“Listen, as much as I want to hang with you guys and rehash old times and listen to your relationship woes, I’m out,” Cristian said. “If you recall, I wasn’t involved in the heist. As soon as we found out that Angelini had Mafia connections and I realized I’d slept with his wife, I walked away.”

“And then you showed up at the wedding and helped us out by sleeping with her again,” Emma pointed out. “You are still part of this.”

“Not the part that seems to have pissed off the boss of the biggest Mafia family in town.” Cristian grabbed his satchel and threw it over his shoulder. “You really should use those recycle bins I left here during the last heist. We can’t do too much for the environment.”

“You can’t be out,” I said. “I told you. He’s got your name—”

“Tell him my name shouldn’t be on the list because I wasn’t part of it,” he said. “He’s got nothing on me.”

“Except the part where you slept with his brother’s wife during his niece’s wedding,” Emma pointed out.

“If he knew about it, I’d already be dead.” Cristian pushed open the door. “Sorry, guys. I’ve got high anxiety and a low danger tolerance, and I’m dealing with too much in my life right now. I lost my house, my dogs, my show, and all the reward money. I just can’t with the whole mob-boss thing. I need to look after myself.”

We stared in stunned silence as the door slammed behind him.

“I can’t believe he just walked out on us,” I said.

“Cristian has always been about Cristian.” Jack checked the window before pulling the blind. “He did us a favor. When you’re dealing with the mob, you don’t want people on your crew who aren’t fully committed.”

“What would Angelini really do if we don’t hand over the necklace?” Anil asked. “I have a hard time believing he would kill us all. That’s a lot of dead bodies to get rid of, and in the end, he wouldn’t get what he wanted.”

“Do you know nothing about the mob?” Emma asked. “Haven’t you seen Reservoir Dogs? Casino? How about Casino Royale? Killing is too easy. It’s the torture they enjoy. Who knows what would have happened in Simi’s office if Garcia hadn’t shown up?”

“I’ll tell you what would have happened if you’d called me,” Jack said, sulking. “I would have dealt with the problem there and then. But you didn’t trust me.”

It wasn’t just a matter of trust. Jack would be dead if I’d called him. Angelini wanted his head, and in hindsight calling Garcia had been the right decision. “I didn’t text you because I thought you’d probably run in the other direction,” I snapped. “Or maybe back to Bloomingdale’s for another smooch session with Clare.”

“Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise.” Emma held out her hand, and Gage and Anil each handed her a twenty-dollar bill.

“You took bets on us?” I stared at them, aghast.

“You gotta admit that you two were always an unlikely couple,” Emma said, pocketing the cash. “Bad-boy rogue thief with dubious underworld affiliations and no fixed address. Hardworking cookie-cutter good girl who worked in a candy store, spent her Friday nights watching crime shows with her octogenarian landlady, showed up every Sunday for dinner with the fam, and never refused a meet and greet with a prospective husband because she didn’t want to let her parents down.”

“I organized a heist,” I protested. “I was arrested for trying to break into a museum. I robbed a mob boss. I got so drunk I passed out on the floor. I did bad things.”

“In a good-girl way. No selfishness involved.”

“What about another heist?” Anil suggested. “We could steal something valuable and then offer to buy the necklace from the museum in Delhi. What rate of interest is Angelini charging us?”

“He said the necklace is now valued at $30 million. He was going to charge 28 percent—”

“So, we owe him $8.4 million,” Anil said, cutting me off. “Unless it’s compound interest—”

“Actually, it was 28 percent and then I made him angry by comparing him to a credit card company so now it’s 30 percent.”

“We owe an even $9 million,” Anil said. “If he didn’t say compound interest, then I think it’s safe to assume it’s simple.”

“I hate it when you do math stuff like that,” Emma said. “It makes me feel like I could be doing so much more with my brain.”

“That’s a crazy amount of money.” Chloe shook her head in disbelief. “He can’t be serious. We’re just ordinary people. Where would we come up with that kind of cash?”

“We barely made it through the last heist,” I added. “We can’t do another one. Even if we did steal something else, we’d have to sell it on the black market, and then convince the museum to sell us the necklace. Too many things could go wrong.”

“I could make another replica,” Anil offered. “It worked last time.”

“He won’t fall for that,” Jack said. “He’ll have a jeweler with him to check it out. I think our best bet is to leave the country and lay low for a bit while we figure this all out.”

“But Olivia is in school,” Chloe protested. “I can’t just pull her out and go on the run. What kind of life is that for a child?”

“One where her mom hasn’t been killed by a crazy Mafia boss.” Emma shrugged when Chloe glared at her. “Just keeping it real.”

I held up my hand to quiet all the protests. “We can’t panic,” I said. “We need facts. Would he really whack all of us if we don’t give it back, or was that just his idea of a motivational speech? I’ll see what I can find out about him. In the meantime, we need to look into retrieving the necklace because that is the simplest solution, leaving the matter of the interest aside.”

“Gage and I will do a little digging into the museum in India and see what we can find out on the dark web about their security system.” Chloe shared a look with Gage. “Maybe it won’t be that hard to steal…”

“We still need to be prepared to leave the country in case it all goes sideways,” Jack said. “I know a guy in West Englewood who can get us fake passports. We’d be too easy to trace if we use our real ones. I’ll need Simi to come with me as a cover for the meet. We can drive out there tomorrow.”

“I can’t be in a car with you all the way to West Englewood,” I said, keeping my voice low. “What if I get the urge to throw something at you when we’re on the road?”

“Why doesn’t Emma drive?” Chloe suggested. “She’s good at staying neutral.”

“Why can’t you come?”

“Because I would take your side,” she said. “Then both of us would be throwing things at him and nothing would get done.”

“You’re such a good best friend.” I smiled for the first time since Angelini had walked into my office, pleased that my bestie would take my side no matter what.

“Until the end.”

I just hoped “the end” wasn’t four weeks away.