Page 60 of Keep You Close

“What made him want to go into security?”

“Oh, sweetheart, you’re gonna want to sit down for this,” I said, waving toward her chair.

She watched me with scrunched brows as she crossed the room, and sat down.

“I’m assuming you haven’t heard anything about what my siblings and I used to do before we all started on our various careers?”

“No. I mean, I never really talked about personal things with Kingston when he came around.”

“King went into security because it was a specialty for all of us for years before we came to Navesink Bank.”

“Okay…” she said, nodding, waiting for me to find the right words.

But… were there right words for this? To tell a woman you had feelings for that you used to be an armed robber? That you had reasons? That you didn’t regret it? Even if, looking back with more mature eyes, you could see how much your combined grief had fueled your actions?

I guess I just had to lay it all out on the table.

“Alright. Let’s take it back,” I said. “Our mom was raising us on her own,” I explained. “Working a minimum-wage job that kept her just under full-time, so she didn’t get to have medical insurance. Then she got sick. And the bills piled up. Until, eventually, she couldn’t afford to fight it anymore.”

“Atlas,” she said, this time reaching for my hand. I let her, lacing my fingers through hers, and holding on.

The grief was still there. It was even still tinged with the anger that had fueled our actions after her death. But it was more distant now, dulled by the years between.

“King was stuck with all of us after,” I said. “And we were all so… angry.”

“Understandably.”

“And we kind of decided one night that we wanted to… make them pay.”

“Make who pay? The company?”

“Yeah. It’s a giant company. Thousands of stores. They could afford to pay for health insurance. Even for their part-timers. But I guess the billionaire CEOs and millionaire stockholders didn’t like that idea.

“Anyway… we came up with a crazy plan to… rob them,” I admitted.

“What?” she asked, eyes going round.

“Yeah. Then we… did it,” I admitted.

“All of you?”

“Yeah. And we didn’t just do it once or at one store. We never hurt anyone, of course. We just wanted the stores to hurt. But that was our… job, for lack of a better word, for a long time.

“Because of that, we got good at things like security systems. About what does and doesn’t work.”

“What made you guys stop?” she asked, still watching me with confused eyes, but not looking shocked or horrified like I’d been worrying she might.

“Funny story. That is because of our sister. We were on a job at one of the stores. She was working but Mark Mallick grabbed her during it, thinking she was, you know, an innocent bystander, and that he was saving her.”

“That’s the craziest meet-cute I think I’ve ever heard,” she said, lips spreading into a sweet smile.

“Yeah, it is. And she caught feelings for the guy. And eventually said she wanted out of this. I think, at that point, we were all done. But no one had the balls to say we wanted to move on from our little revenge mission.”

“Wow. And… and Mark was okay with that?”

“Well, being a loan shark enforcer kind of made it hard for him to judge,” I said, shrugging.

“True. But what about… what about your brothers’ wives. They all know?”

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