Heist Royale (Thieves’ Gambit #2)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“BS.” Kyung-soon flipped over Mylo’s latest cards. It was a pair of twos, totally not the eights he’d said they were.

“God damn it.” He dragged in a heap of sand along with the pile of cards. I tugged my sunglasses down to get a clearer view of Kyung-soon’s chipper smile.

Mylo slapped the sand off his hands. “Stop signaling her.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Flipping to my back on the beach mat, I closed my eyes, blocking out the drone of laughter and music and beach balls, and just focused on the white noise of the tide, the tickle of the sun on my skin, and the smell of sea salt. I could almost fool myself into thinking I was back home. The illusion didn’t last long, though. A few seconds at most. The longer I went without going home, the less I was able to pretend.

Never in my life had I thought I’d ever go twelve months without having set foot on Andros. But here we were. I wondered if they knew it’d been a year to the day since the end of our first Gambit. Was that why they took me to the beach?

Mylo got called on his fake cards two more times, and literally tried to bury his head in the sand. He’d ask Kyung-soon for a rematch later, and to be fair, I’d help him hustle her the next game.

“Devroe’s birthday is next week,” Kyung-soon said, wiggling her toes in the sand. “I think as a gift we should either help him break into the Vatican archives to steal a book or into a West End tailor to swipe designs for a new custom suit.”

“I get the suit sketch thing, not following on the Vatican book,” Mylo said.

“It’s for his mum,” I said. “She started collecting rare books a couple of months ago.”

“Ah, so his gift is a gift for his mum?” Mylo asked.

“His gift would be helping him acquire a gift for his mum, and we’d be doing it pro bono,” Kyung-soon said.

Rare book collecting wasn’t exactly the hobby I thought Diane Abara would pick up when she had to abandon her previous hobby—the quest to murder my whole family. But since that one was off the table now, and with Ms.Abara seeming just a little less enthusiastic about Mom’s death knowing what she had wished for, rare book collecting wasn’t the worst replacement. Helping him get his hands on something that would make his mum smile was a stellar birthday gift. As for my mom, well, sometimes she called. Sometimes I answered. But she was way more likely to get a response to the job requests she sent to my new black box. Well, the ones sent by her assistant Marc.

“Vatican book it is, then!” Mylo said. “I’ve always wanted to meet the pope.”

“If you get to meet the pope before I do while you’re stealing from his library, then I’ve lost all faith in God,” Noelia’s voice bellowed out of my phone, startling all of us for a moment. She’d been silent for so long, I forgot she was FaceTiming. She did that a lot these days. Call, chat, and then stay on the line while she was doing whatever else on her end and not pop in again until she felt like it.

“Since when do you want to meet the pope?”

“I’m Catholic. Every Catholic wants to meet the pope.” I thought I heard Noelia tapping a pencil. “There’s also a rule in the Boschert family that if anyone ever manages to steal the pope’s rosary, they’ll become the de facto head of the family.”

A smaller voice babbled over the phone. “Nicki says if any of you manage to do that, then you’ll be good enough to join the Boschert family.”

“I think I’d rather die.”

Devroe’s voice slid in behind me. I sat up, and his arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me in between his legs. The sun had been warm, but snug with my back against his chest was so much hotter. “You die, I die, remember. So how about we don’t do that anytime soon?”

Mylo was now arguing with Noelia about whether or not he’d be able to pass off a fake stole and take ownership of the whole Boschert empire, to which Noelia insisted that anything from the pope would be so holy you’d feel the difference, when Mylo went catatonic midsentence, staring in disbelief at his phone.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s calling!” Mylo scrambled up and started pacing away.

“Who?” Kyung-soon asked.

“Taiyō! Everybody, shut up.” He said that like he wasn’t running to take the call yards away from us. I watched him hurdle-jump over a family’s blanket before finally landing in a relatively secluded area of the beach.

“I give it three minutes before Taiyō hangs up on him,” I said.

“Four,” Devroe said.

“Two.” From Kyung-soon.

“An hour,” Noelia said. I squinted down at the screen, her camera showing her working on a braid at her vanity. It was night on her side of the world, and with the cat’s-eye makeup and sliver of a silk evening gown I could see, it was obvious she was headed to something important. “I’m a romantic at heart,” she admitted. “Plus, Taiyō was on my team during the Gambit, remember? I got a much better idea of what his real impressions of everyone were. He wouldn’t have called if he didn’t want to listen for at least an hour.” She slid a bobby pin into place behind her ear. “Not that I want that brother kidnapper to be happy—”

“Witch Bitch, will you hurry up?” Nicholi interrupted. “The whole family’s almost here. Wait, where’s your pointy hat and broomstick?”

I think she threw a mascara tube or something at him.

“Later,” she said. “Let me know what I get for winning that bet too.” The screen shook as she grabbed her phone and waved goodbye, but before she hung up, she hit the flip screen. “Oh, one last thing.”

Below the knee-high hem of her cocktail dress, I could see some of the coolest ankle booties. White leather, with painted ice crystals climbing up from the soles. Bold choice, especially with her entire family meeting for their—how had she put it?—semiannual unofficial ranking dinner?

Let’s just hope Papa Boschert remembered that Noelia was perhaps the only person in the family with other career options if she remained underappreciated there.

I pressed the end call button myself, since Noelia seemed to have forgotten, but was surprised to see a string of rubies now attached to my wrist. No, the gems weren’t the right shade. They were garnets. I tilted my head up, peering at Devroe.

“Really? I thought we were just here to chill like normal people.”

“Couldn’t help myself. Besides, Kyung-soon’s been swiping sunglasses and phones since we got out of the Uber.”

Kyung-soon pursed her lips and nudged her beach bag a little farther away, like that would hide it.

The sunlight sparkled from my bracelet. “They’re not even real rubies.”

“Give me a break. It’s Point Dume, not Venice Beach.”

I ran my fingers over the not-so-expensive gems. Pricey or not, I was already treasuring it as much as the dozens of other pieces Devroe had swiped for me in the six months since the Gambit ended. What sort of collection would I have if this went on? In a year, five years, ten years. Twenty.

I shifted around. Devroe’s arm stayed snug around me. I drew him in for a soft kiss and slid a pair of Ray-Bans I’d stolen for him over his eyes.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

Kyung-soon rummaged around in her bag. “Hey, is that from my collection? Not cool, I just found a buyer for those.” She strained to snatch them off Devroe’s face, but I pulled us both back onto the sand first.

And then we were running, Devroe and I hand in hand across the sand, with Kyung-soon at our heels. Past Mylo, blushing into his phone and not seeming to notice the three of us at all.