Page 61 of The Triangle

It turns out I love going to the opera. Who knew? We’re laughing deliriously in the Presidential Suite of the Four Seasons, the lights of Sydney Harbour twinkling at our feet.

I’m drunk. On all of it. The champagne, the adrenaline, the rush of discovering something new, the profoundly erotic pulsing that happens in my body when I take someone’s life.

I’m sure that last part is fucked up.

Maybe it is. Maybe it’s not. But it’s honest.

I don’t care if the things we do are right or wrong. I don’t even care that Alec is a pretty good liar. Hell, who am I kidding, he’s a great liar.

But he won’t lie to me. Danny either. So when we started pulling heists, I believed him when he said that no one would get hurt.

And when they did, I believed him that it wasn’t my fault.

And when it became clear that it was my fault, I believed him that it was for the best.

They were bad people. People who deserved the things they had coming.

I believed him when he said that stealing the diamond from his father would be ‘a laugh.’

I believed him when he said that no harm would come from it.

And I kept believing. And I kept believing. And I still believe.

I know that makes me naïve. And I don’t care.

Because I also know that I love this life and that it’s a whole lot better than the life Danny and I had before.

I love Danny. He’s a good person and he deserves to be fed, and warm, and happy.

And underneath it all, Alec is a good person too… Okay, maybe not a good person, but he loves us. I know he does. And I’m grateful for that. Because it makes all this possible.

I don’t want it to end.

I just wish Danny felt the same way.

He did for a while. But that was before things got complicated. And not complicated in the way life gets complicated when you’re stealing things and killing people. He found ways to be OK with that stuff. Justified it or whatever.

But complicated in the way things have gotten with me and Alec. It was inevitable. Three teenage kids with no accountability to anyone and no one telling us what we can and can’t do? What did he think was gonna happen?

Hell, if Danny hadn’t been around, I never would have finished boarding school. I barely finished as it was. Danny kept making Alec enroll me somewhere every time we’d land in a new location. I’d last maybe two weeks before some rich Swiss girl, or some rich French girl, or some rich Japanese girl would say something snotty and I’d punch her lights out and get expelled. But Danny kept insisting, and Alec kept buying my way into a new one.

The only one I kinda liked was the last one, in Barcelona. It wasn’t that I liked the school so much as they had this incredible music hall. I guess they prided themselves on having cranked out some music prodigy once and decided that they should capitalize on their reputation as the place that produced… whoever. From what I could see, the crazy beautiful music hall hardly ever got used by anyone, so I’d just let myself in and plink out stuff on this hundred-thousand-dollar Steinway they had.

I don’t think I’m very good, and I never had a teacher or anything, but I liked playing. It relaxed me. Which is probably why I made it the six final weeks to graduation at that place. Instead of getting into a fight, I’d just go play the piano. Maybe that’s why the opera tonight was so amazing. I think it felt calming in the same way.

Anyway, if not for Danny, instead of just pulling ‘holiday capers,’ as Alec called them, throughout those years, this life we have now would have been my full-time job. This thing between Alec and me would’ve happened a whole lot sooner.

I know Danny hates it. I just don’t know why. I think I made it pretty clear that I wanted him. Wanted to be with him. Needed him. So many times. But he wouldn’t take me. I would’ve begged if I thought it’d have worked.

I mean, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t even see a cock, much less touch one, until my eighteenth birthday. The same night I had my first kiss.

Does that say something about me?

Alec said he had a present for me. And it wasn’t the yacht he rented for the party. He pulled me downstairs to the lower deck and gave me the diamond necklace I’m wearing tonight.

I don’t even know if he planned on kissing me. I certainly don’t think he planned on crying in front of me. His parents had been dead a year and I know he had never cried over it. Not until that night. It came out of nowhere. He placed the diamonds around my neck and burst into tears.

He looked so sweet. Fragile. Broken. Like nothing I’d ever seen him look like before. And it scared me a little. I guess he saw that fear in my eyes because the tears stopped just as quickly as they started.