Page 44 of The Square

But Alec as in Alec and Eliza.

Danny gets out his phone and starts checking for a GPS signal or whatever. And I take a seat on the stone wall that surrounds a flower bed and watch the little girl grab a jump rope from a colorful wooden toy box next to the ivy-covered trellis which climbs all the way up the side of the stone house to the authentic thatched roof.

Who the fuck has a thatched roof in the twenty-first century?

I feel like vomiting.

“So we should talk plans,” I say, turning away from the house and the little girl to focus on Danny.

“What’s there to talk about?” Danny says, kinda distracted by his phone.

“Like, how we’re gonna get in there?”

He glances my direction and shrugs. “They steal priceless jewels and artifacts from museums. I’m pretty sure they have a whole playbook of plans to choose from. That’s why we’re here.”

“Eliza’s not gonna do it.”

“She will.”

“No.” I shake my head. “She won’t. And she’s the one we need because she’s the one who gets inside first.”

“Let Russell handle Eliza.”

“What did you promise him?”

“Not much.” Danny shrugs. “Just that last job we stole from them.”

“What? Hell the fuck no. We do not give back stolen money.”

“We do now,” Danny says. “I set up the wire transfer on the drive out here.”

“That’s just wrong,” I say. “We earned that money.”

“We stole it.”

“Yeah, but we got away with it. So we earned it.”

“Not this time. We’re giving it back.”

“They don’t even need money.”

“It’s not about money. As you well know, otherwise you wouldn’t even blink at giving back two hundred and fifty grand.”

I sigh. Because it’s true. If they had said, OK, we’ll help. Our price is a million dollars, I still would not have blinked. This is Alec and we need him back.

But whittle that amount down to one quarter and then tack on the understanding that this is them stealing something back from us and that changes everything.

“It’s dumb,” Danny says. “And we don’t have time for dumb. So the understanding is… they won that round.”

I want to explode with rage. “They didn’t win. We did.”

“And now we lost and they won.”

I say nothing.

“Christine, it’s stupid. This whole rivalry thing the two of you have is stupid. He loves you, not her. How do you not see that?”

I glance over at mini-Alec without meaning to and, of course, Danny doesn’t miss this slip-up.