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“What do you get of this?”

Christophe thought about it,and I saw a brief flicker of hesitation in his confident air. In that moment, I saw the face of the boy on the balcony—searching, yearning… lost? My heart skipped the tiniest beat. What did he want withme?

“Iget to confirm something,”he said, finally. “And hopefully put something to rest. It’s not something I can easilyexplain.”

“Idon’t get it,”Isaid.

He smiled.“Me neither. So, are you interested in hearing what I have tooffer?”

“Tell me.”

“As punishmentfor your robbery attempt, I’m offering you the opportunity to repair the damage you did to my home. The door that was knocked down will be easy, repairing what you did when knocking around inside the air vents might take longer. At the end, I’ll have an account set up for your family to help you get back on your feet. How does thatsound?”

The stubborn sideof me wanted to badly to reject him just because, but I wasn’t going to do that to my family. This was exactly what we needed, and I could hardly even believe it was beingoffered.

“Okay,”I said, “Okay, fine. It’s not like I have much of a choice, anyway. When do Istart?”

He smirked at me.“Well, unless you have something more important to do, you can start rightaway.”

Fifteen minutes later,after notifying Mom and Jennifer about my new job, I was on my way back to the Luna residence—the one place I never would’ve imagined myself ever returning to. And the craziest, most ridiculous part about the whole thing was that he was in my life again. He sat in the seat adjacent to me, his eyes fixed on the scene flying by outside the car window. I snuck a few glances at him, and couldn’t help but smile tomyself.

Wasit completely insane of me to actually feel excited to be aroundhim?

“Listen,”I said, breaking the silence that had settled between us. “I don’t know what you’re after, and it’s hard for me to believe that this isn’t some kind of setup to screw me. But…” I sighed, and forced the words from my mouth. “I want to trust you. Not that I have much of a choice. I guess you know just how bad things are for my family. My mom isn’t in the best shape, and with my dad gone, I’m the only one capable of bringing in enough to feed my family. Jennifer, my sister, I can’t let her drop out of pre-academy. I made that mistake already.” I gritted my teeth. “So, I guess, what I’m trying to say is… Fuck. Thank you. I’m trustingyou.”

Christophe lookedover at me and did something that took me completely by surprise. He put his hand on my knee. “I’m putting my faith in you too, Mason,” he said. “And I’m hoping I’m not making a hugemistake.”