Page 15 of The Company We Keep
14
March 2015 · AIIB Mission Month 10
C arrow wasted no time, grabbing Dust hard by the arm and pulling him back up the alleyway.
He was moving slow — far too slow. Whoever else was in that van would surely be just a few paces behind them. Not to mention the cops who would be on their way by now, responding to the robbery.
“Vi, I need you at Third and Executive,” he barked into the mic, trying to drag Dust faster. “If we’re not there, just head south on Third.”
“Roger, boss.”
The kid must be in goddamn shock. It was like he was moving in slow motion.
“Dust, let’s go,” he said, softer. “I’ve got you. You’re ok. But we have to go. Vi’s coming for us.”
The words seemed to finally reach him. He shook his head as if clearing his vision, nodding at Carrow.
He braced himself to cover Dust every time they took a corner, prepared to shove the kid to the ground at the sound of the first gunshot if he had to.
But the firefight he was prepared for never came .
Vashvi was waiting for them in the sedan right where he’d told her to be. Wordlessly, they piled into the backseat and the sniper squealed away, back home, back to the safety of the penthouse.
Dust felt numb as Carrow pulled him to his chest, curling fingers into his hair.
“Jesus, Dust. Jesus. You’re ok.”
There was an AIIB agent back there, dead in the street.
He’d looked older than Dust. Maybe he had a family.
The man hadn’t even drawn a gun. He knew Dust wouldn’t shoot.
Sounds seemed to be reaching him the way they would if he were underwater: slow and muffled and strange. Carrow’s hands were on him. He was getting motion sick from being in the back of the sedan. Vashvi squealed around corners. He felt like a zombie.
McBride was waiting for them when they arrived back at the penthouse, and idly Dust wondered who had called her in and for what. Nobody — on their side of the law, anyway — had gotten hurt.
She took his blood pressure in the living room, shined a light in his eyes. It felt like he was watching a movie — as if the body being moved around wasn’t his own. Every sensation was secondhand, like reality was slightly out of sync with Dust’s understanding of it.
He was losing his goddamn mind.
It was as if the border between Dust and not-Dust was blurring, like his sense of self was bleeding out into the ether.
Someone pressed a cool glass of water into one of his hands and a pill in the other.
“It’s just acute stress ,” McBride said.
The two of them had gotten Dust to lay down in Carrow’s room and then moved to his office to talk.
“All of his vitals are normal,” she said. “Obviously something happened that shook him the hell up, though. You’ll want to watch him for a few days — keep him out of alcohol and get plenty of fluids in him. If he’s still acting jumpy or morose in a week, call me and I’ll come back. You don’t want it to swell up into full-blown PTSD.”
Carrow nodded. No, he didn’t.
He didn’t press Dust .
Whatever had happened there in front of the bank had shaken him up, that much was obvious. Even when he wasn’t doped up, Dust walked around that first week like a somnambulist or secluded himself in his lab.
A week from the day that it happened, he didn’t come to Carrow’s room to sleep. That was fine — Carrow wasn’t mad, wasn’t going to press him. But when the afternoon rolled around the next day and there was still no sign of Dust, he started to feel off. He gave Dust until 2:00 to show his face voluntarily.
Yes, they were sleeping together.
Yes, Dust was admittedly the greatest thing to happen to him since he’d hired The Company, but… there were still those walls. They both had their secrets.
He didn’t want to intrude on whatever Dust was going through and at the same time, he didn’t feel equipped to offer Dust anything. Hell, he couldn’t even think about things that had happened a decade ago without feeling like his mind was an open wound.
But at two, he couldn't ignore it any longer. He knocked on Dust’s door.
When he didn’t get an answer, he swallowed hard and opened the door anyway.
Dust was curled on top of his comforter with headphones on. He saw Carrow immediately, pulling the headphones off of his ears.
“Hey,” Carrow said softly. “Sorry to barge in. You didn’t answer.”
“Jesus. You’re not barging in. It’s your house.”
“You know what I mean.”
Dust sat up and moved to the edge of the bed to settle next to Carrow. Carrow caught him by the chin as soon as he was close enough, pulling him into a kiss. It didn’t last long, Dust breaking off and sitting back.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Will you at least come take a bath? You’ll feel better.”
Dust sat on the closed toilet and watched Carrow draw a bath for him in the big clawed-foot tub in his suite.
He’d discarded his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.
There was something steadying about Carrow in that moment. Unguarded. It didn’t matter who he was outside of the walls of the penthouse. It didn’t matter who Dust was, either.
Dust loved him deeply in that moment.
He’d felt the thrum and flow of love for the other man long before then. But it was too frightening to say it. There was too much risk there .
The words were at the tip of his tongue, though, as Carrow tested the water for him, as Carrow crossed the marble tiles to undress Dust. His movements weren’t hungry or erotic, but they were careful, purposeful, caring. He eased off Dust’s clothes and guided him to the bath. The water was warm. Soothing. He hadn’t bathed in days — hadn’t avoided it, but it just… hadn’t occurred to him. He just wanted to sleep. He wanted to forget the man in the alley — to forget AIIB and everyone who had ever known and worried about Charlie Judge, forget his parents and the little town where he grew up. He had spent the week wishing he never existed.
Without a word, he slipped under the surface of the water and let the world disappear. Dust held his breath, submerged, listening to the big hollow sounds that echoed around him as the faucet roared with fresh, hot water.
When he came up for air, Carrow was there, sitting on the floor by the tub, waiting for him.
He let Dust sit in silence for a few minutes.
Carrow hadn’t had much to say to him all week.
Some part of him wanted Carrow to have answers. Something in him needed the man to tell him that everything would be OK.
“What happened back there, Dust?” Carrow asked, gently.
Dust looked at him, searching his face for some subtext. Was he suspicious of the truth?
“I know what literally happened,” Carrow clarified. “But what was that to you? What’s happened because of it?”
Dust considered his next words carefully. In this of all moments, he did not want to lie to Carrow.
“The man that you shot was someone from my past,” Dust said. “I never thought I would have to face it. And then he was there — no warning, no way to defend myself.”
“You’re scared? ”
“I’m scared that I’ll never escape it.”
Carrow nodded and turned away, his eyes fixed on some faraway point as he considered the words.
There was a long pause, and Dust wondered if he had said the wrong thing.
“You know my nightmares,” Carrow said, breaking the stretching silence.
Dust nodded.
“I had a crew before The Company. The Kettle Syndicate. Do you already know this story?”
Dust shook his head, no. It was a lie, of course. He knew the outline of what Carrow was about to tell him. It had been in A.R. Carrow’s file back at AIIB. But some part of him needed to know the story that was about to be offered from the man’s own perspective.
“There were more of them, exponentially more people, a bigger operation. I didn’t love every man who worked for me, but I respected them and what they gave up to be a part of what we were. I’d never had a family before them — just my mother — and she’d passed long before.”
That was news to Dust. He’d never known any family details about Carrow and AIIB had never tracked anything down.
“I’m sorry.”
Carrow waved a hand.
“It was a long time ago. You know what I mean. But I appreciate it.”
He paused, running his thumb over his lower lip as he thought of how to frame the story.
“I thought we were invincible. I thought about our business and not our safety. And they’re dead because of me and my arrogance.”
Dust had expected Carrow to weave some sort of parable out of the situation. He never thought the man had internalized it to that extent — had blamed himself so deeply for all of these years for so much.
“My past is an awful place, and when I can help it, I don’t live there. It cripples me when I think about it. I get sick over it, thinking about the same thing happening to Leta, Wayles, Herron, Vi… to you… It’s a dark, horrible place, and I try to be strong and to forget it. I can steel myself to be the best for you all, to keep you safe, but I cannot dwell on the past.
“That’s why I watch the sun set — that’s why I had to kiss you that first day. We are not our pasts, and we can only live in the present. The choice we make today is all that matters.”
The words resonated deeper than Carrow could know.
Some part of what he was saying seemed to… absolve him.
Carrow dipped his hand below the surface of the water, finding Dust’s hand, squeezing it tight.
“Your past is not what matters to me. And it can’t be what defines you now. Do you understand me, Dust?”
“Yes,” he said quickly, as if Carrow would change his mind at any minute. “I understand you.”
Dust came to bed with Carrow after the bath.
A slow realization dawned on him: he would never contact AIIB again. But the bureau wouldn’t stop trying to get him back.
Maybe there was another way — a path that was neither the current one with The Company nor the turn back to AIIB. With Carrow’s wealth, they could buy new identities. They could start over somewhere out of the reach of anyone who wanted to harm The Company, who knew the name Charlie Judge.
In Carrow’s arms, Dust fell into a deep sleep.
The next day , Dust seemed more himself.
He got up early, drank two cups of coffee, and helped Herron in the armory. He disappeared into his lab for a long stretch of the day. In the late afternoon, he asked around to see if anyone had dinner plans and volunteered to cook for the first time in several weeks.
By the time they were all retiring, Carrow had half-forgotten the week that was at their backs, the way that Dust had been morose and withdrawn.
He followed the man into bed with no intention of going to sleep.
"Would you ever go straight?"
The question caught Carrow off guard, and he chuckled, grabbing Dust by the hips and dragging him closer.
"Why go straight when I have all this at arm's length?"
"That's not what I meant," Dust said. He wasn't smiling.
"I know what you meant. But my answer stands. Why would I go straight? What could I gain from abandoning everything I've built here?"
Dust seemed to consider it, the corners of his mouth turning down. Was this related to their conversation the night before? He rolled away, out of Carrow's grasp.
"What if someone found a way to take this all from you?"
Carrow frowned.
"That won’t happen."
Dust flashed him a look — his eyes suddenly wild.
"Just fucking humor me, Ansel. In a universe where it could happen — would you ever go straight? Use your money, buy a new identity, and get the hell out of Las Abras."
The look told him Dust wasn't playing. It told him that he had no choice but to tell the truth, because Dust would know a lie the minute it passed Carrow's lips.
"No. I wouldn't," he said. "I would raze this fucking city before I would leave my family vulnerable. "
"And if The Company is gone?"
"Then I'll be gone, too, and I'll take out every cop, every enemy I can on my way there."
Dust closed his eyes and seemed to go far away. Every muscle in his tanned body was lax.
"What's bothering you?" Carrow asked.
"I'm in love with you, Ansel."
Carrow took him hard by the arm before he thought through what he was doing, rolling quick until he was on top of the other man, pressing him down across the hips, pinning him.
"Do you mean that?"
Dust chuckled, his eyebrows raised in a look of helplessness. Carrow's heart went wild in his chest.
"I couldn't lie about it if I wanted to."
"And so, what, you love me — so we should leave Leta and Wayles and all of them and move somewhere with a white picket fence and I'll get a day job?"
"What if there wasn't a choice? If the only thing that could protect them would be me leaving… Would you come with me?”
Carrow let his weight sag over Dust's body.
"I love you, Dust," he said before leaning to kiss the other man's neck. "But I'm telling you the truth when I say I don't know the answer to that question."
Dust moaned and arched against him, reacting to the sensation of a tongue against his sensitive skin, the teeth worrying his throat, before pulling back, pushing Carrow away with a hand planted firmly in the center of his chest.
"You're serious, boss?"
"I hate how much I love you," Carrow said without missing a beat, rolling his hips against Dust, meaning every word of it. "I hate how scared I am every time I put you on the street for a job. "
He’d held the words back so long. What did it mean to say “I love you” to someone you couldn’t fully protect? What use was it to state the obvious when he couldn’t give Dust the guarantee of a happy future? He didn’t want to pledge himself to Dust — but only because he didn’t want the younger man to pledge himself to Carrow.
He’d always prepared for his life to be lonely with a nasty end. Just because he was no longer lonely didn’t mean that the trajectory of a villain’s life got any more promising.
But once the words were out, he couldn’t hold back the rest. It felt good to say them out loud. Dust deserved to hear the reality of what was between them. He made his way, planting hot kisses down the center of Dust's body.
"I hate that I worry about you, that I think about you when you're not in front of my face."
Carrow stopped to tease a perfect nipple between his lips and Dust raked his hands through his hair.
"I hate that I want you to be happy more than anyone else, that I choose you over people who have been loyal to me for years of their lives."
He moved to position himself between Dust's thighs, dragging his hands over his hips, over his groin, tracing Dust's cock where it lay, half-hard and pinned by his briefs.
"I hate and I love everything that you bring out of me, and there's more of it every day," Carrow said, coming to the end of his confessions. "So yes, Dust. I love you. I think I might leave this all, if it was the only way to have you in my life."
He was ready to go to work there between Dust's thighs, to drag moans out of him with his mouth — but instead, Dust caught him by the back of his neck, guiding him back up the bed until they met in a deep kiss. Carrow was hard, didn't know when it had happened or whether it had been Dust's admission or the contact of their bodies, but he rolled his hips down against Dust's and let their cocks find purchase.
Dust moaned into his mouth, the sound almost a question — a request for more.
And Carrow, damning himself all the while, could not bring himself to say anything but, "yes."
Dust's mind was a thicket of contradictions and fears.
He didn't know. Carrow didn't know if he'd leave it all for Dust — for his own safety — but goddamn every rotten piece of their lives, Carrow at least hadn't said no.
They could have this. They could have something.
Dust had never wanted someone as desperately as he wanted Carrow in that moment. Worse than their first meeting, worse than the way they'd crashed together in that dim safehouse. He pulled the larger man against him, erasing everything from his mind other than his need in that moment. There was no AIIB, no Company, no heist, no truth to come between them. The only reality that mattered was their bodies in Carrow's cool bedroom and the weak sliver of hope Dust had just gained for a future.
Their future, maybe.
He hipped up to roll Carrow, scooting out from underneath him. Carrow accepted the change in position, falling to his back and watching the younger man drag the fine patterned boxers off of Carrow's wide hips.
He didn't protest or try to change the trajectory, moving to prop himself on his elbows instead, wanting the best vantage point to watch Dust worship his cock.
It took a moment to get his desperation in check. Something burning hot in the base of his stomach told Dust to take them both to the limit right then and there — to swallow down Carrow's dick until he was choking on it, until his eyes watered and his lungs burned for breath, just because he knew the reaction it would elicit from his boss, the way that Carrow's hands would curl hard at his scalp until he was pulling Dust's hair, fucking his throat helplessly.
It took true dedication not to follow the instinct and to, instead, go slow: lavishing attention first with kisses up and down Carrow's length and then with unhurried laps of his tongue. It took all Dust had not to give in to his first impulse and bury Carrow's cock. They both wanted more than this, he knew, but impatience would have them giving into whatever release seemed closest.
No. He needed to feel Carrow. He needed Carrow's body to make the half-promise his words had just made — needed the man to claim him and fill him so that Dust could give up to it, could forget what he was and hope that together they would make something better out of this stolen life.
Carrow's dry moan brought him back to the real world, back to the plush bed. He held Carrow hard by the hips, pressing him down into the mattress to keep him from hipping up, from thrusting deeper into Dust's throat — instead teasing with shallow bobs around his cock's swollen head.
The conversation had apparently moved Carrow, too, because after a moment he was pawing at Dust's shoulder, trying to slow him down.
"Please, if you keep going, I'm going to..." he started. "Can I fuck you? Please."
Dust didn't respond with words. He kept a hand on Carrow, pumping his length, while his other hand fumbled to drag off his own boxer briefs and find the bottle of lube he knew would be in his bedside table. He didn't want to wait — could prep himself while he continued to worship Carrow's cock — but the other man intercepted the lube and started to guide him.
"What?" Dust said, momentarily annoyed that the other man didn't trust him to guide the action in a way that would benefit them both.
"Come here," Carrow said softly. He was guiding Dust to stay on top but to spin, to change his position.
After a moment he understood, and with an awed little "oh," Dust moved so that his face was back over Carrow's groin and his knees were on either side of the man's chest.
From the minute Carrow started touching him, he lost track of where he was in space and time. The man started with his hands and mouth, pulling Dust low before pressing wet kisses onto the pads of his ass.
Dust moaned around Carrow's cock in anticipation as the man spread him gently before painting hot stripes over his ass. Every bit of pleasure looped around as he concentrated on working Carrow, swallowing around him and taking him deeper into his throat now. Carrow dragged the wet muscle against his hole, his scruff scraping Dust's thighs, and it was all he could do not to push back against the man's face and abandon his work here at Carrow's groin.
Maybe Carrow could feel his desperation. The man didn't tease him for long, and after he was satisfied that Dust was relaxed and ready, he clicked open the bottle of lube and tested Dust's entrance with a fingertip. Dust was pliant and ready for more, taking the finger easily, moving his hips to let Carrow know he was ready for more and humming around his cock.
When Carrow pressed a second finger in, Dust felt like his mind and nerve endings were threatening to become unmoored, his whole life threatening to unravel between the sublime pleasure of being stretched by a confident hand and the sensation of his throat relaxing and gliding over Carrow's hard-on.
It was so much to deal with all at once. The doubts and fears were gone. Dust was a vessel for pleasure, and he was entirely content with that role. Still — he wanted more.
"Please," he begged, pulling off of Carrow, his own body throbbing at the sound of his wrecked voice. He broke out of Carrow's grip to rut down, pressing himself against the cleft of the man's chest, dragging his cock that lay heavy with need between them as if to make a point. Carrow hummed and gave in, taking him again by the hips to guide him, keeping Dust on top but moving them so that they were face to face again.
"Is this what you want?" he asked, low. He had a hand on his own slicked cock, pressing himself against Dust's ass but not guiding in.
"Yeah," Dust huffed, not sure if the man was going to toy with him. Carrow rutted against him in response, teasing his head in just so before slipping out and over to lay a long stroke against him. " Please. Don't make me wait."
The second tease was probably meant to be playful, but it felt cruel to Dust as he throbbed for more, so eager to take Carrow that the absence felt almost painful. He whimpered as Carrow teased him with another stroke.
" Please, Ansel —"
Carrow moved for another stroke, maybe another tease, but Dust decided not to give him the opportunity. In one quick movement, he reached behind himself, clamping a hand over Carrow's hard-on, keeping him still as he thrust back, gasping as he finally took the man.
Carrow's breath caught with the shock of it and his hands moved to Dust's hips, trying to slow him, to keep him from hurting himself with too fast of a stretch. Goddamn it, the man knew him too well — knew that Dust would push himself too far, wouldn’t care about the pain as long as it meant he got his moment of satisfaction.
"Easy," Carrow cautioned as Dust's thighs shook. He was right, and taking him so far had been at the border of too much, but Dust wasn't about to stop. He let Carrow guide his hips in short ellipses, taking him deeper each time until he finally had Carrow's cock to the hilt, their bodies fitting together once again.
"I never thought we could be more than this," Carrow said as Dust rested their foreheads together, breathing through the final stretch, willing his body to relax. "I didn't think I had anything more than this to give you."
"And what do you think now?" Dust asked, unable to miss the way that Carrow avoided his eyes. He began to roll his hips, tentatively exploring what he was ready for and how much movement he could take. Carrow looked up, his expression almost desperate.
"I think you scare the hell out of me, Dust," he said. "I think you'll be my ruin."
Carrow didn't know why he'd said it. Dust always laid him bare, made it feel not only impossible to lie but impossible to hold back the truth, to cloak himself in familiar silence.
Dust reared back, looked panicked at the statement, and started to work his body faster. He fell forward after a few heady strokes so that they were chest to chest, his hands fisted in the sheets on either side of Carrow's body.
"Easy," Carrow cautioned again. Dust didn't listen this time, his pace unchanged.
"I need it like this," Dust pleaded, his breath tickling the shell of Carrow's ear. "Please don't make me stop."
That want was back in his voice, that edge that made it impossible for Carrow to deny him anything. Did he need to forget who they were? Did he want their coupling to erase, if just for a few minutes, the forces they faced?
He couldn't give Dust a happy future or a guarantee of anything. But he could give him what he wanted in that moment, at least. Dust gasped a breath as Carrow clamped his hands down harder with bruising force around his hips, matching the pace he set and slowly rocking his hips up off the bed to meet Dust's strokes.
If this was all they could be, so be it. And if they could be more, then he welcomed it. How long had it been since someone loved him in this way? Had it ever happened before Dust?
Carrow stopped holding back, letting his body take over. Dust responded from the first stroke, his moans going higher as Carrow took him harder.
Being filled , being held hard with those hands — it was almost enough to forget everything.
With each powerful movement of Carrow's hips, he wanted more. Dust sat back, resting his weight on his knees, looking down and savoring the expressions Carrow made as he took him. Carrow's eyes raked across his torso as they moved together, as Dust worked himself back onto Carrow's hard-on. There was no pain, then. Just want.
Carrow's hands went even tighter on him, slowing him, and for a moment Dust thought he must be close and didn't want to stop yet. But no — that wasn't it. Carrow held him still in the air so that he could fuck up into him at a faster pace, the obscene sound of it, the soothing rhythm making Dust groan.
He wanted Carrow to take him like this, to erase everything he felt until he was just a set of nerve endings. And so when Carrow moved to roll them over, when Dust's back hit the cool sheets and Carrow hitched his legs up easily, Dust didn't protest.
The sight of the older man above him was even better than the view from the top. Carrow's brow was furrowed as he worked his length into Dust, the muscles of his neck and shoulders more pronounced as he bent over Dust and held his weight up. What his body lacked in definition, it made up for in sheer size — and even the parts of Carrow that had gone soft with age and disuse seemed to be perfect as he rocked into Dust.
They caught each other for an urgent kiss, neither one knowing who had initiated it, and the union only broke when Dust realized that he'd drawn blood with his teeth. Carrow leaned back, smiling his mugshot grin, not slowing his rolling hips, but drawing the back of one hand over his lip and laughing softly.
He loved Dust. He'd said that he loved him. That he might leave it all for him.
The words still rattled around in his brain like they weren't attached to anything. The words made him reach for Carrow's hips, urging him to roll deeper. It made him kiss the man again, dragging him closer, tasting Carrow's blood on his mouth.
Fuck the world, fuck their pasts — this was all Dust needed.
Carrow slicked his hand as they separated, producing the bottle of lube from before, and began to twist around Dust's neglected hard-on in rhythm with their bodies.
Even on his back , Dust moved with desperation against Carrow, grinding up to meet every thrust as if he couldn't take Carrow deep enough, couldn't get enough of the sensation of being claimed.
He'd had Dust urgent and he'd had Dust slow and sweet — but he'd never had the man quite like this before, moving under him as if there was a point to this, as if he needed to prove something in the way their bodies came together.
It was too much, and the orgasm he'd been fighting for what felt like ages now began to unfurl into him.
"Gonna come, Dust," he warned. Dust just nodded and kept working his body, rutting up to meet Carrow's strokes, fucking into the slicked heat of his palm.
He hated to come first, hated the thought of shortchanging his partner, but his body was helpless against the way that Dust was moving, and his own thrusts in turn went harder, faster, his hips stuttering at the overwhelming pleasure of it all.
Dust cried out abruptly, and then he was throbbing in Carrow's hand, painting stripes up his taut belly as he came hard. The sight of it — his slick release over tanned skin, the way Dust's eyes went glassy and strange with satisfaction that seemed to be otherworldly — was enough to push Carrow past the point of no return.
The orgasm seemed to have no beginning and no end as he rocked into Dust, pumping his release into the eager body beneath him. He lost the sense of himself for a moment, no longer aware of whether or not he was hurting Dust, what he was doing, just riding the wave of pleasure as it crested. And when he was back to himself, Dust's muscles were trembling, his breathing funny. Carrow was still stroking him, he realized, twisting around his overstimulated length as the last sensations of his own orgasm ebbed. He stopped gradually, holding his own weight, letting his forehead drop to rest against Dust's .
He couldn't remember when they had become more than this — couldn't put his finger on the moment he realized it or what had factored into it. Carrow knew he should be afraid of it, should reel back from the reality that he cared so deeply for Dust.
Instead, he basked in it in that moment: in what they were, in what they could be, in the way that this new reality circled around to make moments like this meaningful.
For the first time, maybe, Carrow wasn't scared.
There was a strange negotiation in Dust’s mind in the months that followed the night they’d both remember as the first time they’d admitted the obvious to each other.
He no longer felt that his entire world was suspended in a state of cognitive dissonance.
AIIB was out there, and they weren’t going to stop. But The Company was his life.
There were loose ends he needed to tie up. Dust needed to somehow let his parents know that he was alive and well. He needed to set up some way that he could get money to them as they grew older. Maybe he could find a way for Carrow to help him do that — or maybe it would have to be behind the other man’s back. But he could not abandon them, disappear without a trace, and pretend that he owed them nothing for the many years he’d relied on them. He did love them — of course he did.
March became April and the days sprawled out longer. Everyone had been shaken up by how badly Dust had been shaken up after the bank job — and so they waited weeks between jobs. Carrow went back to planning out every aspect of every heist.
April faded into May. It became easier to put off the things that Dust knew he had to do as they fell back into a steady rhythm with jobs.
AIIB didn’t make a move. Emerson no longer called.
Maybe… Maybe, Dust allowed himself to think.
Maybe they gave up on me. Maybe they gave up on The Company.
In June, Antoine Lefebvre contacted Carrow with a request: help him gain a little relief with a simple diamond heist. An insurance scam, at the heart of it, the younger Lefebvre said. Carrow shook the man’s hand, accepted a deposit, and began planning.
At the end of that month, they celebrated the anniversary of Dust joining The Company. Wayles set up a party on the roof, everyone lounging after the sun set, Herron mixing drinks while Vashvi splashed Dust in a perfect recreation of that first night he’d spent at the penthouse — before they were his family, before he loved Carrow, before he’d found a home.
And afterwards, when everyone retired, Carrow made sure that Dust didn’t get lost on the way to their room.