Page 32 of The Most Wanted (The Kinky Bank Robbers #4)

I frowned, hating that this guy knew things that we didn’t know about each other. Did it really not bother Odin?

“Tell them what day Valentine’s Day is, Nick. Tell them the significance of it.”

Zeus glared. “You think you know important things, but you don’t know shit.”

Thor stared at his own fingernails, but I could tell he was curious.

Zeus heaved himself up off the couch and joined Odin at the bar. Odin topped off his scotch. “Goddess? Want a drink?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Fine, I’ll tell them,” Denko continued. “Valentine’s Day was Nick’s parents’ anniversary. It’s an important day to him in a deep way.”

“Nice to see the agency shrink’s been so ethical about patient-client confidentiality,” Zeus said.

“And where do you think they would celebrate?”

“Here comes Denko with the big reveal,” Zeus said. “Or should we wait for the studio audience to guess?”

Shivers went over me. “At La Belle?” I tried. “Zeus, why didn’t you say?”

Zeus shrugged.

I wanted more than a shrug. I wanted him to take it seriously. I needed us to be serious. “Zeus, that was your parents’ special anniversary place?”

“When they could manage it.” Zeus took his scotch with him to the window.

“Tell us,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me,” I said.

He gazed out with a faraway look. “It was important to them,” he said softly.

We all waited. He went on, “They really couldn’t afford it—it was their splurge.

And I’d ask them, why splurge on an anniversary meal at a fancy restaurant when, you know, when we didn’t have enough money to get the car fixed and Mom had to bus it to work and Dad had been doing without his medication, and they’d say, this is where you go when you’re happy and in love. “

It was so sweet. He’d wanted us to carry on the tradition. Happy and in love.

“Zeus,” I whispered.

He shrugged it off. “So that’s how I knew about La Belle. No big. And now we have the money.” He came and sat back down with us, avoiding our gazes.

“You had good parents,” Denko said. “You were a good boy with good, hard-working parents—the kind of family people dream of having. You three, that fierce closeness.”

Zeus glared into the distance. I was thankful Denko didn’t know my name, didn’t know about how desperately I missed my sisters so that he could taunt me with memories like this.

Denko went on, relentlessly filling in the details of a lost, happy life. Christmas. Little League. Bingo the dog with one black foot. The clockmaker father. Family game night.

Zeus would never have that. He’d always have to keep running. We’d all have to keep running. I stared at my shoes, thinking about what an awesome father Zeus could’ve made. He’d be the kind to coach a soccer team. Fix things.

Denko went on. Zeus’s father had a clock shop in the neighborhood that he could walk to. Zeus would hang out there after school with Bingo.

Nobody stopped Denko. Should somebody stop him?

But then I realized that it was up to Zeus to stop him.

Why wasn’t Zeus stopping him?

That’s when I got it—Zeus loved the respite of his past. He loved it the way when, after you’ve been driving for hours and you’re tired, you rest your eyes—and you love that quick rest. A dangerous, seductive kind of rest. He missed the regular world.

A regular life. Is that why he’d wanted us at La Belle? To pretend for a while?

He looked so alone. I put my arm around him, but still he seemed alone.

“And the way you and your mother cared for your dad at the end—that togetherness you had,” Denko continued.

“We pulled you off that case in Yemen and sent you back—we knew you would’ve gone AWOL if we hadn’t.

Your little family against that devastating disease.

Remember how you fought for him? And your mother… you lost them too soon.”

Zeus looked bereft. I glanced at Thor, whose ordinarily sunny, happy eyes had lost some brightness. Odin furrowed his brows.

“You probably thought you could never have it again, but you see that you can with Isis. You see it. Even I see it,” Denko continued. “Isis has a good heart like that. You and her. It’s within your grasp.”

“We all have good hearts like that,” Zeus spat.

“That house is for sale,” Denko said.

Zeus stiffened. “What? ”

“You know—561 Oak Mill Terrace. It’s been on the market for a while.

It needs a little repair, of course. Remember how you and your father brought one of your mother’s yellow roses to the paint store to match it?

The house it still that color. South side needs a new coat, though.

Overhang is still leaking. The roses could use some TLC. ”

My heart pounded. Even I had this urge to rescue the house. Fix it.

“Liar.”

“You think I would lie about something so easy to check? Go see for yourself.”

Odin’s voice sounded distant. “Zeus.”

Zeus shrugged. “Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry?” Odin barked. “You think I don’t know how much you loved them?”

Zeus shrugged.

“How much you miss them?” Odin said.

Another shrug.

“Don’t shrug me off.” Odin pushed away from the bar and moved near. “Why didn’t you say what La Belle meant?”

“I don’t know,” Zeus said.

“Let’s do some business, Nick,” Denko said. “It would be so easy?—”

Zeus shot Denko a look so hard, so full of fury, it would stop a tornado in its tracks. I pulled my arm away. Denko stopped talking. It chilled the whole room—even the poshness frenzy seemed to calm.

I laid a hand on his arm. “Zeus.”

“It’s not just about the anniversary.” He looked at all of us—me, Thor, Odin. “I’m going to be honest, I’ve been freaking out.” He stood and took a few steps around, unsure, it seemed, where to go, what to do with himself. He gazed out at fake Paris .

None of us dared to speak.

“Since I was a kid, one of my greatest dreams has been to have a family just the one I grew up in. When ZOX recruited me, I never saw it as a career. I wanted to walk down to the same shop every day for thirty years. I wanted that stability and simplicity. Traditions. A simple, normal family. All throughout being in the agency, even through us knocking over banks, I still had that in my mind—that someday I would have that life for my own.” He lowered his voice to a whisper.

“My family was amazing, you guys. You wouldn’t believe.

Growing up, all I wanted was to be like that—have this stupid, simple life.

And yeah, that door’s been closed a long time.

And I’ve been realizing that lately, and it’s been fucking me up. ”

So that was the P.I. agency impulse. A shop we could walk to. A way to feel normal.

“And then Herk walked in with all of his talk about how important his family was to him, to hear him describe that life he dreamed of with Maria. Fucking Herk…” Zeus took a ragged breath.

“That door is open,” Denko said. “You just have to choose to walk through it.”