Page 111 of The Thief

Shelley chuckled, and Bryony rolled her eyes.

“Will you guys ever retire?” Bryony asked, but she already knew the answer. We all did.

“We would never take a job that put our families in danger,” Adam said. “We’d never do anything that jeopardised what we have. But let’s be real here. We’re soldiers. We’ve always been soldiers.”

“Street soldiers,” Will butted in.

“Soldiers of the people,” Devon added.

“And we’ll be soldiers till we die,” Colton proclaimed.

“Amen to that,” Tyler said, taking my hand to lift it and kiss the back of it.

With my other hand, I touched the necklace Tyler had given me this morning, rubbing my thumb and finger over the key pendant. And a voice in my head said to me, ‘You can’t change him, all you can do is love him. Hold on tight and live this life with everything you have. He’s a good man. He’s always done right by you and Ava. He’s exactly what I wished for you. You are perfect together.’

‘He'sexactly what I wished for us too.’ I thought. ‘Thank you, Dad. Thank you for being there. For all that you did. I know life wasn’t always easy for you, but you never let that show.’

As tears welled in my eyes, I heard Ava exclaim, “What’s this?” picking up something that’d blown on the wind to land on the blanket against her.

“That’s a fifty-pound note,” Leah May told her. “How lucky are you? That’ll buy a lot of sweets and ice cream.”

Ava held the note up in front of her eyes, and in a daze, she said, “I’ve never seen one of these before. Wow. Fifty pounds.”

And I smiled, giving my key pendant another rub.

“Thank you, Dad. Thank you.”

The End.