“I‘d pretend to be separated from my tour group—crying, scared, wallet stolen. Just pitiful enough to draw attention, but not so much that anyone would call the cops. Sabin would pick the pockets of everyone who came to help. And when someone offered to call the police, he’d swoop in as the relieved big brother.” She mimicked Sabin’s deeper voice: “’Oh thank God, I’ve been looking everywhere for her!’”
Dom smiled, easily picturing Sabin’s dramatic performance. “I can’t see you playing the distressed damsel.”
“I was...convincing.” There was no shame in her voice. “We made three hundred dollars that first night. More the next.”
“And your parents?”
“They had no idea. Dad was consulting in Europe that summer. Mom was buried in her research. Sabin told them he was working at the French Market.” She traced a pattern on the glass with her finger. “The look on Sabin’s face afterward—God, Dom, I’ll never forget it. He was laughing so hard he could barely stand, already planning the next job, the bigger score, the riskier play. He had this light in his eyes, like he’d found exactly what he was meant to do in life.”
Dom watched her profile, the way her expression softened with the memory, the slight curve of her lips.
“You loved it too,” he said.
“Yeah.” She nodded slowly. “I did. The rush. The challenge. The feeling that we were smarter than everyone else in the room.” She glanced at him. “You know that feeling.”
He did. It was what had drawn him to her in the first place. That thrill of risk, that sense of being truly alive only when the stakes were high enough to matter.
“It’s like being on a high wire,” he said. “Nothing between you and disaster but your own skill and nerve. Nothing else feels that real.”
“Nothing,” she agreed.
They fell silent again. The waves rolled against the cliff far below, a constant, rhythmic sound that filled the space between words. The Villa remained still around them, its security systems humming beneath the quiet.
“I think that’s why losing Brennan hit so hard,” Dom said after a while, the words appearing in his mouth before he’d fully formed them in his mind. “He was the only one of us who loved the edge as much as I did.”
Vivi turned toward him, her expression caught somewhere between surprise and curiosity. He rarely spoke about Brennan. Rarely allowed himself to open that wound.
“Tell me about him,” she said.
Dom swallowed. Looked back out at the water. “Brennan was... he was fire. All energy and light and danger. Couldn’t sit still, couldn’t follow rules, couldn’t play it safe to save his life.” He paused. “Literally, as it turned out.”
She didn’t push. Just waited, giving him the space to find the words.
“When he died... something cracked in the family that had always seemed uncrackable.” He pressed his palm against the cool glass. “We’ve all got designated roles, you know? Davey’s the leader. Elliot’s the mediator. I’m the wild card. Daphne’s the computer whiz. Liam’s the sharpshooter. We all click together, but Brennan was... he was the spark. The one who made us all more alive somehow.”
“And Cade?” she asked softly.
“Cade was the rock. Solid. Dependable.” Dom laughed without humor. “At least that’s what we thought.”
“Until he wasn‘t.”
“Until he wasn’t,” Dom agreed. He took a breath. “His betrayal... it didn‘t just hurt. It hollowed something out in Davey specifically. Changed him.”
“How?”
Dom stared at his reflection in the glass, at the ghost-image of himself superimposed over the night sea. “Davey built his whole identity around protecting the family. Being the one everyone could count on. And then Cade—the person he was closest to after our father—turned to the enemy. It was like...” He searched for the right way to describe it. “Like watching someone get shot and realize they’ve been wearing fake body armor. Everything they believed about themselves just... wrong.”
Vivi was quiet. Dom could feel her watching him, but he kept his eyes on the water.
“Some nights the grief for Cade is worse than the grief for Brennan,” he admitted. “Because Brennan didn’t choose to leave.” The words felt raw in his throat. “He would never have left us like that.”
He hadn’t said any of this before. Not to his father. Not to his uncles. Not to his brothers.
“I told Davey it would be okay,” he continued, his voice lower. “That we’d figure it out. But I don’t know if we will. I don’t know if he’ll ever be the same.”
Vivi stepped closer. Not touching him yet, but close enough that he could feel the heat of her, smell the jasmine of her skin.
“Maybe he’s not supposed to be the same,” she said.
