Despite the pain, I can’t regret meeting Archie.
He showed me a side of myself I’d never indulged.
I spent my childhood being serious because I had to be. I had to grow up fast and be the adult because the actual adults in my life weren’t doing their jobs.
I never had the freedom to be ridiculous.
Archie gave me that freedom. It’s a gift I will never forget.
Gus arrives at the restaurant exactly on time.
“Leo.” He shakes my hand with his usual measured grip. “Good to see you.”
“You too.”
We order. Gus gets a black coffee and a salad because Gus approaches meals the way other people approach business meetings—with discipline and minimal enjoyment.
But something about Gus seems different from normal.
Not physically. He’s still the same sharp-eyed, careful, impossible-to-read man he’s always been. But there’s somethingaround his edges that’s less contained. A tightness in his jaw that I recognize because I’ve been seeing a version of it in my own mirror for the past few weeks.
“So,” I say. “What’s on your mind?”
Gus pauses. This is normal. Gus always pauses before speaking, like he’s running his words through an internal compliance check. But this pause is longer than usual.
“I need your advice,” he says. “Not on the company. On something more personal.”
In the year I’ve known Gus, he has never once asked me about anything personal.
“Okay,” I say.
He takes a sip of his coffee. Sets it down with precision.
“The partner I told you about. In London?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“It turns out they don’t exist.”
I blink. “What do you mean they don’t exist?”
“I mean, the person I thought I was in a relationship with was a fabrication. The trip to Italy, which was conveniently timed to coincide with my arrival, was a stalling tactic. It was all fake.” He delivers this with the same measured tone he’d use to describe a market correction. “It was a romance scam.”
I stare at him.
Gus Wilson. The man who builds software to detect financial fraud for a living. Who analyzes patterns of deception as his day job. Who trusts approximately three people on the planet and suspects the rest of harboring ulterior motives.
Got catfished.
“I know you’re thinking it’s ironic that the man who spots fraud for a living got defrauded.”
“The thought crossed my mind,” I admit.
“It crossed mine too. At considerable speed.” He takes another sip of coffee. His hand is steady, but I can see the effortit’s taking to keep it that way. “The person behind it was good. They did their research. They understood what I wanted, and they built it piece by piece, like a product designed for a market of one.”
Despite the clinical way he’s describing this, I’m fairly sure the wound is deeper than he’s letting on. Gus isn’t the kind of man who falls easily, so I imagine that when he falls, he falls far.
“How much did they get?” I ask.
