I watched Upper’s gaze lock with Elia’s, which lingered for approximately three seconds before Elia looked away.
Sometimes, I despised my invasive, unnatural, and observant nature. I despised it because half the time I did not want to learn certain things, but I ended up learning them anyway.
“But,” Upper said while breathing in, “one thing I want to do, after we get that gold, is start up my education again. Go to college, learn more, and get a job that pays.”
“What about you, Dog?” Milk blurted out the question.
Dog’s brows snapped down in a frown. “Why the fuck did you attack me like that?”
She blinked. “What?”
“You just asked like you have been dying to know what I would have done with my life and what I want to do.”
She pressed her lips together, cheeks going pink. “I mean…” She was flustered now. “Isn’t that what—what we’re all doing?”
“Yeah, you just came on too—”
“Dog, just answer the bloody question,” Upper spoke over him, glancing at Milk and deciphering her sudden distress.
What a mess.
Dog sighed, raking his fingers through his hair, scattering the already scattered arrangement. “Well… if there was one thing I could redo, I would ask my parents the question that had been burning in my mind when they brought me to Italy. The simple question of ‘why?’”
“Care to explain?” Elia asked.
“My parents… they were murdered a week after they brought me here and took my—” He cleared his throat. “Well… my dad was an agent for the CIA, and my mom was a cop. When I get the gold, I will join the FBI and find out what happened to them. They were pretty big with people who were people, so with a little digging, I can get my answers.”He shrugged. “You don’t know what people would be willing to reveal with a briefcase filled with gold on their desk.”
“So,” I started, “a thief wants to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation. How do you suppose that would work without a clean background check?”
“I have money. Nobody knows I’m a thief; my background is a clean slate. I’m smart, I’ll train, I’ll do whatever it takes,” he said, determination in his eyes.
I nodded. “Impressive.” I offered, “If you ever need to talk about this, whatever it takes, my doors are always open.”
Dog blinked at me. “For… real?”
“Hm. I have a few favors owed to me by people who might be able to answer your questions; I can grant you a favor too.”
“What’s the catch?” Dog asked.
“You owe me a favor, one I probably won’t have enough time to collect, but it could help you.”
He observed me. “All right, we’ll see.”
I responded with a firm nod.
“What about you?” Upper gestured to Elia. “What would you change, and what would you do with the gold?”
Elia’s gaze lifted to look around the group, settling on me for a bit, allowing me to see that he was caught off guard, despite knowing the question was going around. “I…” He trailed off, eyes unsure. “I…” He looked down at the drink he held and shrugged. “Don’t really know. There’s nothing I would change… there’s nothingtochange. As for the gold, I don’t really care about it. I might travel, uh…” He lookedlost,like he didn’t know what he had planned or hadn’t thought about it.
His eyes held this heavy cloud like his whole life had been a blank page. He didn’t know what to write on it or where to start writing… the middle, the top, the bottom—or maybe I wasn’t reading him right, perhaps this thing I saw didn’t stem from how I had erased him. He cleared his throat. “Um… I don’t know. I guess I haven’t really thought about it,” he said,drinking from his beer bottle like he didn’t want to speak any further.
“And you, Marino?” Dog asked. “You’re not taking the gold, so the question there is, what would you change?”
I thought about the question and allowed the silence to stretch as my gaze focused on the littered center table, a vivid representation of my life since I was born. A clear picture was painted before me, a mockery of the irony in my life.
I swallowed. “Nothing,” I answered with the truth. “I would change nothing.”
“Really?” Elia asked, shock evident in his voice.
