“He has a boyfriend?” I asked, feeling my stomach turn inside out.
Falcon’s brows furrowed. “Wouldn’t you know?”
I shrugged. “Not only have I not seen him in two years, even if I had, I wouldn’t necessarily know about his sex life. It turns out the thief is also a liar.”
Ziv hid his words in a fake cough. “Takes one to know one.”
Mouse looked at me with pity. “Don’t listen to him.”
Ziv rolled his eyes. “According to social media, Elek has taken up with the son of a friend. Even if he’s an old family friend, I still don’t think he’d give a new boy toy that kind of access. Maybe it’s one of his security guards.”
I thought for a minute. “No. He’d keep the crown in his bedroom and he doesn’t let his guards have access to the bedroom.” I met Falcon’s eyes. “The lover’s prints are probably the ones you want.”
He could tell I knew what I was talking about. “How do you know?” he asked anyway.
I thought about all the nights Elek had instructed me on how to prepare myself and be ready and waiting on his bed when he came home from a trip.
“I just know,” I said.
Falcon assessed me for a moment in which I silently begged him not to push me on this.
“Okay. Then we need to find out where they’re going to be in public so we can try and get their fingerprints.”
Ziv clicked around on his laptop for a while before finding something. “Here are posts about a gala coming up. Hold on… let me see…” He clicked some more with Mouse reading over his shoulder.
“There!” Mouse said, pointing to a post. “They’ll be at the gala this week in Mykonos. It’s a charity thing the guy’s family puts on.”
Falcon turned to speak to Linney. “Figure out how to get us an invitation. Mouse, you and Ziv need to figure out how we’re going to capture the fingerprints with some kind of tech we can get past gala security. Linney, you’ll need a dress, and I’ll need a tux.”
“What gala? Is Elek going to be there? And what about me?” I asked, selfishly wanting a chance to look Elek in the face again.
“We can’t risk him seeing you. The only semi-public event we know he’s planning on attending is the Lazarus gala in two days. According to Ziv’s intel, Elek’s old friend Kristo Lazarus is the one throwing it, so the son, Elek’s rumored new fling, should be there too.”
The name Lazarus didn’t ring a bell, but then again, I knew enough now to know there’d been plenty Elek hadn’t shared with me about the rest of his life. I pictured Elek, my Elek, with a new man on his arm. How did I feel about it? Jealous? Mm, not really. The very minute he left me at the scene of the crime in Paris, he’d ceased being the man of my dreams, and in the years since, I’d grown up enough to realize what I’d had for him was puppy love, not real love. While I hadn’t been home to Hobie much in the past few years, I’d seen the special kind of connection between my siblings and their partners. It was enough to open my eyes to what true love really was. And then there was the love between my grandfathers which I’d always assumed was a one-in-a-million kind of love.
Sitting at the vineyard among the Marians and Wildes was all I’d needed to see how wrong I’d been.
So, did I wish Elek was still mine? Hell no. But thinking of another man spending time in that house and enjoying the money I’d help make was galling.
“I’m going to that gala,” I said defiantly.
Falcon ignored me and continued to talk to Linney about logistics. I met Ziv’s eyes and could tell he was the kind of man who might enjoy lighting a spark on a mission if it wouldn’t bring the whole thing toppling down on us.
I needed to concentrate on wooing the one member of the team who seemed to understand me the best but like me the least. But how? I was no “world-renowned” hacker, but I knew enough to prove to him he wasn’t the only techie on the team. So maybe I needed to use my own computer skills to send Ziv a message.
I leaned back and closed my eyes, thinking through what I knew about the Mykonos house and the elements I’d specifically designed for it in order to foil would-be burglars. The question was whether or not he’d had the presence of mind to add any additional ones after we’d broken up.
Elek wasn’t really a forward thinker in that way, so I doubted it. However, one rule of any heist was to expect shit to go wrong and be prepared to handle it on the fly. So we would have to assume he’d added security protocols we didn’t know about.