“You…what are you doing here? Is Mom here too?”
“Mom?” A hard bark of laughter escaped her as if someone had slammed a baseball bat into a metal door. “I haven’t seen her in years. Leaving your husband to be killed by a firing squad in Cambodia is kind of an eye-opener, you know? Makes you think about how expendable you are and that maybe it’s time to branch out on your own.”
“Dad’s dead,” he murmured and nodded as if it were exactly as he expected. He glanced over his shoulder at Ed, and Ed tried to give him a reassuring smile. No one wanted to have their family’s dirty laundry aired in front of strangers, and while they might have been flirting less than an hour ago, they were still definitely strangers. He was not going to judge Max based on the people he’d been born to out of bad luck. Max needed to remember that he got out, built a good life for himself. His so-called family couldn’t steal that from him.
“Mom…is she still in the business? Are you?” Each word tumbled out with effort, as though Max was struggling to even string coherent thoughts together. Everything in Ed longed to pull the man into his arms and protect him from this moment.
Particularly with what he could guess was still to come. Max was too shell-shocked to see it, but this Amy or Rive didn’t seem to be the type to hand Max the news gently.
“Oh yeah, she’s still out there conning the rich and pawning cheap knockoffs on the gullible masses. Still trying to get one over on the experts at Christie’s, as if that’s ever going to happen,” Rive muttered with a roll of her eyes. She crossed her arms over her chest and shifted her weight to her right foot. “I prefer to deal with the real thing.” The annoyed look on her face morphed into something more feral as she stared at her brother. “But you got out.”
“Got left behind, you mean,” Max corrected in a snarl.
She snickered, and for the first time in his life, Ed wanted to punch a woman. “What’s the old saying? You fall behind, you get left behind.”
“I was twelve! And you said you’d stick by me. It was us against them, remember?”
Ed’s fingers tightened on Max’s shoulder when he lurched forward. No matter how emotional Max became, he was not letting this man out of his grip. He couldn’t risk it.
“Yeah, well, I was sixteen, and you were dragging me down. Getting you out would have gotten me sent to the US too.”
Max huffed a choked laugh and retreated a step so that he was nearly leaning on Ed. Yes, this was much better. Easier to protect him. So far, no one had moved within the garage other than Rive and Max. They just watched the family drama with limited interest and generally ignored him.
“Charlie and West are two minutes out,” Kairo updated him. “Soren and Alexei are fifteen and will serve as extraction. Charlie and West will offer cover as needed. Keep Rive talking until they can get into position.”
Right now, that wasn’t going to be a problem. He might want to drag Max out of there this second rather than have him deal with this nightmare, but a chatty Rive would be helpful in the long run.
“Yeah, I got out and did something better with my life. Something that didn’t involve lying and hurting people.”
Rive chortled, shaking her head at him. “Spare me your moral indignation and don’t pity the stupid people. They were born to be taken advantage of. If the world has to carry around that dead weight, they should be good for something. And me? I want their money.” She gave him a weary sigh before shooting him a new look. “But you escaped our life of crime and did something so different with your life.”
Ed could feel Max wince at her words. Yeah, they were both involved in antiques, but Max was helping the world by expanding its knowledge of the past, while his sister was stealing from it. It was like saying serial killers and surgeons were in the same business because they both held the lives of innocent people in their hands.
He needed to get Max away from Rive. He’d almost thought “sister,” but this woman was no sister to Max. She was toxic and evil. Her only concern was for herself and how she could use him.
“Let me guess. You’ve brought him here because you want something from him. An Egyptian treasure he’s unearthed? A lead on a new dig site? You’re just interested in using him,” Ed growled at her.
For the first time, the men surrounding Rive stiffened, their hands lifting weapons that had largely become forgotten in their grips.