Page 22 of The Broker
My daughter looks exasperated but gets up without a complaint. She really is a good kid. “Are you okay with us living here?”
“Sure,” she replies, unzipping the suitcase and burrowing in her clothes until she finds her toy dinosaur. “I like it at Uncle Dante’s.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.” She moves her T-shirts into the dresser. “I can play with Katie. I can do Legos—”
“And you can sleep in a princess bed.” The one she conveniently forgot to tell me about. I bite my lip, debating whether to bring up the topic. When I told Angelica we had to move here for a few weeks, she had suspiciously few questions. I’d seen the calculation in her eyes; I know my kid. She’s planning a romance between Dante and me.
I need to dissuade her of that notion as quickly as I can. Nothing will come of her dream. Dante is Angelica’s uncle; that’s it. If she’s imagining us being one happy family, I have to tell her it’s never going to happen.
But do I rip away the hope like a Band-Aid? She was bullied relentlessly in her old school because she didn’t have a father. And that was only a few months ago. Sure, things are much better in her new school. No teacher is going around proclaiming that the best kind of family is one that has a mother and a father, and I’m not the only single mother there. But maybe I should just let her grow out of this fantasy on her own?
“And when we go back home, I’m going to get a puppy.” She fixes me with an intense look. “Right?”
“You are definitely going to get a puppy. Are you okay on your own while I finish making dinner?”
“Of course, Mama.”
Dante’s not back in time for dinner. I’m a little disappointed and then annoyed at myself for feeling that way. What the hell am I doing? I don’t even like him.
“Is there enough left for Uncle Dante?” Angelica hesitates over a second helping of broccoli. “I don’t want him to be hungry.”
I roll my eyes. “Your Uncle Dante is capable of feeding himself.” I look at her worried expression and bite back a curse. “There’s plenty here, but if you want, I’ll make up a plate and put it in the fridge for him. He is capable of reheating it, right?”
Angelica giggles. “Of course. He’s very good at using the microwave, Mama.”
After dinner, she wants to build a complicated Lego set of the Mars Rover. “I started it yesterday, but I got stuck. Can you help me with it?”
“Sure. Where are the instructions?” Angelica looks blank. I contemplate a lecture about putting things away in their proper places, but it’s been a long day. I don’t have the stamina, so I head to the Lego website and download the PDF. “Angelica, this is a two hundred and sixty-four-page instruction booklet.”
We work on it for an hour and a half, and then it’s her bedtime. I’m expecting the usual bargaining, but she must be tired. It only takes one story before she’s out like a light.
I shut her door and head downstairs. There’s still no sign of Dante. I could call him to find out where he is, but that’s ridiculous and entirely too needy. We’re not living together—this is a temporary situation. For all I know, he isn’t even planning to eat meals with us.
And besides, I have work to do.
Dante said I could take over his office, but he didn’t finish showing me his home, and I don’t know where it is. Well, that’s not exactly true. With the process of elimination, I’m assuming it’s on the level I haven’t seen so far, but that’s the same level as his bedroom, a room I’m wildly curious about and yet strangely nervous to see.
I could call him and find out where I should work, but that feels suspiciously like I’m looking for an excuse to talk to him. Anyway, all I have with me is my laptop, not my full computer setup. I take it downstairs to the living room and poke around the house until I find Dante’s Wi-Fi password. This doesn’t involve hacking—it’s scribbled on a Post-It note on the refrigerator. Which is bad data security by the Broker, the second-in-command of our organization. Tsk, tsk.
I prop the laptop on the pleasantly worn leather couch and look for a music player to pair my phone with.
Of course, Dante has nothing. Music probably annoys the devil. And the audio quality on my phone is garbage. In the rush of packing, I must have forgotten to grab my wireless headphones, which work with my phone. All I can find are the wired ones that plug into my laptop’s USB port. Gah. Reluctantly, I connect to the Internet, muttering curses under my breath the entire time. I plug in my headphones and load up my playlist.
Like I told Dante on Thursday, Revenant shouldn’t have branded his work. Now that I know it’s him, I have a way to find the weakness in this encryption. I know he’s impatient and prone to shortcuts—I’ve seen it in his posts over the years. Most people do a combination of AES and RSA protocols, but not him. He never does more than one round of encryption, relying on the unbreakability of his key. And because he brags, I know enough details about his custom algorithm to provide a starting point.
Rosa calls me about an hour into my work. “Are you serious about the date?”
“What?” It takes a few seconds for my brain to switch contexts.
“The double date we talked about?”
Oh, right. When Rosa called to check in on me Friday, in a moment of headache-medicine-fueled stupidity, I revealed that Enzo and I were done, and I’d be willing to go on a double date with her.
It’s only been two days since that conversation, but it feels like a lifetime ago. Maybe it’s because I’m in Dante’s house, surrounded by his things. Curled up on the leather couch he sits on, inhaling the gentle aroma of the pine candle I lit on the coffee table. Or maybe it’s the strange expression on his face when he showed me to his guest bedroom. For ten years, the bedrock of our relationship has been sarcasm and barely contained dislike. But the ground is moving under my feet, and I feel dangerously off-balance. The idea of setting off on a date from Dante’s house makes my stomach do a funny flip.
And what happens when Dante goes on a date? I’ll have to see him leave the house, dressed in one of his fancy woolen suits, smelling like amber, sandalwood, and musk, knowing that before the night is over, another woman will wear his cologne on her skin. Another woman will undress him, slowly removing his tie and unbuttoning his shirt. Will she kiss each spot of skin as it becomes visible? Will she stroke her fingers over the curved lines of his tattoos?