Chapter 4: Terms

"It's a combination book," Mickey said the next morning. "You don't take a combination book unless you mean to open something."

"The Don reset that vault himself before he died," Vin said. "Your father's numbers won't open it."

"Then why steal them?"

Vin didn't have an answer.

They were in his kitchen in River Forest at eight a.m.

Mickey had slept in a guest room the size of his whole apartment, alone, with the door locked.

Vin had slept across the hall.

Mickey had heard him walk past the door twice in the night and stop.

Both times he kept walking.

Aoife was at the table in a borrowed Bianchi bathrobe, eating Nonna's eggs.

She'd come over at midnight with a duffel bag and a baseball bat.

The bat was leaning against the fridge.

Vin was eating a piece of toast standing up at the counter, in a black shirt, his hair still wet.

"Sit down to eat," Nonna told him, passing through.

"I'm fine."

She took the toast out of his hand and put it on a plate on the table.

He stood there a second without it.

Then he sat.

Aoife looked at Mickey and mouthed, "Oh my God."

"Okay," Mickey said. "Terms."

Vin folded his hands on the table.

"You have terms," he said.

"I have four."

"Go."

"One. Aoife stays here too, as long as I do. She's got classes on the West Side. She needs a ride, and she gets one."

"Done."

"Two. I keep working. The shop opens at nine every day, and I'm in it."

"If that means you sit in a car on Milwaukee Avenue for eight hours, you sit."

"Done."

"You didn't even think."

"I thought on the drive home last night."

Mickey kept going before that could land anywhere.

"Three. Separate rooms."

Vin's eyes dropped to the table for a second.

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