beautiful thieves | ✓

sixteen

For the next few days, I'm working as hard as I was last week, but it feels a lot better with Adam helping me out. He's been helping me build my strength and stamina while also making sure I drink as much water as possible and giving me breaks when I need them. Danielle was right; he is like a guardian angel.

I've also gotten to know him a lot during our training. When he's not motivating me to keep running on the treadmill, he's telling me about him and his life and asking me about mine. I told him about my psycho mother and my older brothers, which soon sparked up a conversation about how having twins would be Adam's dream, along with a whole bunch of other kids.

When I'd asked him why during one of our breaks, the two of us sat on the cold floor, his face turned solemn. His head hung for a few seconds, until he lifted it and stared into the distance.

"I have five brothers out there," he told me. "Three sisters too. The nine of us lived with our parents who were happily married. They never argued once."

I had let out a gentle sigh. "Where are they now?"

"Well, both parents died in a home invasion while the rest of us were at some school thing. I was eighteen. We came home and found them, and it seemed as though as soon as I had called the police, we were all split up and the younger kids were placed in foster care. My brother and I, though, were too old for the system, and the two of us had never gotten along. We decided to split our parent's money between us, said our goodbyes, and that was it."

I felt so bad for him in that moment. I thought about how increasingly difficult it's been being separated from my older brothers and multiply that tenfold, just to have the slightest clue on how hard that must've been.

Adam smiled fondly. "Then I found Danielle, we fell in love yada yada, and things started looking up. I grew to have a family, and it wasn't long before I reconnected with one of my sisters. We talk from time to time but... I don't know. Obviously she's not the same eleven year old girl she was before..."

There was a pause before I spoke. "Is that why you want a big family?" I asked him, my voice small.

He nodded, his eyes gleamed with tears. "As soon as Danielle wishes to retire from this hectic lifestyle, we will have a lot of kids. We will have a family."

"We will," Danielle said, making her appearance. I hadn't even noticed that she had walked in, and when I looked at her face, I realized she must have heard the whole conversation. "Come here my love."

Adam stood up and walked into Danielle's embrace, burying his face into her hair. The two of them kissed, and I quickly knew that my training was over.

Present day Adam breaks me out of my thoughts by handing me my water. I've been running on the treadmill for around twenty minutes and am reaching my breaking point for the day. I step off and gratefully take the water from him, going over to sit on a nearby bench.

"You've been doing well," Adam says, stepping over with his hands on his hips. "I definitely think you're ready for that raid."

I shrug. "Maybe," I say breathlessly. "But anything could happen."

"You don't feel prepared?"

"Not exactly," I admit. "Like, physically, I feel great, but I have no idea what I might see, or what might happen."

"Aurora, it'll be fine," he reassures. "The chances of us losing anyone is slim-to-none, especially when you have plenty of people there looking out for you. You'll barely even need to do anything, just wave a gun around and scare some assholes in fancy suits while the others do the dirty work. But if anything doesn't go to plan, it will always be a priority to get you out."