Wish Cards

Barrett moved while Adrian was still in Newport.

Marcus laid it out in the car on the way back, ashen and clipped, reading from a tablet. Three shipments stopped at customs, held without cause. Five of their long-term partners had pulled out within a single afternoon. The bank was stalling on every loan approval, citing "regulatory review." Rumors were traveling through the docks that the Cole family had lost its heart.

"He went for the throat while I was gone," Adrian said slowly.

"He probably figured you'd be too tied up to notice, sir."

"He figured wrong." Adrian's voice was almost gentle. "Get the word out. A meeting in one hour. All captains. All heads of departments."

"Yes, sir."

Beside him, in the back seat, Miles slept with his head against the window, a blanket tucked around his shoulders. He did not stir.

---

The house was quiet when Adrian came up at one in the morning.

He found a light under the library door. He pushed it open and found Miles at the long table, hunched over a book with his chin propped on his fist. His hair stuck up on one side. A cooling mug of tea sat at his elbow. He was wearing, for reasons Adrian could not begin to guess, one of Adrian's old gray cardigans.

"Still awake?"

"Couldn't sleep." Miles didn't look up. "You're back late."

"Your book's upside down."

Miles turned it right side up without a word, gave him a dignified stare, and failed to hide a smile.

Adrian laughed. It was an odd sound in that room, a thing he had not done for weeks. He crossed the floor, set down his briefcase, and sat in the chair across from him. For a moment they simply looked at each other: two people who had been through a war and were not entirely sure it was over.

"I know I've neglected you lately," Adrian said.

"You've been busy."

"I've been a coward."

Miles blinked.

"I'm not going to say more than that tonight," Adrian said. "I need time. I'm not good at this. But I won't send you away again. And whatever happens next—" He hesitated. "No strings attached."

"No strings?"

"No conditions." He met the golden eyes. "You don't have to do anything for me. You don't have to be anything. You just—stay."

For a long time Miles didn't answer. His throat moved.

"Okay," he said at last, very softly.

"And there's something else." Adrian leaned back. "The Barrett situation."

"I heard." Miles's expression sharpened at once. "Marcus told me."

"Barrett's yours to handle."

The silence that followed was electric.

"Mine?" Miles said carefully.

"Mine would be messy," Adrian said. "And he'd see it coming. He expects me. He doesn't expect you." He held the boy's gaze. "You've been wanting to be useful. This is your chance. Do you want it?"

Miles's lips parted. His eyes lit up like a struck match.

"Yes," he said. "Oh, yes."

---

The meeting lasted two hours.

When it was over, the heads of the family's seven departments filed out, and one of them, an old accountant named Tolliver who had served three generations of Morettis, paused at the door to look back at the young man still seated at the head of the long mahogany table.

"Sir," he said to Adrian, in a voice of wonder, "I think the boy just ate us all alive."

"I know."

"He didn't even raise his voice."

"I *know*," Adrian said, and could not keep the pride from his face.

"How do you plan to do it?" Adrian had asked, quietly, when the room was almost empty.

Miles looked up. Smiled. Closed the folder.

"Get the car," he said. "Bring everyone."

---

Barrett Holdings occupied the top eleven floors of a glass tower on Fulton Street. It had been renovated top to bottom three weeks earlier, at a cost reported in the papers as "staggering." Its lobby boasted a Murano chandelier, a marble floor imported from Carrara, and a receptionist whose eyes went very wide when forty men in black came through the revolving doors.

Miles walked in at the head of them with his hands in his pockets.

"Mr. Moretti," the receptionist managed. "Do you have an appointment—"

"Wreck it all," Miles said pleasantly. "Top to bottom."

---

The call came to Adrian's desk at three the same afternoon.

"Boss." Marcus's voice was strangled. "Mr. Barrett's on the phone."

"Put him through."

"*Adrian!*" The old man's roar rattled the receiver. "Are you going to control that lunatic of yours? My company! I just had it renovated top to bottom! The lobby! The fountains! And my car—brand new, three days—"

"I'm sorry, Walter, I don't know what you mean."

"What do you mean, you don't know? Your boy just smashed the whole place!" A choked sound. "Already smashed, he says! You're paying for it! Every penny!"

"Serves you right," Adrian said gently.

"Adrian, *keep spoiling him!*" Barrett's voice cracked with fury and, absurdly, something that sounded like admiration. "That temper will get you both in trouble one day! You'll see!"

Adrian hung up. He sat for a moment with his fingertips pressed to his lips, hiding a smile he didn't know how to stop.

*Next time*, Miles had said that night, in the library, with the dark gleam of his father in his eyes, *it won't be things I break.*

He had no doubt of it.

---

That evening, Miles stood in the center of the study with his hands clasped behind his back, looking more like a schoolboy than the terror of Fulton Street.

"You smashed Barrett's company," Adrian said.

"Yeah."

"Do you know how much that costs?"

"A lot." A tiny, unrepentant shrug. "I thought you'd approve."

"Approve?" Adrian rose from behind the desk. He walked around it, slow, and stopped a foot in front of the boy. "I told you to *handle* him. Not to raze his building."

"You didn't say how."

"Looks like you learned nothing from last time."

"So." Miles tipped his head back, meeting his eyes, a challenge dancing at the corners of his mouth. "How do you want to teach me?"

The air in the room changed.

It was a joke. Adrian knew it was a joke. And yet, as he stood there with Miles's breath warm against his chin and the memory of the study desk ringing in both their skins, something low in his body drew very taut.

"Someone needs a lesson," he said, and his voice came out rougher than he'd intended.

"Then give it to me."

Adrian's hand lifted. He took Miles's chin between two fingers. For one long suspended second he held it there, thumb brushing the corner of that insolent mouth, and then he reached into his breast pocket with the other hand and drew out a small cream-colored card.

He pressed it into Miles's palm.

Miles stared down at it. It was a business card, heavy stock, the Cole family crest embossed in the corner. Across the front, in Adrian's neat black script, were three words.

*One wish. Anything.*

"What is this?"

"The lesson," Adrian said. "You've worked hard. You've been punished enough by yourself." He took his hand away. "Wish for something. Anything at all. I will give it to you."

Miles's eyes had gone very wide.

"Anything?"

"Within reason."

"Define reason."

"Miles."

"All right." The boy looked down at the card, and when he looked up, his expression had gone soft and fierce. "Then, the second wish card—"

"There is no second card."

"Can I write that we go to work together every day?"

Adrian's breath caught.

"One card," he said unsteadily. "One wish."

"Stingy," Miles murmured, and for the first time since the night in the study, he reached up and cupped Adrian's face in both hands. He kissed him: slow, soft, thorough, a kiss that tasted of tea and relief and something like coming home. Adrian's eyes slid shut. His hands settled on the boy's waist and stayed there.

"I accept," Adrian whispered, against his mouth, in the end. "Every day. All right?"

He felt Miles smile.

"Then I'll write the next card tomorrow," said the boy.