The Merry Men Masquerade

6. Ashes, Ashes

The sheet of paper Vito unfurled was long and covered in erratic graphite sketches of a house. Vito had to hold onto it at opposite corners to counter the telltale curl of its edges inward, the mark of a long period of disuse.

"Tell me, do any of you recognize this?"

To an extent, Ronan did. It wasn't uncommon for Vito to procure a sketch like this one before a heist. He almost always arrived at scouting locations with pencil and paper to jot down different angles of the target and mark areas of interest Ronan pointed out. The two of them worked well together – Ronan analyzed a building from the outside to determine possible points of entry, Vito took visual notes down to the shadow. More often than not, they scouted as a pair without the others.

That said, if Vito expected Ronan to recognize some house they'd looked at years before by a rough sketch – and he did, if the way his eyes kept darting back to Ronan was any indicator – he was bound to be disappointed.

He seemed to realize this himself as he was met with ever-stretching silence. Perched on the arm of Mitch's seat, he deflated against the backrest, the paper drooping in his grip. "Really? None of you?"

"Cry," said Ronan, just to see Vito sulk. Fucking– cute.

"Get on with it," Tony heckled. Her standard was to lay on the couch with her legs across Ronan's lap, but today, she stretched over Amir, too, because he'd taken the middle seat next to Ronan before she could. He seemed to do that a lot lately – occupy the space next to Ronan – though Ronan couldn't decide whether this was a new development or something he'd failed to notice until recently.

Vito answered his sister's dry stare with heightened sulking. "Eighteen years," he said. "For eighteen years, you've ruined my fun."

Tony moved to stand.

"Alright!" Vito yielded, loath to lose a player. Despite the size of their home, it had taken him nearly ten minutes to herd them all into the living room for this meeting. "This," he raised the sheet again, glaring pointedly at Tony, "Is the home of the esteemed Browning family."

That, at least, sparked some recognition. The Brownings had been a missed opportunity; a home they had planned for weeks to invade some two years back after catching wind of a family trip that was ultimately canceled.

"They actually leaving this time?" Mitch asked at Vito's side. He was still breathing heavily from the beating he'd surely given his punching bag before the meeting – Ronan had heard him from here. His chest, broad and brown and characteristically bare, gleamed with sweat, and Ronan made a note to avoid the armchair for a while.

"Not quite," said Vito, looking a lot like he'd been hoping someone would ask that. "But we don't need them to."

"Hold on," Ronan interrupted, much to Vito's chagrin. This wasn't how they operated. They won big and then slipped away from the public eye, living comfortably on their earnings for as long as they'd last. And their last win might've been their biggest yet. "Why are we interested in the Brownings right now? We haven't made a dent in the Van Doren loot."

A chill took root at the base of his spine when he realized – Vito had said he wanted more, and he was starting now.

"Haven't you heard?" Vito handed the sketch off to Mitch. Leaning onto his knees, he fixed Ronan with a dipped head and a crooked grin. "A rolling stone gathers no moss."

Fondness budded in Ronan despite the cold, against the cold. It was so like him, so wholly Vito, to throw a random cultured maxim into regular conversation, ever the self-proclaimed wise old sage. The rest of them had always teased and booed him for it, but all Ronan could muster right then was a short, winded laugh and a roll of his eyes.