I know, I know! There's no excuse for the delay, but blame the show, malec and tumblr for it, okay? lol. Anyway, here's the new chapter, as you know it's Magnus's story, so I'm really excited about it. There are a few mentions of violence and child abuse, so if you're trigged by that, please read with caution, it's not very descriptive, Magnus just mentions it as something that happened to him, but still be careful, okay? I don't want to upset anyone with this.

Anyway, I hope you like it! The next chapter will be up sometime during the weekend! Love you all and thanks for all the support! Btw, if you ever wanna chat about the story or something, feel free to come and talk to me either on twitter or tumblr, you can find me on both with the same username MsAlexisCriss ;)

See you soon!

Chapter 19

Alec sat down on the couch and waited patiently for Magnus to take out a bottle of white wine and pour two glasses for them. The criminal looked nervous, as Alec had never seen him before, and although he tried to conceal it with a smile, Alec knew him too well already to be able to see through the facade and know that the expression on his face was more false than a thirteen-dollar bill. It was clear that this wasn't easy for him, but well...neither was it for Alec.

When he had first decided to come here to talk to Magnus, he hadn't known what to expect from all this. At first, he had had many doubts, many questions that even now he didn't know if the criminal would ever answer, but of one thing he had been certain: one way or another, they had to talk. Their situation was quite complicated and he was aware of what it meant for both of them that he, a federal agent, knew of Magnus's criminal past, but the only way they could make things work between them was if they trusted each other completely.

"Everything's going to be fine." Alec said, trying to reassure the criminal that what he had said before, that nothing would make him hate him, was nothing but the truth. "It's just me."

Magnus smiled—this time sincerely—and sat down on the opposite side of the couch, handing Alec his glass of wine.

As usual, the amber liquid tasted delicious, like nothing Alec had tasted before.

"It all started when I was eight." Magnus began to share his story.

"Wait, you started to be a criminal when you were eight?" Alec asked in surprise. He had been expecting to hear a young age, after all, Asmodeus had spoken of a boy, but Alec had imagined a boy of about twelve or thirteen years old, not an eight-year-old. Magnus had literally been a kid when all this had started.

Magnus nodded. "Maybe I should go back a bit in the story so you can have the whole picture." He said. "I was born in Indonesia-"

"You were born in Indonesia?" Alec interrupted again. "Do you speak Indonesian?" He asked. There were so many things he didn't know about Magnus that it was hard for him to hold back and not ask.

Magnus limited himself to nod.

"Can you tell me something in Indonesian?"

"I can, but do you want me to tell you the story, or are you going to keep interrupting me every two words?" Magnus asked with a smile.

"Sorry, you're right, please ignore me and just go on." Alec said a bit ashamed of his insatiable curiosity.

"I don't know my parents' story," Magnus continued, "I don't even know how they met, all I know is that somehow, thirty years ago I was conceived. My mother was young when she met my father, very young, or at least that was what she said. The truth is that I'm not sure about any of this, she almost never talked about him and the few times she did it was to curse him for ruining her life, so I don't know exactly how things happened between them or what went wrong. Maybe the age difference was a determining factor or something else, who knows, but the thing is that when she found out she was pregnant, they were no longer together and so she never told him about my existence."

"She had you on her own?"

"Yes." Magnus nodded. "Then, when I was four, she met a guy, a writer or that was what he said he was, I never saw him grab a pen or write a full sentence, but never mind, she was happy with him, he was kind to her and treated her well. They started dating and shortly after, they got married. It's not a secret that I was always a big burden for my mother, she never wanted to have me in the first place, but, well, I was her son and she couldn't get rid of me that easily, so despite how much she wished I didn't exist, she had to take me to live with her and her new husband. The problem was that his guy didn't like me, he didn't like me at all."

"Why?"

"I never knew for sure," Magnus said with a shrug, "but I figured it was because I was my father's son. He said it all the time, he said I was the living image of my father and that I would surely end up like him." He added with a sad expression.

"I know I said I wouldn't be interrupting, but I have to ask you something...do you really remember all this?" Alec asked. "Because so far it seems as if you were sharing your memories of that time, and, well, you were only four, most kids have no vivid memories of their childhoods."

"I know, but I had a rough introduction to life, Alexander, so almost all those bad things I once went through are still here." He said, pointing to his head.

Alec put his glass down on the coffee table and got closer to Magnus. He wanted to wrap this man in a blanket and hug him until they became one, but since that was physically impossible, he just grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly.

"My step-father was a nightmare, he despised me with every fiber of his being," Magnus continued, "when for whatever reason he got angry, he always used me as his personal punching bag and beat the crap out of me."

"What!?" Alec exclaimed appalled.

"Yeah, and a couple of times he even...well, he even tried to get rid of me. That was how much he hated me."

"Get rid of you as in-?" Alec asked, not even daring to finish that question. He couldn't believe that Magnus had been treated like that by his own family—it wasn't fair, he had been just a kid.

Magnus didn't answer, but nodded, confirming what Alec had asked and breaking his heart into a million pieces.

"Magnus, I'm so sorry." Alec said, not really knowing what else to say. "This is so...horrible! God! And your mother? Didn't she try to stop him? To help you?"

"The first time it happened, yes, I was her only son, she had a little love for me somewhere in her heart, but the second time...well, she just pretended she wasn't there and let him do whatever he wanted with me."

Alec gasped in horror. Knowing all this about Magnus was helping him to understand and even admire those mysterious and complex layers of Magnus's personality. "I'm so sorry you had to go through all that."

"Don't be, it's in the past."

"Still…" Alec said.

Magnus just smiled softly and continued. "Then my mother got sick. At first she was only tired, but soon after she started to complain of a pain in her bones. We didn't have any money, so we couldn't take her to see a doctor and know what was happening to her, instead, we tried some home remedies, ointments and teas, but none of that really helped. She was tired all the time and the pain was getting stronger and stronger. Our lives gradually became a real hell, Alexander, you have no idea." Magnus said. "One morning, when I woke up, I discovered that my stepfather had left us. He was a coward, so I wasn't surprised that as soon as things started to get complicated he ran away, but nonetheless it was very shocking to me. Suddenly I was left alone with a very sick mother and a long list of debts to pay. My stepfather was a gambler, in fact, I can tell you he was more of a gambler than a writer, so when people in town heard that he had fled, they came to my house and demanded that we pay them."

"And what did you do?" Alec asked.

"My mother told them that we would try to find a way to pay them, but she just said it to reassure them, we didn't have any money, there was no way that we could pay them any time soon. So I did what any other kid in my situation would have done, I tried to get a job. It didn't work, though, no one wanted to hire a kid, and that was when I decided to look for the only person I thought could help me."

"Your father." Alec said.

"Yes, I was eight when I met him. I didn't even know who he was or what his name was, I just knew that somewhere I had a father and that maybe he could help me."

"And how did you find him?"

"One of our neighbors had met him once, when he had come to visit my mother, so she offered me some help to find him." Magnus said. "It took us a few days, but eventually, I found out who he was and I went to him. He was surprised to see me, of course, he had no idea who I was or what I was doing at his home, but when I told him who my mother was and how old I was, he smiled. I thought he was happy to have a son, I thought that despite the circumstances this was going to be a good thing for everyone. Any kid wants to be with their parents and have a family, but, well, it wasn't quite like that."

"What happened?"

"At first he helped me, he gave me enough money so that I could take my mother to the doctor and pay some of our debts. I felt relieved, she and I didn't have the best of relationships but I loved her, she was my mom, and although the fact that I had accepted my father's help only distanced us more, I didn't care—I had to save her. So I accepted my father's money and took her to the doctor...that's when everything fell apart." Magnus said, taking some time to continue. Alec could see how much it still hurt him to talk about this part of his life.

"It turned out that she was dying," Magnus continued, "she had cancer—bone cancer. Her situation was very delicate, but the doctors were hopeful that with the right treatment she was going to be fine. The problem was that, as in any part of the world, the treatments for that type of disease were very, very expensive."

"So you went to your father again." Alec assumed. It made sense, Magnus had no one.

"Yes, I had no choice, I was desperate." Magnus said.

"And what happened?"

"My father offered me a deal," Magnus continued, "he would pay all of my mother's expenses if I agreed to do some small jobs for him. He told me that he was only doing that so that I could learn to earn the money he was giving me, and I said yes—I was a kid, I trusted him. Anyway, after that I took my mother to the doctor and we started the treatment. A couple of weeks later the man showed up on my doorstep and asked me to go with him to do one of those jobs that he had told me about."

"And you went?"

"Of course I went, I had given him my word."

Alec didn't know what to say, the story was so cruel and wrong on so many levels. There was no doubt that Asmodeus had only shared a part of it, the whole story was more heartbreaking than Alec had been expecting, so he just squeezed Magnus's hand tightly to reassure him that he was there, and listened intently.

"He took me to this fancy building in Jakarta. He said I had to sneak into one of the offices and get a key for him. He said it wasn't a bad thing, just a prank for his friend who worked there, so I did it without a second thought." Magnus confessed. "It was easy, I was a kid, so naturally no one raised an eyebrow when, pretending to play hide and seek, I snuck into one of the main offices and took the key. I didn't know it then, but that was the moment that all this crap started."

"Oh, Magnus…"

"Things went on like that for a few months, he asked me to take things from people and always told me they were his friends. When I started to realize that he was lying and that what I was doing was called stealing, I got scared. I was terrified that the police could come and get me, so I told my neighbor that we needed to hide from my father because he was a bad man and she helped us escape. She had a brother who lived in Spain, he was a monk, so she told him about us and he offered us refuge in his monastery. I saved some money and when I had the chance, I took my mother and fled from my country."

"You went to Spain?"

"Yes, I was terrified of my father and in my innocence I thought he would never find us there, but I was wrong. It took him some months, but eventually he found us." Magnus said. "When he came to the monastery he tried to make me work for him again, but I refused. I was eleven by then, I knew better, but my mother's health hadn't improved with the trip, on the contrary, she was worse, we had interrupted her treatment, so I had to swallow my pride and accept his help again."

"And the monks?"

"The monks tried to help us, but they didn't have much money, they could only offer us food and shelter." Magnus said. "Anyway, from that moment on my life changed, I started working with my father again and he started teaching me stuff—how to pick locks, how to steal someone's wallet without being noticed, how security systems worked, etc...all the basics to be a criminal, but at the same time the monks were teaching me everything about history, science, literature, the arts; Brother Abraham was very skilled with the brush, he was the one who taught me how to paint. My formative years were difficult to say the least, more than once I found myself wondering who I really was. The boy the monks were teaching him how to be good, compassionate and to do good deeds, or the boy my father was turning into a replica of himself."

"You're nothing like him." Alec couldn't help saying. He had met Asmodeus, he had talked to him, and that man had nothing to do with Magnus—nothing. They were complete opposites.

"You think?"

"I'm sure." Alec said confidently. It was important that Magnus knew that despite the influence his father had had on him, he didn't resemble him in the least.

"It's good to hear that." Magnus said with a smile.

Alec smiled back. "And then what happened?" He asked. "How long did you stay in Spain?"

"A couple of years," Magnus said, "my mother wasn't quite right, but she was still alive, I had no reason to want to move from there, but then I heard about some new health treatments here in the States, so I asked my father if we could bring her here to cure her once and for all, and he agreed."

"Did you come to New York?"

"No, to Boston. The Cancer Institute was in Boston's Longwood Medical Area."

"How old were you then?"

"Fourteen almost fifteen."

"You were still so young." Alec couldn't help saying.

"I was, but not so much in criminal terms. I was growing up, so obviously I couldn't keep using the innocent-kid stunt I had exploited for years, and that was when my father forced me to get involved in other stuff...more dangerous stuff."

"Like what?"

"Well, robbing banks, participating in millionaire frauds, forging valuable paintings...that sort of thing."

"Was he still paying your mom's expenses?"

"Yes, although technically, I was doing it because I was the one getting his hands dirty." Magnus said. "I was pretty skilled, with all my years of experience I could go in and out of buildings in record time and without even triggering the alarms."

"Tell me about it." Alec said laughing. If there was a person in the world who knew about the brilliant set of skills that Magnus possessed that was Alec.

"I've been a headache, haven't I?"

"Yes, you have, but please go on."

"Well, then I turned sixteen and like any teenager, I rebelled against my parents. I was tired of my life, I was tired of having to steal in order to survive. I didn't want to be a criminal, I wanted to be something else, so I ran away."

"You ran away?"

"Yes, my mother was in remission, so I told myself, why not? And I left. I came here to New York, I changed my name and started working in a coffee shop. It was good, my salary wasn't the best, but I was finally having the life I had always wanted...and that's when I met Ragnor."

o-o-o-o-o

Sharing his life with Alexander had turned out to be harder than he had thought it would be, and not because he didn't trust the agent, he had already told him that he did and he had meant it, but reliving all his past, despite all the time that had passed since then, was still very painful for him.

"Where did you meet him?" Alec asked.

"In the coffee shop, he got a job a few weeks after I started working there." Magnus said. "He had just arrived from London and he needed money, the owner of the place was a very good person, so she didn't hesitate to give him a chance too."

"Did you guys become friends right away?"

"Yes, we did." Magnus said with a smile. "From the moment we met, there was an understanding between us that we couldn't explain. We were two young boys trying to make it big in the city and although he's older than me—eight years older than me—that age difference never mattered between us. We had no one, we were both alone in this intimidating city, so we became each other's family. It was nice, we rented a very shitty apartment in Washington Heights and we became full-time New Yorkers. It was a great time, those days were the best of my life, unfortunately, a few months later the bubble burst."

"Your father." Alec tried to guess.

"Yeah, that man was worse than the cancer that had been eating my mother." Magnus confessed.

"He found you?"

"Yes, and he even brought my mother with him. He knew it was the only way I was going to do something, but even with her here, I refused, I refused because I didn't want to go back to that life, I was done with all that. But then he showed me stuff…" Magnus said, remembering that day as if it had happened just yesterday, "videos and pictures of me stealing all those banks, jewelry shops and museums. I didn't know that he had done that, it took me completely by surprise, and, well, he...he-"

"He blackmailed you."

Magnus nodded, thanking Alec's quick mind and taking a deep breath. "So I quit my job and started working with him again."

"And Ragnor?"

"Ragnor didn't know what I did at first." Magnus confessed, recalling all those days when he came home and tried to avoid Ragnor for fear of being discovered. "For weeks I avoided him, pretending to be asleep or arriving when I knew he wasn't home so he couldn't start asking me about my new mysterious job, but it was hard to hide it from him, we lived together, so sooner or later he discovered me."

"He discovered you?"

"Yes." Magnus laughed, remembering that day. "I was saving money from the scores I was being forced to do, I was getting a lot of cash and I wanted to save a little just in case I might need it in the future, but since I couldn't just go and open a bank account to put it there, I started to hide it in a box under my bed. One day when I arrived home after having stolen two diamonds from a private collection of this very famous jewelry located on Fifth Avenue, I was surprised to see that Ragnor was waiting for me inside my room. It was late, so I thought he would be asleep, but, well, he was not. He was very much awake, sitting there on my bed and looking at me as if I were his errant son coming home way past his curfew."

Alec laughed.

"He had the box where I had been putting all my money next to him, so he demanded an explanation." Magnus continued. "I tried to come up with something to explain what that box was doing under my bed, but there was no way to justify that amount of money, much less in cash, so I had no choice but to tell him the truth—the whole truth. He listened to me without judgment and when I finished my story, he just looked me in the eye and said he would help me, not only with the upcoming scores, but to find a way to retrieve that evidence that my father had against me. I told him that he didn't need to do that, I didn't want to get him into any of this mess, but he insisted, saying there was no way he was going to let me keep doing any of this on my own. So after that we became a team. He has the mind of a strategist and knows a lot of people, so he became the brains behind the operation and my right hand man. He helped me plan the next scores and made sure everything went well for us. It was a good thing, you know? With him by my side I wasn't so scared anymore, I knew that if something bad happened he would be there, having my back as he'd had it from the first moment we had met."

"He's like your big brother."

"In more than one way." Magnus said with a smile. "Then, well...my mother's cancer came back. I had some savings, but I didn't have enough money to pay for the treatment, so I told my father to give me a higher percentage of what we were getting from the scores and he agreed, but only on the condition that I signed a contract to make it official that I would be working for him for a while. I was eighteen by then, a legal adult, so I did it, I screwed up and I did it. I signed without knowing what I was getting myself into. So when my mother died and I no longer needed the extra money, he showed me what I had signed and, well, it turned out to be my own death sentence."

"Why?"

"By signing that stupid contract I had promised to pay him all the money he had given me through the years with a very high and quite insane interest rate. The document said that if I could pay him in a year, then the contract would be canceled, if not, then for each year I couldn't pay, he would add a zero to my debt. I owed him a lot, he had started lending me money when I was eight, so..."

"So...you've been paying him all these years?"

"Yes."

"He said that you had signed that contract because you wanted to be free and he needed a guarantee that you would pay him his money," Alec said, "I thought it had been a conscious decision on your part, not that he had deceived you to do it. He's worse than I thought he could be, I mean, you are his son...his blood runs through your veins, why did he do that to you?"

"Because he hates me? I don't know, Alexander, I stopped asking myself those questions a long time ago. Anyway, what he told you isn't true, he always twists the stories to make himself look good, but I signed that contract just to have enough money to pay for my mother's treatment, I had no idea it was a hoax." Magnus said. "But never mind, after he showed me what I had signed, I knew I had no choice but to become a real criminal. It was the only thing I knew how to do and I was good at it, so I took the easy way out and decided to become independent. I wanted to do it under my own terms, so I told him that I would no longer work for him and that I would find a way to pay him."

"And that's when you started working on your own." Alec assumed.

"Yes, I embraced what I had become, and Magnus Bane, the criminal you know, was born. I told Ragnor, 'if I have to be a criminal then I'll be the best criminal in the world,' and I started to study more and to be better at what I did, do you want to know what was my first big score as Magnus Bane?"

Alec nodded enthusiastically.

"I stole from my father all the evidence he had about me and burned it." Magnus said, smiling at the memory of that glorious day. "Then, with the ashes, I wrote him a little message on the wall—a quote from Leonardo Da Vinci."

"What did you write?"

"Tristo è quel discepolo che non avanza il suo maestro." Magnus said in perfect Italian. "Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master." He translated it into English.

"You mocked him."

"Yes, I hated him for what he had done to me and I thought it was funny," Magnus confessed, "I've always had a slightly twisted sense of humor. Anyway, after that I tried to pay him in the year he had given me, but I failed. Ragnor and I didn't have much experience working on our own, so our first attempt to rob a casino in Las Vegas didn't go as planned."

"The Mandalay Bay casino, eleven years ago." Alec said, much to Magnus's surprise.

"Yes, how do you know that?" Magnus asked intrigued.

"They teach us that one in Quantico," Alec confessed, "the FBI has always suspected that you were behind that attack."

"Well, they got that right, it was me, that casino was my first big epic fail." Magnus shared with a bit of bitterness. The ghost of that failure would follow him all his life.

"Then what happened?"

"We met another friend and he convinced us to go to Europe. He said that the real money was there, so we followed him. We moved there and started to make a name for ourselves." Magnus shared. He avoided naming that other friend because, unlike Ragnor, Raphael would never forgive him if he shared private information about him with a federal agent. "It wasn't hard, there were a lot of valuable things there—Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Greece, all countries had something we could steal." He confessed. "And well, that was what we did, we were all over important countries, stealing paintings, jewelry and important things of great cultural value, making a business out of it. Ragnor and I planned the heists and our friend sold whatever we stole—we made a lot of money like that."

"And with that money...did you start to pay your debt to your father?"

"Yes, sometimes I paid him in cash, some other times I gave him the stolen piece and he deducted the value of it from my endless debt, it all depended on how the market was at the moment. He was well known over there, so it wasn't like he needed me to do all the dirty work." Magnus said. "Anyway, long story short, I became quite famous in that part of the world, people knew that there was a criminal who was stealing all kinds of things without leaving any trace but my glitter, but no one knew who I was, the Interpol could never put me under their radar. It was easier to avoid the authorities when I could move around fast, I could commit a crime in Germany in the morning and be in Italy at night. It wasn't until I got here that you all could put a face to what I had done."

"Then why did you return to this country?"

Magnus sighed. Of all the things he had done in his life, this part was the one he regretted the most. "Because I fell in love."

o-o-o-o-o

"Oh." Alec said, trying not to show emotion in his voice. He knew a bit about Magnus's past lovers, over the years he had managed to find out some names of people who had been involved with the criminal in a romantic way, but this was the first time he was going to hear Magnus speak of them openly and that made him feel a bit anxious.

"Yeah, but that love turned out to be a big mistake. In fact, the moment I arrived here with her my life became a series of mistakes—one after the other. Everything I'd done up until that moment, all the things I had achieved crumbled down before my eyes."

"What happened?" Alec asked.

"She used me," Magnus confessed, "she was a swindler, a wolf in sheep's clothing, but I didn't know that when I first met her. She was mysterious, yes, but I thought it was all part of her charm. Anyway, she made me fall in love with her like a fool and I lost myself, I lost sight of who I was and what was important to me."

"Was her name Camille? Camille Belcourt?" Alec couldn't help asking. He was remembering a note, a note he had found a long time ago and that had led him to discover Magnus's real name.

"How do you know that?" Magnus asked, genuinely surprised. "Did my father tell you about her? That's weird, he never liked her."

Alec shook his head. "He didn't mention anyone from your past, in fact, he didn't even mention your name...I...I-" Alec hesitated. "Do you remember when you asked me how I had found out your real name? Well, I told you that I had found something and connected it to one of your cases. It was a note...addressed to her." He confessed.

"Oh."

"I know it's weird, but I found it on the floor of that storage unit and recognized your handwriting, I had been following your case for some time by then and well, the FBI had some samples of your-"

"Wait," Magnus interrupted him, "I do remember that note, I left it inside one of the boxes I didn't want to see again in my life, but I didn't sign it, how did you-"

"I know," Alec said nervously, "I know you didn't sign it, but you-you you left a map for her hidden between lines, that map led to a place in Central Park."

"You figured it out?" Magnus asked, surprised.

Alec nodded. "And not just that...I-I-I also found the necklace." He confessed. "It was camouflaged as part of a sculpture there and, well, I took it. The moment I saw it, I knew it was the same necklace that had belonged to Queen Marie-Antoinette of France and that you had stolen at some point during your time in that country. There were rumors that the mysterious glitter-obsessed criminal who had been causing chaos all over Europe had stolen it, so I requested to see what the Bureau had on that case. In the file there was a picture of the necklace and the first thing I noticed was that it wasn't engraved like the one I had in my possession, so I assumed you had added that detail for her. I knew there weren't many places in the city where you could do that kind of work, let alone in such a valuable piece, so I asked around until I found the man who had helped you. I told him I was looking for you to give you back the necklace. He asked why and I told him that because the person to whom you had given it had passed away a few weeks ago. He believed me and looked in his files to see if there was anything on the record of that work that could help...and your name popped up. At first, I thought it was just another one of your aliases, but when I tracked you down, I realized it was your real name."

"See? Mistake after mistake." Magnus said. "Even without knowing it, she gave me away." He added amused. "I can't believe you've actually deciphered the map I hid in the note and found the necklace."

"You tended to underestimate the FBI, but I was not, I am not your average special agent." Alec said with a soft smile. "But never mind that, you never gave it to her, why?"

"She left me." Magnus said, as a matter of explanation. "She was just using me as a means to climb faster in the criminal world, so once she met someone more experienced and powerful than me...she left."

"Oh."

"Yeah, I was really in love with her, but she didn't feel the same way about me. I learned the hard way that when love is a one-sided affair things end badly. Anyway, after she dumped me, I decided to stay here for good. Ragnor, who had decided to step away from me because of her, found me again and together we bought another place and returned to what we had been doing before I screwed up. We went to several cities in the country and did a couple of scores, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington D.C., Miami, San Diego…Las Vegas—Vegas truly is a magical place, we stayed there for some time."

"To plan the Bellagio casino heist?" Alec asked just to be sure. He knew that Magnus had the Bellagio casino heist on his long list of misdeeds.

"Well, of course! I've never been into gambling for reasons that I'm sure now you understand, so why else would a man like myself spend half a year in a city like Vegas if it wasn't to steal a casino, huh?"

Alec laughed. "So it's true...you were behind the attack to the Bellagio casino."

"Guilty as charged."

"Was it a way to make a statement of your new abilities after your failed attempt to rob the Mandalay Bay years ago? Because between the two, the Bellagio had the best security system and you still managed to get into their vault and take the money without triggering the alarms."

"Kind of, yeah, you could say that." Magnus confessed.

"How did you do it?" Alec asked curiously. That had been eating him for years. "You walked out the front door with 80 million dollars in cash hidden in four suitcases."

Magnus laughed. "Do you really want to know?"

Alec nodded.

"I didn't." Magnus said simply.

"What?"

"I walked out the front door with four suitcases, yes, but they weren't full of money, they were full of clothes."

Alec frowned in confusion. "But the money wasn't in the vault when the police arrived." He said.

"I know, because I had taken it, but I didn't take it with me, I left it in the casino and came back for it a couple of days later. I hid it in plain sight."

"What!?" Alec exclaimed in disbelief.

"Patience, my dear Alexander, is a virtue I'm very good at...in case you haven't noticed it yet."

Alec chuckled. "So the footage of you walking out of the casino-"

"Was just me being cocky." Magnus admitted.

Alec couldn't help laughing. "I can't believe you, you could have avoided linking your name to that heist, but no, you had to walk around the casino pretending to carry the money you had just stolen."

"What can I say? I was in my arrogance stage, I wanted the attention."

"Have you done something similar since then?"

"Yes, do you want to hear all about my misdeeds?" Magnus asked.

Alec nodded—he had given him immunity for a reason.

"Very well." Magnus said, and with a smile started to share in detail some of the things he had done in his life as a criminal, the places where he had been and the things he had stolen. He didn't hold back anything, he shared everything, even things Alec doubted were completely true or at least as astonishing as the criminal had described them.

"And well," Magnus said when he finished confessing all his misdeeds, "the rest of the story you already know. In the last three years, I tried my best to avoid the irritating FBI agent who was following me and trying to catch me, but, well, I think it's safe to say that I failed in that since I'm telling all this to said irritating but surprisingly sweet agent."

Alec smiled at the sudden compliment and looked around, realizing that time had flown by and it was already dawning. He didn't have much time left to ask before he had to head back to the office. "I need to ask you something before I have to leave."

"Ask away, dear."

"Did you finish paying that debt to your father?" Alec asked. Asmodeus had told him that he had, but Alec had decided the moment Magnus had started to share his version of the story that he was going to put aside what the other criminal had told him and only take Magnus's word for it.

"Yes, the bonds were my ticket way out."

"Then why did you hand him over to us?"

"Because he isn't a good man and he deserved it."

"You haven't forgiven him." Alec stated.

"Can you blame me?"

Alec shook his head. Of course he couldn't, Asmodeus had literally ruined Magnus's life.

"Now you know the full story of Magnus Bane." Magnus said.

"You don't use your father's last name, was Bane your mother's maiden name?" Alec asked out of curiosity.

"No, do you remember those books I gave you? I told you that the man who had raised me had given them to me, well...that man was Brother Abraham, his last name was Bane."

"Oh."

"When I decided to reinvent myself, the first name I came up with was Magnus because of the similarity my life had with what is described as the Magnus effect, but I couldn't decide on a surname. I didn't want to use my father's or my mother's because that person wasn't who I wanted to be, so I decided to use Brother Abraham's because at the end of the day he was the one who made me the man I am today, my father made the criminal, but the man? That was all Brother Abraham's doing."

Alec smiled. "I like that man." He said sincerely.

"Do you?"

Alec nodded.

"And the criminal?" Magnus asked.

"This may surprise you," Alec said, looking him straight in the eye, "but I like him too."

Magnus smiled. "Well, Alexander, the man and the criminal like you too. You'd be surprised to know how much."

"Is that so?" Alec asked playfully. After the intense conversation they had had, both deserved a break and changing the mood seemed like the best way to do it. Alec didn't have much time, but he had a minute or two to spare that he could certainly use with this man.

"Yes, would you like me to show you exactly how much?" Magnus asked seductively, already leaning over to kiss him.

Alec smiled and closed the small distance between them, kissing him back and just enjoying this new closeness that this conversation had given them. Because there were no more secrets between them, for better or for worse, nothing stood between them.

Magnus was starting to push him against the couch so they could be more comfortable when Alec's alarm started ringing, breaking the spell and snapping him back to reality—he had to go to work.

"Crap!" Alec exclaimed, reaching into his pocket for his phone and trying to turn it off. "Magnus, I-I..." he said between kisses, "I-I have to go."

"Are you sure you want to go, darling?"

"No, I mean, yes." Alec said, pulling away just a bit to look Magnus in the eye. "I have to go to work."

"Always so responsible," Magnus pouted, "but okay, go...go save the world one criminal at a time."

Alec just rolled his eyes playfully and started gathering his things, picking up his jacket and grabbing his badge and gun from the table—putting an end to that limited deal he had given the criminal. "I...hmmm, I want to thank you for sharing you life with me." He said.

"It was my pleasure, Alexander, but thank you for listening."

"I'm a good listener."

"And I'm a good sharer...I guess we're the perfect team."

Alec smiled rather pleased with that statement. "Yeah, I guess you're right." He said. "Hmmm, I'll call you later, okay? When I'm off from work."

"Okay." Magnus said, giving him a quick kiss that Alec made sure to prolong for as long as he could before he had to stop for a little breath.

"Are you sure you can't call in sick and stay?" Magnus asked. "I really don't want you to go. We could have breakfast together and then get some sleep, order takeout, watch some movies…have lazy sex. I know you like that."

"I...I do, but I can't," Alec said, though he would have stayed without hesitation had it not been for what had happened in the office just yesterday, "the CID sent an agent to review our work."

"The Criminal Investigative Division is reviewing your work?" Magnus asked surprised.

"Yes, they sent an agent from the National Security branch to see if Valentine's case and your case are still under our jurisdiction."

"When did this happen?"

"Yesterday morning."

"Well...I'm not an agent, but that can't be good, right?"

"It's not, but don't worry, I have it under control. I just need to prove the new agent that we have enough to keep the case."

"Well, then go...we don't want this agent taking over our investigation."

"That's not going to happen, I promise." Alec said. "Anyway, I really have to go, it's a little late and I still have to go home to pick up some clothes. Please don't hand me over any other criminal today, okay? I have enough work as it is."

Magnus laughed. "Okay, don't worry...I won't."

"Bye." Alec said, giving Magnus a quick good-bye kiss before heading for the door.

"Alexander?" Magnus said, when Alec was on his way out.

"Yes?"

"Aku cinta kamu." Magnus said.

"Excuse me?" Alec asked confused.

"You wanted to hear something in Indonesian, well, that's Indonesian."

"Oh, and what does it mean?" He asked, now intrigued.

Magnus smiled softly. "You'll find out soon enough, but know that I mean it."

Alec frowned. He wanted to know what that meant, but he really had to leave, so he just gave Magnus a look that said that he would be asking about this as soon as he had more time and walked away, closing the door behind him—the echo of those words still ringing in his head and sending a swarm of butterflies to his stomach, as if deep down, he already knew the meaning of them.