Chapter Twenty: Faro

"Right this way please Miss Bennet."

Lizzy was led out of the room by some faceless suit, her legs feeling heavier with every step. She was still reeling from it all, all the revelations. Her mind ached, her body was sapped of all energy. Some fucking holiday, she though wryly. Las Vegas, the grifters Mecca, where everybody like her wanted to end up eventually, had swiftly turned into a city of nightmares. All because of four people, four people who had targeted them, had seduced them with their charm and words, and had dropped them as soon as they'd got what they needed from them. Her anger was a swarm, ready to swamp them all. God, Jane. How the fuck was she supposed to break this to her? She had to tell her, there was no way she could hide this from her. News of Darcy's arrest would spread to London sooner rather than later, Jane would find out eventually, work it all out by herself. She had to tell her before that happened, had to be able to have some semblance of control over the situation. This had the potential to do real, lasting damage to her already considerably damaged, no matter how well she hid it, sister.

One day, she'd make them all pay.

"Please, hurry Miss Bennet." the man was saying as they twisted and turned again through the maze.

She quickened her pace to keep up. Was it just her, or was this journey taking longer than it had before? Speaking of, she didn't recognize any of what was around her. The corridors were definitely a different shade of white as well….

She was brought back as the man in front of her suddenly stopped still, causing her to crash headfirst into his back and steady herself.

"What the fuck, man?" she rubbed her temple. "I really want to get out of here sooner rather than later, so can we please get a move on?"

The man gave her no reaction, just looked left and right. Lizzy realised that they were at a literal fork in the road. Two ways to go.

"Of course, we can leave if you want," the man said softly. "Go right, and you'll be out of here in less than a minute…."

"Ok then," Lizzy huffed. "Let's go."

She pushed past him and began to head right down the corridor, before she was called back.

"But if you go left, there is a certain someone who would like to see you."

Stopped dead in her tracks. Somehow, she knew straight away that he was talking about William Darcy. She knew that that couldn't be the end of it, it couldn't end with her watching his downfall through a glass pane. That was never how these stories ended.

She shouldn't go, she knew that. She should carry on the way she was going, one foot in front of the other, until she eventually found her way home. Home to her family, to Jane and Lydia, to London and all its ugly concrete, steel and gravel beauty. Get on with her life and not look back at this again. Try to forget that she had been taken in by a group of self confessed con artists, even made friends with a couple of them, and been so thoroughly out thought and manipulated. The thing she felt more than anything, even more than the anger, was the embarrassment. God, to think she'd thought she was ready for all this. She'd been harping on to all that would listen about her ambitions to play the long con, to be like Will Darcy. To the man himself as well. He must have been laughing at her the whole time, knowing that she was in his game and had no idea, just a stupid little orphan girl. It was galling and embarrassing. How did she not see it? It was all there, every piece of it, all right in front of her. And yet, she hadn't. The grift sense that she'd prided herself on had stopped functioning, hell, maybe it hadn't ever functioned as it should. Just how arrogant had she been to think she was ready for all this?

Steeled herself from the dark thoughts.

This wasn't how it was going to end.

"Take me to him."

Darcy was sitting on a wooden chair in an otherwise completely bare room, head tilted back and eyes shut. As usual when she saw him, she forgot for a brief second how much she hated him, distracted by his sheer beauty. Handsome wasn't the right word for him, no he was beautiful. And here, with his normal piercing, judgemental eyes shut, he became even more angelic. He looked younger, the crease in his brow absent, an expression of pure peace. But this man was no angel. This man was vermin, a snake, and she wasn't about to let him forget that.

He hadn't noticed her presence yet, and made no movement when she coughed. Maybe he was actually asleep. Drew closer to him, fighting the urge to give him a slap. As she approached and was looming over him, the door banged loudly behind her, causing her to whip her head round to the source of the noise. The man who had led her here was gone, leaving her alone with Will Darcy for the first time since that night at the club that she barely remembered, the night before it had all been revealed. Was that only last night? It felt like a lifetime ago. When she turned back to him she was met with open, grey eyes. Drew a sharp breath.

"You came." he murmured, eyes not leaving hers.

"Very observant of you." she sneered back, causing him to laugh.

Anger swelled up in her, but she kept it checked. He didn't have the right to laughter after what he had done to her sister.

"In my defence, it's been a long day." he smiled at her. That smile threw her off balance for a second, and she realised just how close she was to him. Took a couple of steps back and leant against the wall, clenching and unclenching her fists in an attempt to keep calm. It would do no good to lose it. But if she wasn't going to scream and hit and hurt, then why was she even here, she wondered. What was it about this man that had her like a moth to a flame? Every time she thought she'd got rid of him, both literally and figuratively in her mind, he always popped back up again, and she stood by and let it happen, even sought it out.

"This was a mistake." she muttered and started to make for the door.

"Wait!" Darcy stopped her, standing up, his tone one of desperation if her ears didn't deceive her. What was going on?

"I have nothing to say." she shrugged, her back still to him.

"But I do," Darcy began to pace. "Look, I don't know how much you've heard….."

"All of it," Lizzy turned to face him. "I've heard all of it. Catherine had me sat behind that fucking glass. I watched her beat you, Picasso. As she said at the time, you're done. Finished. Was it worth it? That five years at the top of the game, all that money? Worth it for the years you're going to spend locked in a cell? They'll throw the fucking book at you, you know that right?"

"I'm aware," Darcy sighed. "Ten to fifteen probably, seven to ten if I get lucky. But you never know…."

"Do you want me to pity you or something?" Lizzy asked angrily. "God, why am I even here? To say an emotional goodbye?"

"Something like that," Darcy stopped pacing and cast his eyes down. "It may well be that I am going away for a long time, and that's fine, that's what we all risk in this game. My decisions got me here. But I can't accept it without doing this first…."

"Doing what?" Lizzy sighed, sick of all the cryptic shit.

"Um… well, you see….." he stuttered. She'd never heard him stutter before. He was always so careful with his language, never slipping into slang or accent, always speaking in that perfect, clipped tone.

"Get on with it, Darcy," Lizzy demanded. "I have a plane to catch."

"It's just, I had to see you before you go. Or I go, I suppose. Whatever. Yes, I had to see you."

He raised his gaze to hers, and she saw a sudden vulnerability there.

The silence stretched on, before Will Darcy somehow managed to give her the biggest shock to date. No mean feat considering all that had happened.

"I think I'm in love with you."

Her first reaction was to laugh, and indeed she did. A short bark of disbelieving laughter. Next, came the anger. Not content with conning and manipulating her, causing her to slip back into self doubt, now he did this. One final flourish, one last humiliation. But why? What was wrong with him? Why was he messing with her like this again? It was sick, the actions of a true sociopath.

But then she looked into his eyes.

Sincerity. That's what she saw. Total and utter sincerity.

Fucking hell, he was actually serious.

Charlotte had called it.

She was too stunned to respond as Darcy followed up.

"It's been killing me," Darcy began to pace again, twitching in a way that was most unlike him, avoiding looking at her. "I had to say something, had to tell you. I couldn't go away without telling you how I feel…"

"How you feel…" Lizzy repeated, still in a state of complete shock and confusion.

"Yes. I've struggled with it for months now, I thought it would go away, in fact I actively tried to make it go away. But I couldn't. I can't stop thinking about you, despite my best efforts. I mean, you are the last person I would have expected to fall for. Indeed, I still can't get my head around it all. You're so different to any of the other women I've ever felt something for. You're rude and crass, certainly have an inflated opinion of yourself, with a family that is, to put it politely, a bit of a nightmare. For God sake, you still play the Monte! But despite it, despite me telling myself all this, telling myself that I'm being stupid to even be considering it, that I'm the worst hypocrite in the world, I can't keep it in any longer. I needed to tell you."

He stopped pacing, and finally looked at her, his grey eyes shining with hope.

He couldn't be serious. She needed to get out of there before she did something she'd regret. Or worse, something she wouldn't.

"And now you've told me. Goodbye, Darcy."

"Wait! Is that it?" he asked her incredulously. "That's all you have to say?"

"Well, obviously I'm flattered, Darcy," she spat. "Flattered that you could see past all my flaws and still deem me fit to be this object of your love."

"I didn't mean to….." he tried to defend, but Lizzy was not going to allow it. All thoughts of leaving were forgotten.

"Didn't mean to what?" she raised her voice. "Insult me and my family so thoroughly? The family who are the only reason I am standing here today, the only reason I'm not some smack addict or nameless grave in a cemetery? But, no, you're right, they are a nightmare. Total fucking arseholes. I'm glad you can overlook just how awful they are. Speaks volumes for your generosity."

"Oh, come on, Lizzy!" Darcy said. "I'm not saying they're all bad, but…."

"Oh, they're not all bad!" Lizzy laughed, sarcastically. "That's good to know. Let's forget about them anyway, focus on me and my inflated ego. Pot, kettle, black? You think you're the smartest man in every room, you admitted it yourself. And rude and crass? I'll give you crass, some of us actually talk like normal fucking human beings, some of us have actually lived in the real world, suffered the real consequences of it. By no means am I trivialising your own hardships, Darcy. I'm sure there are starving kids in some third world village bemoaning your fate. 'Oh no', they're saying, 'you mean the rich boy had his casino taken away? He was only allowed to manage it and had to get by on a manager's salary while living in a castle rent free? Lord, how tough it must have been for him, we need to pray for his fortune to return…."

"You don't know anything about it." Darcy said, the coldness in tone coming out for the first time.

"You're right, I don't," Lizzy shrugged nastily. "From what I gather, you just did what all rich boys do, threw a tantrum, drank a lot, snorted a lot, whatever. Then once that got boring, you decided to reinvent yourself as Picasso in some pathetic attempt to hide the fact that you're exactly the same as those you take money from. Anyway, I digress. So, I'm the rude one. Are you fucking kidding me? Can you actually hear yourself? You're the most rude and condescending person I have ever met, and considering you've met my 'mother' you'll know that is some achievement. You're a fucking prick, Darcy, no other way to put it! Just how on earth did you expect that declaration to go down? You're a fucking con man, Darcy, people say you can read people and judge every situation perfectly. How could you get it so totally wrong? You thought that insulting me and my family and friends would go down well?"

"I wanted to be honest!" Darcy protested, but Lizzy could hear the veiled anger and frustration. "You're right, I'm a con man, a pretty fucking good one, I could have lied to you, said all the right things, but I wanted it to be real! What's wrong with that? So I have reservations! Of course I do! You're not some innocent woman, Lizzy, you're a liar and a cheat, just like me."

"The difference is, I didn't have a choice!" Lizzy snarled.

"Everyone has a choice…."

"You think? God, you rich types. It's all so black and white for you isn't it? You chose your life, Darcy, you chose to be what you are. You could have done anything. You're no different from your dear Aunt, not really. She said the same thing to me, you know, said I should forget about the con and make it honest. How am I supposed to do that? I grew up in the system, grew up on the streets. I have no qualifications, no friends in high places, nothing to fall back on. I do what I do because it's the only thing I've ever known, the only thing I can do, and even if I wanted to change, I couldn't. Well, maybe I could, but where will that change get me? Waiting tables, serving coffee, scraping by month after month, year after year, telling myself that it will get better, telling myself the same lie until the day I die."

"I just hear excuses," Darcy waved her off, taking a step towards her. "You're a resourceful and intelligent woman, if you wanted to change, you could."

"Oh, so now I'm resourceful and intelligent," Lizzy smirked. "Tip for the future, Darcy, lead with that first when confessing your love. Leave the disparaging parts until later, or better yet, don't mention them at all."

"Would you have preferred it if I played you then? If I…."

"Play me like you already have?" Lizzy interrupted, finally getting to the crux of it. "Played me like you played my sister?"

Darcy went silent.

"Nothing to say?" Lizzy pressed, lowering her voice to a whisper and taking a step towards him, they were almost nose to nose now. She could see every line on his face, every eye lash, every fleck of spit that she had showered upon him in their heated arguments.

"You might have ruined her life, you and Charlie. You thought I'd look beyond that?"

"I think that's being a bit dramatic." Darcy replied, causing Lizzy to laugh with derision.

"Dramatic? You honey trapped her, you fucking got one of your crew to seduce her, make her love him and then disappear! All so you could get close to Billy Collins! It's sick, awful, unforgivable."

Darcy was silent for a moment, could see his mind carefully considering his next words.

"I expected you to be angry, but at least understand…." Darcy began.

"Understand?"

"Yes, understand," Darcy raised his voice. "Don't you see how hypocritical it is to call us sick and unforgivable? Don't forget who you and Jane are, what you do. You're short con players, you take money from people day in day out, and you sometimes use your looks and femininity to do it. Don't deny it. Tell me, do you work the Badger? Does Jane work the Badger?"

"That's different." Lizzy muttured, seeing exactly where he was going with this. Seeing that he was unfortunately going to have a point.

"In what way? You seduce lonely and desperate men. You don't know their backstories, you don't know why on that certain day they were tempted into it. It could've been anything. Are they necessarily bad men, all of them? Of course not. You use them, prey on their weakness and extract their money. You honey trap them. And now suddenly when the boot's on the other foot, you get all morally superior about it? If you do it to someone else, then you better be prepared for someone to do it to you. That's life, that's the game we're in, how it works."

"She loved him." Lizzy repeated, not allowing his words to get to her.

"No she didn't," Darcy opposed. "I watched them, it was clear that she was being pressured into a beneficial relationship by your mother. I was in the room when she came to Netherfield, remember? Besides, while she was maybe not indifferent to him, she was certainly not in love with him, anyone could've seen that. Both Caro and I saw that she felt a lot less for him than he did for her….."

"Than he did for her?" Lizzy pounced on the strange choice of words. "What are you talking about? He targeted her, it was all part of your score."

"It was," Darcy nodded. "And he played it perfectly. Too perfect…."

"What do you mean?"

"He fell for her," Darcy said simply. "Told us that he wanted to pack it in, that he was going to tell her everything. I couldn't let it happen, Lizzy. We'd worked so hard for this, six months of our lives. This was my retirement, my way of getting it back. Of giving my sister a future, something to look forward to. I couldn't let him fuck that up, not for something that wasn't real."

"But it was real!" Lizzy shouted, stunned by yet another revelation. "She loved him. You think she was indifferent? You've spent, what, a few hours in her company, and you know her? She's shy, Darcy, she was embarrassed by our mother. She genuinely loved him. She cried for weeks when he left her without so much as a word. Your doing, I presume. How did you persuade him then, how did you change his mind? Why didn't he tell her everything and put an end to your petty revenge."

"I ….. um ….. I'm not particularly proud of it. I did what needed to be done." he muttered.

"Tell me!"

"I made it look like the police were coming after him. Made it look like Jane was slipping them information. Took some photos and then showed them to him. Made it clear that I didn't think she felt the same for him. Reminded him of what we've been through together, of what we owe each other. Maybe I feel a twinge of guilt, but I will not apologise for it. They'd known each other for five minutes, we'd been together for five years. That he wanted to throw that away for something so fleeting was both idiotic and a little bit insulting."

"You know, when I walked in here, I thought there's nothing he can do to make me dislike him any more. You are full of surprises, you know that?"

"I'm sorry you feel that way." Darcy said, emotionlessly.

"Yeah. You ruin lives, Darcy. You're poison. Everyone who comes into contact with you, you destroy. Let's see, your crew are behind bars, about to spend the next decade or so in prison, my sister remains heartbroken, your sister…."

"No!" Darcy shouted. "You do not get to do that. You know nothing about it so you will not take the liberty. Do not mention my sister."

"Guilty conscience, Darcy?" Lizzy smiled evilly. "As you wish. And what about George Wickham? The dear old friend you ripped off and cast aside…."

"Wickham?" Darcy repeated with a look of surprise that quickly turned into rage. "Seriously? George fucking Wickham?"

"You ripped him off, took his money and robbed him of his future in this game. So this talk of great friendship and loyalty between you and Charlie rings a little false I'm afraid. If that's what you do to your friends then it's a wonder you have any left."

Darcy surprised her by smiling. But it wasn't the smile of warmth that she had seen increasingly in their acquaintance. It was cold and derisory, mocking and nasty. His beautiful face was contorted slightly, making him look both older and younger at the same time, resigned and resolved.

"So, this is what you think of me. Thank you for making it so clear. Maybe one day you will be able to see past your unbelievable hypocrisy and begin to understand why I have done what I have done. Why I do not feel guilty for it. Understand that you have very little right to throw it all back at me and call me sick and unforgivable. I may not know who I am, but at least I own what I am. I do not hide from it, I do not hold other people to a different yardstick. I know that I have no right to do that. I'm a grifter, a con man, a sociopath, maybe even a psychopath. I own that. But you? You can't see past your pride and your hypocritical moral stances. You're a mess of contradictions, can't accept just what you are. Did you expect me to rejoice at your family? At your mother? Did you expect me to flatter you with everything that is good about you? I could have done, indeed I could still, because on that subject I would have a lot to say. But you don't want to hear it. You have made up your mind. You have tried me, you have judged me, and you have sentenced me, done so with a muddied picture, ill informed stories and with clouded morals."

Lizzy realised just how close he was, just how cold his eyes were. But she wouldn't back down. She would have the last word.

"You say you love me, or you think you do," she whispered. "All you have done is prove how ridiculous that is. To be honest, Darcy, it's not even what you've done. It's who you are. From the moment I met you, I have disliked you. You are a rude, manipulative, judgemental and arrogant prick!"

"Right back at you." Darcy sneered.

"You're the last person I would ever love. Even if we were the only two people left on earth, I would spend my entire lifetime avoiding you."

Lizzy turned away and yanked open the door, her body shaking, her mind bent and exhausted.

"Enjoy prison. I hope you fucking rot. Now it's my turn to give you some advice. When you finally get out, when you're finally free, when prison has turned you into even more of a shell, when you begin to start thinking about rebuilding yourself and your life, remember to watch your fucking back. Cos me? I don't forget easily."

With that she was gone, one foot in front of the other, ready to do that until she found her way home.