Chapter 25

A little while before

"If you'll have a closer look, you'll see Solidor's signature inscribed here in the bottom right corner of the piece. You see, it isn't surprising for artists to sign their names on their work, but Solidor is particularly successful in making his initials into a large abstract art part of the entire painting." She continued to explain, pushing up her sharp, small black, full-framed spectacles up her nose. Her smile was friendly and business-like, as she clutched on to her file to her breast, explaining the pieces as her clients passed each of them.

"Turning right here, you will see the Diamond of Love. Dubbed the most expensive and meaningful piece of jewelry ever created, this Diamond of Love has been kindly been donated to the museum on display in hopes to bring romance and love to its visitors for Valentine's Day." She added with a suggestive smile, and the couple exchanged glints of lovey-dovey looks between them.

She pretended to ignore those gazes and moved on.

Little did she know, the couple had stayed back, and showed far more interest in the Diamond of Love than they had done to any other pieces of art that they'd seen.

Sweetie, the voice came from an earpiece, time to end the tour and get down to business.

The woman who had been ogling at the Diamond of Love with her boyfriend began to quarrel –her demanding irrationally that she wanted the Diamond of Love to be her Valentine's Day present. Her boyfriend, at a loss of what to do with his girlfriend, did his best to calm her down, but it was quickly obvious that he was beginning to lose his top too.

The chaos was the best way to be unseen.

The curator rushed immediately to get securities.

Bingo. Go, Kaylen, and do us proud. Hayley urged through the earpiece again, and Kaylen made a soft annoyed voice.

I can do this, Aunt. But if you're going to whisper things like that in my ear, I'm going to get crazy Goosebumps. She replied evenly, sounding confident and unafraid. Hayley Seyfried, along with Jeremy, brimmed with pride and joy as they watched their darling niece move through the hallways. They had hacked into the mainframe of the museum's securities, and had taken over the surveillance cameras. Only the most observant of security guards in the security room on the second floor would come to see the small repetitive flickering of lights in Camera 5.

Running the same tape over and over again on the cameras had been easy jobs for skilled conmen like them, but getting into the security room and tripping the wires hadn't been the easiest thing to do.

We're just worried for you. Hayley replied indignantly, but was still watching her niece's confident but rushed walk down the hallways. Kaylen hadn't taken off her disguise yet, which was a good thing. The thing about stealing in places as obvious as museums was the fact that they had to make sure that their cover was always with them, just in case they had to transform again in the last minute during escape.

Stopping by the third bin in the hallway, Hayley watched from Camera 8 as Kaylen withdrew her bag of tools, swinging them easily over her shoulder, and moving on without so much a hesitation.

"She's doing really well." Jeremy commented evenly, but Hayley shushed her partner up quickly, monitoring the situation carefully. This was a mission that they had decided to give Kaylen alone, but nothing could erase the protectiveness of Hayley over the well-being of her niece. Damn all promises she made to her brother and her niece; she was going to go rushing in if she felt anything going wrong. Kaylen was too precious to be caught.

Security guard coming your way from the right up front. Hayley informed quickly, and from Camera 10, watched as Kaylen react quickly, dropping the bag hiding behind a display along the corridor, and clutching to her file tightly again, pushing up her spectacles in a movement iconic of the curator.

"Where have you been?!" Kaylen raised her voice upon seeing the two burly bodyguards turning around the corner. "The couple could have broken into the case by now!"

The two men looked at each other in alarm, and at the woman of authority, who had a black face facing them. Their jobs weren't the hardest, but when it came to situations like these, they often thought that the curators of the exhibitions always acted as if they were always people out there trying to steal their ancient relics.

"On our way, ma'am." One of them reported quickly, and they sidetracked her as they began to rush faster to their destination. Kaylen waited for them to disappear around the corner, before picking up her bag and resuming her fast paced no-nonsense walk.

That was good. Hayley commended, and Kaylen hid a secret smile, keeping her face down so that her aunt wouldn't be able to detect her smile from the cameras overhead. There had been a little of Inner Bitch Kaylen working during the moment.

Eventually Kaylen reached her destination, another room close to the room of the Diamond of Love. There was only one exhibit in the room, and behind the bullet-proof glass sat the oldest mask made by a Venetian's hand. Personally, Kaylen didn't feel much for mask-art, but her client had been a fanatic about Venetian art, and with Venice came masks and masquerades.

So she had to comply.

Snapping on gloves quickly, Kaylen punched the security code of the first layer of sensors, watching with satisfaction as the light turned green with a beep. Then, with extra care, she removed the elaborate lock pick that she'd devised when she first caught sight of the lock. It was a sophisticated, high-tech version of a snap lock, and any jerking movements from unskilled conmen would trigger an alarm.

Steady. Hayley couldn't stop herself from saying, but Kaylen showed no sign of having heard her aunt at all, as her hands remained steady and unfazed.

Click, click, click. The consecutive sounds of soft clicks came with satisfaction, but Kaylen remained calmed and composed as she carefully removed the lock pick, then removing the bullet-proof glass barrier with extreme care.

Come to Mama. Kaylen breathed softly, and withdrew a replica from her bag. The forgery had been her work, and even Hayden had applauded her for her eye for art. Even though Kaylen had never approached anything related to art 5 years ago when she had first been introduced into the industry, she now found her expertise in forgery and thievery. The sale and dealings were usually done by either her father or her aunt; while Kaylen reveled in her continued ability to strive for more dangerous, more famous pieces of art.

Careful not to set off the last layer of defense, the pressure mechanism on the stand that held the mask, Kaylen lifted the mask steadily from its display, applying soft pressure on the velvet cushioning to mimic the weight. The slightest change in pressure on the cushioning would trigger an alarm and shutdown of the room, and Kaylen did not want to be locked inside.

With very steady hands, she replaced the pressure of her finger with her own forged mask, glad that she'd calculated the weight during her research period. Tilting her mask so that it seemed as if nothing had changed, she dropped the original into her bag, and set to work setting the securities all back in place. Setting up the defenses was definitely easier than breaking them, and it was all too soon that the curator of the exhibition strode back to the room of the Diamond of Love to find the couple subdued and the bodyguards watching over things.

"We expect respect for the exhibits as well as the silence for others to enjoy the same art, Sir and Madam." Kaylen said severely with a frown, pushing her spectacles up again. "But we will let this go. Let us move on."

The couple looked all too happy to get away from the embarrassment they had found themselves in, and raced to follow after the curator as she continued her explanation.

Outside, a cleaner rolled out with a bin full of trash. Careful to make sure that the alley was deserted, he unzipped his dirty overalls, and brushed imaginary dust off his casual plain black shirt and jeans. He picked up the black bag of tools, along with the mask carefully zipped up inside, and walked from the alley, whistling a gay tune.

Hayden crossed the street, circled a few blocks to make sure that no one was following him, and then headed down a few more streets. He waited patiently for the lift, and when it brought him to the tenth floor, he pressed the bell to the first apartment to the right.

Jeremy opened the door with a stupid grin, and Hayden replied it.

"How's my little angel doing?"

"Being boring, as expected of her. Wherever did you find her? She picked up the skills you took twenty years to learn in five years." Hayley asked, as if she hadn't asked the same question over and over again.

Hayden grinned proudly, stepping into the room and setting the bag down on the low table, withdrawing the mask to scrutinize it against the light.

"She's my daughter, of course she's going to be awesome. Seyfrieds have to be. And for the records, I wasn't the one who found her. Elxa did."

"If you speak once more about you being smart enough to assign the right job to the right man, I will kill you. You almost never found out Kaylen's true identity." Hayley replied seriously, taking the mask from Hayden's fingers then inspecting it herself. There were little scratches, and looked exactly alike the one that her niece had replicated.

"I wasn't going to. However, I was going to point out that I took a shine to her even before I realized she was my baby." Hayden declared victoriously, and his sister's face of disbelief lightly colors her nicely shaded face.

"I don't exactly think that 'Baby' is the appropriate word. She's 26. Rather, I'll go for 'Beauty', 'Gorgeous', or -my personal favorite -'hot babe'." Jeremy put in with a grin, earning a sharp slap from Hayley on the arm as he neared his partner. Neither of them had wanted to get married -for marriage was just another relationship penned on paper. Instead, they were fine keeping as partners, and to everyone who knew them, it was obvious that no one would ever erase Hayley from Jeremy's eyes, and vice versa.

"Aren't you a daring little devil today?" Hayley commented as she logged out of the security mainframe as soon as she saw her niece slip out of the museum through the front doors, makeup and disguises gone.

Kaylen truly reminded Hayley of herself in her youth. If she had already been a beauty at 21, 5 years had only accentuated her beauty, as Hayley charted the new beauty with the confidence in her posture, expressions and eyes. Kaylen was always a beauty, but she had lacked confidence -confidence that she was unique. 5 years ago, Kaylen thought she was the odd-one out, the socially awkward individual.

5 years later, she had learnt that she was unique and special, and that made her understand that everyone looked to her not in negative judgment, but rather in jealous awe.

"Aunt Hays." Hayley heard her niece's voice through the Bluetooth headset. "Do you have anything else for me? I need to visit a place."

"Jon?" She ventured to ask, for her niece had chased the fashion designer back to Miami again, and Hayden had been only happier to see the young accomplished man. Hayley would much prefer to be in her own paradise in New York City, but it remained a fact that Kaylen was orientated to Miami as a home, and Hayden only suited his daughter.

"Something like that." The sudden softening of Kaylen's tone quickly rang bells in Hayley's mind.

"Elxa's getting released today. You want to be there when he walks out?" Hayley's reply elicited nothing but hesitant silence from her niece, in which the conwoman on The Circle took it as one of her niece's iconic hesitant pauses.

"I don't know if I want to see him."

"I understand." Hayley's reply was compassionate, for once she had been caught between loving Jeremy and giving up everything. They had found their way to make things work in the dangerous world that they belonged to, and too a small extent, so had Hayden and Kaylen's mother. Cons naturally couldn't hold that truthful, faithful relationships. There were always lies and cheating, but love and a little bit of rare honesty to Jeremy had made Hayley work through those problems.

While she smirked internally at her family's tendencies to fall in love with only conmen and conwomen, and no one else from the outside world, Hayley understood too that every one of them had to face the same set of problems of trust and lies. It had been easier for Hayley and Hayden, for they had been taught since young that lies were perfectly okay, that lying was the only way to survive. It wasn't the same ideal with Kaylen, whom Kristen had taught to take lies with a pinch of salt -to neither truly abhor lying, nor advocate lying as a regular necessity in her life.

In all rare honesty, Hayley still wondered how her niece could be so adept in picking up the trade of the con considering her aversion to lies and cheating. Kaylen had truly picked up the skills of conning with surprising ease, never making the same mistake twice, and surprising both her father and aunt constantly.

"I'll let you decide what you want, Kaylen, but I'll only tell you that being locked up for 5 years... it can change a man. The Elxa who went in might come out different." Hayley advised wisely, looking over to the sight of her baby brother still joking around with Jeremy. Hayden had once been caught by FBI, and spent some time in the Yard. It hadn't been a good experience for a man of his early twenties, and being made to be a CI afterwards had very much changed the little brother that she once knew. Yes, they were siblings and they still shared a close relationship despite their age. It did help that Jeremy and Hayden were almost the best of friends, but sometimes, Hayley still couldn't understand her little brother well.

"And the Kaylen who went into the con world disappeared. If I never believed that I could be a con so successful, how is it possible that he can accept me being in his profession so easily? I'm no longer that gullible little lamb he fell for." Kaylen asked worriedly as she hailed a cab, looking up to the blue sky above her.

Any minute now, the gates of the correctional facility would open, and the man she fell in love with despite his flaws and lies would walk out, head held high.

She gave the driver an address that she'd memorized by heart. She hadn't gone to that place ever since she moved out along with Jon. Jon had wanted to get away from the protected environment he had been brought up in, and she... simply did not want to live in the empty house, staring at the same 4 walls without the presence of the men who had made it her home. It felt almost like yesterday that she left, and yet 5 years had flown by without her seeing him. She had thought of him every day, as she trained hard to be like her father, like him.

All she wanted was to be like him, to be powerful and to finally see him on eye level and understand everything about him and his world.

"Honey." Hayley's voice was motherly in her ear as Kaylen watched the scenery pass. Already in her early fifties, it was obvious that Hayley didn't plan to have any children. Besides, her profession and stressful life often took any chances of ever considering conceiving, but it had never made her lose her maternal instincts. "If you love him, at least tell him before you leave things be. Elxa isn't a man of words, but he speaks fiercely with actions. He's been growing up learning to take care of a boy, hiding his true self behind his title on The Circle. But I think you might be the one who sees the real him for who he is."

"But I don't understand. How would you know if Elxa's being truthful or not? He's amazing at lies." Kaylen's reply was strangely child-like, and Hayley only smiled. Sometimes, Hayley just had to wonder how much of Hayden the young woman took after. If she hadn't single-handedly brought Hayden up after their parents died, she would never be able to recognize the little Hayden hiding behind her niece's innocent questions.

"There's always a truth and a lie. Every conman works to hide the truth, to bend it into their own lie. Every one of us use a different way to do it. Elxa hides them behind his emotionless face and voice. When he smiles, when his eyes flash, when his voice is gentle; they all speak their own truths. He does it all to you." Hayley explained, but frowned a little as she watched her little brother's face change upon picking up a call that had come from him.

Hayden, already 46, now was a man past his prime in the dating sector. Ever since Kristen, he had wasted his youth wallowing in guilt, burying himself in his work. Never had he once loved another, and even though Hayley knew he had his own fair share of hookups and temporary girlfriends, none of them had stuck long enough. None of them loved him like Kristen did, and neither did he to them. Finding Kaylen was a cause of celebration for him, but as his daughter became successful in her own rights, independent and in love with her special man on The Circle, Hayden was slowly slipping back into his sad state of life.

"How was it for you and Jeremy, Aunt? I really envy how you and he are so dedicated to each other. I don't think Elxa and I could ever be like that. I'm scared about what happens to us. I'm scared we will turn out like Dad and Mum." Kaylen admitted quietly, and though it was never a good idea for a con to tell another about her weakness, they were family.

Family; the single most important thing in Hayley's life when it came to conning.

"Honestly, I don't know. But I guess it has to do with the fact that I know what he wants, and he knows what I want. We can read each other, and see what it is that we desire." Hayley replies honestly, watching as Hayden jump to his feet, a slightly angry, slightly troubled expression on his face. Jeremy immediately follows, a curious and worried expression.

Right now, Hayley knew Jeremy desired to protect her brother as much as she did.

"After all that's happened between us? I think the only thing he wants is to have a normal life."

"For Elxa? I don't think that's going to happen."

Hayley knew that she had –somehow –helped her niece come to a conclusion when she heard the determination shining in Kaylen's voice.

"Then I'm going to make it happen."

"I'm sure you will." Despite the obvious problem that was cropping up with one of Hayden's cons, Hayley smiled.

"Thanks, Aunt." Kaylen sounded much livelier and happier and distantly, Hayley heard a unfamiliar voice –most probably the cabbie –announcing that they had reached their destination.

Kaylen looked up at the familiar scenery. Nothing had changed since 3 years ago. Kaylen had expected to see this place a little differently –considering when she left she still had been a struggling, fledgling con. Now, she was successful, and was about to finally be introduced as a candidate on The Circle. It would bring up controversy in the con world –considering how it was unlikely for 3 members of the Seyfried family to be on The Circle. Having her aunt and father there had already been an uncomfortable thing for many conmen, afraid of their combined power ruling over the entire con world.

Having a third Seyfried on The Circle?

It was unthinkable.

But it wasn't for them. It wasn't for her. No, it was for Elxa, whose return on The Circle would be spectacular. The con world would reel at seeing him suddenly on The Circle again, would be disbelieving that he had somehow made it back without a hitch; just in time to see the woman of his heart emerge like a phoenix from the ashes he left.

Kaylen was never a person part of much drama, but this time, she couldn't help but feel excited.

Still, she couldn't wait. She had to see the place where she –he – used to live. She had to soak in the feel of him again, after not seeing or hearing from him for 5 years. She'd promised to wait, but she hadn't been able to find it in herself to go find him. She had been afraid that if she did, she would find ways and means to bust him out –getting herself prematurely landed in jail too.

But that restraint was finally paying off, as Kaylen took the lift to the fifth floor. She didn't have the keys to the house anymore –no –she left it in the house as a form of self-restraint to never return unless she absolutely had to. Now; she had to.

There was only one thing for a con to do when faced with a locked door.

The smell of musty air hit her upon the opening of the door after 3 years. She stepped in, heart ready to explode. She closed her eyes, almost imagining seeing him standing at the living area, waiting for her with the same glitter of love in his black eyes.

But he wasn't there. Still, she smiled at the thought of seeing him again.

Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow she would see the man she loved at the prime of his career, the peak of his life. She would watch him step on The Circle, the blaze of surprise and love from his eyes as he would look down on her.

She got out a note and began to think of what to write. What could make him wait for her, anticipate her, and love her?

She thought of something that made her laugh –something that would make him laugh too. Satisfied by her little joke on the small slip of paper, she looked for a place that would be obvious in his sight. What would a conman see upon entering a room? The exit routes.

No, it wasn't something he would do –considering he was at home. Given that she had picked the lock, he would be expecting someone to leave him a message, or waiting to kill him. He would be waiting for danger.

She suddenly had a great idea. Before things were too late, before he walked in on her setting up her moment, she slipped out and knocked on the neighbor's door and bought a water of refrigerated water. Just as she set everything up, her phone rang.

"Kaylen." She greeted happily, but the voice at the other end of the phone was serious.

"Kaylen Baby, we've got an act to put up for Interpol. Come back with a gun." Hayden said, and the adrenaline rushed.

"Got it." She didn't ask more, and before she could linger anymore, she closed the door quickly behind her and left.

Minutes later, a Lamborghini pulled up, and a man ran up the stairs. He walked cautiously into the room, but the first thing that caught his eyes was the bottle of water still condensing. He read the note left next to it.

And he laughed.