He looked away from her suddenly, clearing his throat. "Yeah, uh. It's a gift. My older brother gave it to me for my birthday."
She put a hand on his upper arm and gently guided him a few steps away from his friends so that she could lower her voice and speak privately. "Marco…where did your brother get that chain?"
Marco ran a hand across the back of his neck, still unable to make direct eye contact with her. "I can't say, okay? Ms. Mara, can you please just drop it? It's just a dumb gold chain."
She frowned at his response, but just dropping things had never been her way of operating. She needed to get him away from his friends so that she could get the truth out of him. "Hey, you know, you almost hit twenty-thousand points. Want to come check out the Nintendo Switches?"
His eyes lit up and he grinned, finally looking at her. "Hell, yeah. Hey, guys, I'm going to go get my Switch."
He followed her up to the front easily and as soon as he was far enough away from his friends, she stopped them both in their path. "Marco, I know that chain came from Kisses and Karats next door. You didn't have it earlier this week before the store was robbed. Do you know something about that robbery?"
Marco swallowed hard, his eyes darting around the arcade probably trying to assess who was nearby or in listening distance. "Ms. Mara…"
She cut him off. "I need you to tell me. If you did this, Marco, we can talk to the courts and get help. We can ask for leniency, something. But you need to return everything you took."
"I didn't take anything, I swear," he replied adamantly. "It was…look, my brother said I needed to just flip the circuit breaker so the power would go off. That's all he asked me to do. I didn't know he was going to rob the jewelry store with his friends. He's my brother, you know? I couldn't say no."
Shit. Amara was never going to hear the end of it from Val when he heard that her store's circuit breaker had been the culprit's entire in to rob his store. "They came through my store?"
"I guess," Marco replied, his hands wringing the hem of his shirt in a nervous gesture. "I'm sorry, Ms. Mara. I didn't mean for any of that to happen. Are you going to tell the police?"
She shook her head. "You're a good kid, Marco, but I think you need to be the one to go tell the owner at the jewelry store what happened."
His eyes went wide. "What? No. I can't. He'll have me arrested!"
"Listen, I'll go with you. Val is a reasonable guy. I'm sure we can figure out some way of solving this." Amara put her hand on the back of his shoulder. "Can I go with you over there now?"
He looked like he was about ready to throw up, but he finally nodded and followed her out of the arcade to the store next door. When they got to the showroom, he paused and looked ready to bolt.
Amara gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder. "You can do this, Marco."
"Maybe he's not here," Marco attempted to stall. "It says it's closed."
She knocked on the store gate anyway, knowing Val wouldn't have had time to leave that quickly. A few seconds later, the gate lifted with a loud racket and Val was standing in front of both of them.
"Hey, I thought you were going home," he said, smiling at Amara. "Who's this?"
"Val, meet Marco. Marco, this is Val." Amara squared her shoulders and gave Val a pleading look, hoping he'd get the message without her having to tell him to go easy on the kid. "Marco might know some information about the robbery."
Val's eyes widened and he crossed his arms over his chest as he took in the young boy for a second time. This time his gaze lingered on the chain around Marco's neck, and she had no doubt that he recognized it every bit as much as she had. "Well, what is it?"
In a complete explosion of verbal diarrhea, Marco explained how his brother had told him to trip the circuit breaker at the arcade, which had turned out all the power. When Marco had gotten home from the arcade later that night, he'd discovered his brother and his friends in their living room with all the stolen jewelry and merchandise and once he'd seen the news, he put two and two together. His brother had even given him the chain as a thank you gift of sorts for his part in it, but Marco swore repeatedly he hadn't known that that was what was going to happen.
"You've got to believe me, sir. I would never do something like that," Marco said for the tenth time. "I'm so sorry. Here, here. Take the chain back."
He lifted it from around his neck and handed it to Val.
Val took it and placed it on top of a nearby display case. He kept his back to them for a minute or two, and even Amara was beginning to feel nervous about what his next steps might be. She didn't want to see anything happen to Marco, and she certainly didn't want to see him arrested…but what the hell was the protocol in a situation like this?
"Listen, Marco," Val began as he turned around and faced them again. "You seem like a good kid with prospects. Your brother could be, too, but he's going down a bad path. I am going to have to report this information so that police can apprehend him."
"But then he's going to know I told you." Marco's voice turned into a high-pitched whine. "Please, sir. He's my only family. He's all I've got."
Val looked conflicted, his gaze finding hers with a silent plea as if begging her to tell him what to do.
"I think he's right, Marco. We do need to tell the police what your brother did, but it doesn't have to come from you," she pitched in, trying to think on her feet. "Maybe there's another way—like maybe he told someone else. Or maybe he posted something online? Or…I don't know."
"Instagram!" Marco's eyes lit up and he pulled his phone out of his pocket. He began clicking through apps and scrolling until he found what he was looking for, then turned the screen toward Val. "He posted a story wearing the stuff from the robbery."
Val took the phone and examined it. "Yeah, that definitely looks like my merchandise. Why would he post this online?"
"He said it looked cool." Marco shrugged. "I mean, it is kind of bad ass."
"Jewelry store owner here," Val reminded the young boy. "That's my property he's wearing."
"Right, right." Marco nodded. "Well, I'll send you a screenshot of it, okay? The police can say that's how they found it. Nobody needs to know I said anything. Right?"
The young boy looked so hopeful, and Amara had no idea if they were doing the right thing or not. But she'd known Marco for over a year now, and she wanted to believe he was better than this. She knew he was. This kid had a good heart, and he was smart as a whip. He could have a lot of different futures that didn't look like the path his brother was currently walking.
"Send them to me now via Airdrop," Val told Marco, holding his phone up toward him. "I'll take care of the rest. You go back over to the arcade and play, okay?"
Marco did what he said quickly and then scurried out of the jewelry store as fast as he could.
"Thanks for not going hard on him," she said to Val once Marco was out of sight. "He's a good kid, but his situation is difficult. His brother is his guardian. If his brother gets arrested, I'm not sure what that will mean for Marco or his living arrangements."