“Levi has been wiping some of them off the map. One, I’m told, was wiped out before you were even hurt.”
I thought about that for a moment and remembered. “A few guys attacked us. I-I guess it was three weeks ago, if I remember right. Levi said something about them being from some gang trying to cash in on the bounty those Los Muertos bastards put on his head.”
“That tracks,” he said, his eyes narrowing in an expression that turned my stomach. It was almost exactly the same face Levi made when he was thinking hard about new information. “It’s not unheard of to use a great deal of force on a smaller gang that goes too far, to make the point of what happens when you overstep your bounds. But I suspect it was less motivated by pragmatism and more by the fact that you were injured in an attempt on his life.”
“You’re, uh...informed.”
“Levi and I understand that knowledge is, in fact, power. Even the smallest scrap of information can open up new possibilities and tactics,” he said, tapping the back of the chair he had been sitting in. “But...he has gone beyond simply making an example of one gang. By all accounts, he has, if not outright wiped them out, severely crippled the operations of several smaller gangs. It seems that if he so much as thinks that anyone has helped Los Muertos, even if it’s a business arrangement rather than participating in their crusade to kill him and take over the city, he regards them as enemies.”
“And anyone who is his enemy is in for a bad time,” I said, thinking of the news reels I had skimmed through.
“And that isn’t covering what he has been doing with those who have direct ties to Los Muertos,” Augustine continued grimly. “Their supply lines? Their runners are killed in the streets. Their manufacturing or storage? Burned down. Their people? Killed in the open. He has not only been driving the smaller gangs into a panic to throw their lot in with him, or run to Los Muertos to align with them, whether they normally would or not, for fear of what he’d do to them.”
“Jesus wept,” I whispered.
He had told my family he was going to fulfill a promise to me, a promise they knew nothing about, but I did. It might have come to me when I was so doped up it merged with the weird dream-memory, but I was pretty sure he had actually made that promise. He probably didn’t think I would remember it, or that I knew he’d told my siblings that once he’d fulfilled this mysterious promise, he would leave. But I remembered both.
“As I said, I knew I should have had you killed,” Augustine said grimly.
“Are you fucking kidding me? This would never have happened if you’d just stayed a deadbeat fucking dad,” I snapped. “You took so much of him and twisted it to fit your goddamn plan to groom someone into taking your top spot one day. Anything decent or good in him, you tried to smother. Anything that could be turned into the perfect ruthless businessman, you encouraged, fed, and trained. Don’t blame me because I reminded him there are good things in this life, inhim.”
“Yes, and if it weren’t for your lessons about love and goodness, this mess wouldn’t be happening. The Levi I had in my retinue would never have done this,” Augustine told me coldly. “He would not have endangered everything for the sake of one man and his family.”
“You were trying to turn him into a monster.”
“When in fact you were the one who created this particular monster.”
I hated knowing what he meant. Levi was doing all this because I’d almost been killed, and because he knew it was never going to stop. Even leaving wouldn’t have made me or my family safe; his enemies had already figured out I was important, and they would figure out my family was important to me. All of us were in danger, and he had probably realized the full implications of that while kneeling in the street next to me, wondering if I was going to die.
So he had chosen to do the one thing that had the greatest chance of keeping me safe. I couldn’t be under threat from his enemies if all his enemies were dead and buried. Augustine was right; all the lessons and ruthlessness Levi had learned at Augustine’s feet might have stayed contained if he hadn’t met me again, if I hadn’t brought out some part of Levi that had been buried and lost. His love for me lit a fire that was now blazing its way across the city, in my name.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“Now you understand,” Augustine said, and I so badly wanted to punch him in his smug face. “And it’s drawing attention. The police are swamped with the chaos he is causing, and soon, the delightful alphabet agencies will start moving in on the city. I can keep them at bay for a while, but even my influence over the federal government is limited. They will be forced to act soon, and when they do, the chaos will erupt, crushing the Family’s control over the area. Right now, it will take months to fix this mess, but if they act, it will take years,yearsto get control back in this region and not have the feds sniffing up and down every doorstep The Family has.”
“I’m not even going to pretend to be surprised that all you’re worried about is your business,” I scowled at him. “God, I alwayssaid you were a heartless fuck, but you didn’t have to show up and prove me...wait a minute?—”
Augustine raised a brow. “Are you taking a break from being emotional to have a real thought?”
“Whyareyou here?” I asked, squinting at him. “You’re the goddamn leader of The Family. You’re his dad, his sneaky little mentor whispering from the shadows. Why would you waste your time talking to me? You should have just killed me and called it a day.”
“He has been willing to do all of this and more in the name of keeping you safe. Can you imagine the damage and carnage if you were to die?” Augustine asked with a scoff. “It would probably send him on a crash course to self-destruction much sooner, but the amount of damage he would do on the way out? That is easily the worst option, and yes, it was considered.”
“Yeah, yeah, you want me dead, I got that,” I said, eyeing him suspiciously. Because he still wasn’t telling me why he was here. He was the head of The Family, and Levi was his subordinate, the favorite, being trained to take over, but still under his thumb. Shit, Augustine shouldn’t even have needed to come here in the first place when he realized what was happening. All he needed to do was call Levi, and that should have been the end of it.
Unless—
My eyes widened. “Unless...you can’t control him.”
Augustine’s nose twitched, almost wrinkling before he got it under control, but I had my answer.
“You can’t,” I said softly. “Come on, Augustine, you were speaking plainly before. You’d better keep doing it, because I just realized you can’t control him. And you keep making the point about me being alive instead of dead. You’ve told me more than you should have. But your plan needs me, doesn’t it? So fess up.”
“You seem to be suffering under the delusion that you have me over a barrel,” Augustine said coldly.
“Nah,” I said with a laugh that felt out of place and yet right. “Levi’s the one who’s got you bent over and taking it without lube. He’s not listening to you anymore, is he?”
Augustine’s face twitched again before he turned back to the window. “No, he is not. We spoke...once. It was illuminating, including the reminder that not all knowledge is helpful.”
