“And how many goddamn times did I tell you not to see patience as a weakness?” Leo barked at him, and I raised a brow in amusement, not minding that I was momentarily forgotten as he slammed his fist on the table and rounded on Reg. “All the ‘chicken shit tricks’ did was keep you busy, so he could ‘poke around’ and figure out ways to fuck you over. And now look, patience is gone, and we’re literally sitting on a bomb ready to go off.”
Which released a rapid-fire tirade of Spanish from Reg, met with equally fast Spanish from Leo, both of them going far too quickly for me to keep up. I caught enough, but it was the tone that gave away the conversation. Reg was defending himself and still teetering from the unexpected loss of Luis, but Leo was chewing him out, clearly not caring that he had also lost one of his ‘up-and-comers’ in the process.
He cares about results...and his own skin.
Yes, and that was precisely what I needed.
“Gentleman,” I called, tapping the detonator on the table hard enough to make Leo flinch as if a tap was going to make me lose my grip on the switch. “I think we should come back to the real problems at hand, not disappointment over their fuck ups.”
“I’ll wipe that fucking smirk off your face,” Reg said, switching back to English, but his anger made his accent thick.
“You’ve already lost,” I told him plainly, keeping the smirk he hated so much on my face just to keep him pissed. “You lost the moment you decided to play with your food instead of just killing me outright. We both know I made mistakes in my personal security, and you could have had me. But instead, you decided to prove you were the biggest, baddest, smartest person in theroom. Now you know you’ve lost, everyone knows you have, so maybe suck up your pride, and you’ll get out of this with your skin intact.”
We both know that isn’t the case.
No, but when you were going to kill someone, you didn’t tell them they were going to die. People who had nothing left to lose did desperate, stupid things. And while I didn’t care if he did something stupid and desperate, I wanted him to wait until I had everything I wanted. Once that was taken care of, he could do everything he wanted, and I would still win.
Reg opened his mouth, but Leo’s hand came down on the table again, and he growled. “Cállate! You’ve said enough, and done enough, so shut your mouth.”
Reg lapsed into a sullen silence that I didn’t trust for a moment. Instinct told me I had already pushed Reg far enough, but Leo was pushing him even further. If he was pushed too far, that fury could lash out at Leo, and that would be...messy.
Leo glared at him before turning to me and flashing a smile. “I think this is where you tell me what it is you want.”
“I believe so,” I said, leaning forward and fighting the urge to grimace as my right handsquelchedagainst the table. God, killing people was messy work, which was one reason I hated it. And no, it did not matter that it had been the most gratifying kill, even down to making it more personal with a knife. It was still a sticky, gory mess, leaving me feeling sticky and dirty. “We’ll start with the most obvious. Los Muertos gets out of my city.”
“That is one of the more obvious,” Leo said dryly, and I could see him becoming more comfortable. Apparently, hashing things out in a boardroom was more his style...even if the meeting had already involved a brutal murder, a half-crazed subordinate, and a bomb strapped to the bottom of the table. That I could relate to. “I’ll be honest, you could have garnered that without needing to involve...Luis, and the bomb.”
“We both know Luis was personal, and I won’t be apologizing for that,” I said, wondering if Reg realized that he, too, was a personal matter that had yet to be dealt with. I was guessing Leo did, though. “And the bomb is not leverage, it’s already served its first purpose as an attention grabber, and it’s a guarantee against any further...what was it Reg used to describe my tactics? Ah, right, chicken shit tricks. Like the one they first pulled on me.”
“I won’t apologize for their opening tactics,” Leo said with a shrug. “Taking down a rival leader before he can get traction is smart.”
“But they weren’t smart enough to follow through.”
“No, as you already said, they wanted to play with their food.”
“You speak with the tone of someone who already knew that was one of their flaws.”
“Yes,” he said, the word having enough weight that I realized they weren’t just his subordinates, but two people he had personally trained and tried to guide.
“Now, here’s the real question,” I said, raising a brow. “Just how long will you keep Los Muertos out? I don’t have any illusions that your eviction will last forever. Expansion has been the name of the game for your people for years, and I don’t expect that’s going to stop just because I pushed back harder.”
I could see him weighing his options, but instead of pressing him, I waited. I had played this game before, and I knew that pushing him could lead to a mistake on my part; it could make me too eager to go for the kill. What I needed was to see what kind of negotiator he was, how sensible he could be, how diplomatic he wanted to be, and how honest he would allow himself to be.
“Pushing this far north was...a gamble,” Leo finally said, choosing his words carefully.
“Because you didn’t have the resources to commit to it fully, or because you were hoping you might be able to circle around Eliza in the southwest to put yourselves between her and her backup while hemming her in?”
“Both,” he said, clicking his tongue. “As I tried to explain to these two more than once, your representative further south is...let’s just say I have floated the idea of trying to bring her into our ranks if possible.”
That caught me by surprise, and I laughed. “Really? Honestly, I’m not informed about the...politics of Los Muertos. Has that idea been shot down because you didn’t think she could be turned, or because she has the unfortunate luck of being a woman?”
“The fact that she is a woman is the biggest problem as far as many people are concerned,” he said with a stiffness that made me smile.
“But you disagree.”
“Your own organization made changes recently that were less...stiff about that sort of thing.”
“True, but it’s still hanging on like a bad hangnail.”
