“My organization has not become as...enlightened. There are too many opposed to the idea based on her sex. Then there is the fact that she is a white American. Even then, I couldn’t care less. She is, however, unwilling to leave your organization.”
I gave that a moment of thought and shrugged. “Perhaps.”
Honestly, if I had read Eliza right, they might have been able to pull her into their ranks, but they would have to drop the xenophobia and sexism quickly. She already had to deal with the occasional comments about her sex in The Family, and she wasnotgentle in reminding people that she was more effective and vicious than many of the gossipers. Her presence in Los Muertos would probably result in her being killed quickly by a rival.
Otherwise, the ambitious woman would turn in a heartbeat if the getting was good enough. She had always felt she wasn’t getting enough out of The Family. An offer of something greater, where she would gain the respect she demanded, would be too tempting. Even then, though, she might hesitate. The Family did not deal with traitors and defectors with a shrug and a polite wave goodbye. She would have to be put somewhere far enough away from The Family’s reach to ensure she wasn’t in any danger, and even then, she would always have to look over her shoulder.
“But yes, we wouldn’t be able to bring back any real force to attempt another foothold. The Marelli Family is aware of our intentions, and considering how hard you drove Luis and Reg back before they could gain a true foothold, we are left with nothing,” Leo said, his expression growing darker.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I wasn’t going to let Reg leave this building in one piece, I might have been tempted to let him go with Leo. If only for the fact that I knew that although The Family could be harsh on failure, they were tame in comparison to what Los Muertos did to their own who failed. And from what I was seeing in Leo, this most certainly counted as a monumental fuck up on Reg’s part.
In fact, I suspected this was a fuck up on Leo’s part by proxy as well. If my suspicions were correct, they had been under Leo’s direct supervision, and he must have taken an interest in their future. That he was here with them probably meant he was being held responsible for what they did. And if that were the case, the only option left for Leo would be to make sure Reg and Luis suffered for their failure so he didn’t have to take their place.
You need to make sure he still loses, but you can’t make him lose so badly that he would suffer more at their hands than he already will.
Trickier and trickier.
“I have to ask,” Leo said, eyeing me. “You’ve been busy keeping these two on the back foot, I think that’s the phrase. So busy I can’t imagine you’ve had time for much else.”
“You’d be surprised what I can balance when properly motivated,” I said, not needing to point out that I had never been more motivated in my life. “But what point are you getting to?”
“The sheer amount of...chaos, and destruction can’t have gone unnoticed by the police,” he said slowly. “And everyone knows that one of your own fell a while ago to the government agencies coming down on him.”
“He did,” I said, now realizing where this was going.
“So how did you manage to keep them out of the mess you’ve been creating? I can’t imagine they would ignore what you’ve been doing when the news has been talking about it all the time.”
“As we’ll get to in a moment, you’ll find my time in The Family before I came to Cresson Point to salvage what I could from William’s failure has garnered me a few habits that have served me well here. I have a great many resources at my disposal,” I told him with complete confidence.
Did he suspect what I already knew? That it was Augustine keeping them at bay. While I could imagine, I couldn’t begin to calculate the cost of keeping the police and the alphabet agencies at bay. If I got through this with my life intact, I would be met with a furious Augustine. Not just because I’d been ignoring, defying, and outright flouting his authority, but I had forced him to become directly involved when he was supposed to keep his head down.
There was no future for me in The Family, and that meant there was no safety in my future. Without safety, there would always be a target on my back and on those around me. I could do everything in my power to protect Dom and his family from Los Muertos, but there was only one way I could protect them from The Family...from Augustine.
“I cannot say how long we would stay out of this city,” Leo said bluntly. “It is not something I have a say in. But I can tell you it does not make sense for us to keep trying, not after this, not after everything. You would have years, maybe more. It all depends on who wins our war in the south.”
Interesting. Augustine hadn’t been providing Eliza with much support lately because, in his assessment, she had been handling things well on her own. Perhaps after my hand in this mess, she could hold off Los Muertos’ advancement into The Family’s territory for years, perhaps even decades. It was the sort of thing he would be delighted to know, and what a shame that I had no way to convey that information to him.
Even at the last leg of this little marathon of yours, you can’t help trying to give The Family a leg up, can you?
Old habits die hard, and boy oh boy was I a creature of habit.
“There will benoretaliation for what has happened here against anyone that is mine,” I said, and when his eyes flashed, I held up my bloodied hand. “Who is not part of the Marelli Family. I refer only to civilians.”
“They will say there are no innocents in war.”
“And they will have to understand there are contingencies already in place that should motivate them to remember there were innocents in a war. Except I won’t need an international coalition of countries to enforce that.”
“And howwillyou enforce it?”
I smiled. “The Company.”
Reg’s head snapped to me, and Leo’s twitching fingers stilled as that settled in. “You...have a contract with The Company? Those can’t be retracted, not without a great deal of effort.”
“And I have no intention of taking them back.”
“Then what is the point of this discussion?” Leo said in irritation. “It’s done.”
I understood his annoyance. The Company was a group of hired guns who could and would get to anyone... so long as the price was paid. They had their own rules for their own people and potential clients. The more destabilizing the death of a target, the higher the price, and if there was too much potential chaos, they would flatly refuse, no matter how much someone threatened, cajoled, pleaded, or bribed. And they only took one contract for one person from one client, which is to say that much like the American justice system, they didn’t believe in double jeopardy. If the target killed the Company representative, then the Company would no longer take out a contract on them.
