“I was focused on you being alive and not blown the fuck up,” he hissed, picking my hand up and examining it. “What happened?”
“It’s not mine,” I said with a huff. “When we get back to what I was doing, pay attention to the floor beside the table for your answer.”
We walked back out, and before I could say anything, I heard Dom mutter next to me. “Holy fuck, like a goddamn fish. Was that you?”
Leo gave me a deadpan stare. “Are you finished?”
“Yes,” I said calmly, knowing I was caught out in a vulnerable moment and there was nothing I could do but own up to it. “Let this be a lesson...stay single.”
“My ex-wife was a strong enough lesson,” Leo said wryly. “I have to say you are as good a negotiator as you are a general. Augustine chose wisely to invest in you.”
Reg was staring at him, and he didn’t seem to have moved much, but something was bothering me. “I would pass the message along, but if I can be blunt, he wouldn’t put much weight on your words.”
“Augustine is clever enough to know that respect from an enemy should be taken into account,” Leo said as he got to his feet. “So that brings us to the conclusion and my response to your demands…” It was the knife, the knife wasn’t on the ground anymore, and Reg was closer than he had been when we went behind the board and… “You have made your point enough for me to?—”
Reg’s cry was as insane as it was feral as he leaped forward, the knife covered in his...friend’s, lover’s blood? Dom flinched, but this world was mine, and I had already realized what was going on, even if it had been a frenetic jolt of understanding. I would never have been able to move Dom before, but he was already weak and off balance. When I yanked on his arm, he yelped in surprise and pain, but he was moved away from the slash that would have caught him across the throat.
I wasn’t as lucky, and I cried out as molten pain flashed across my face and I stumbled, my back slamming into the corner of the table. Instinct took over as I felt myself topple towards the ground. I reached out, snagging myself on the table as Dom gave a war cry that would have sent trained fighters scattering. I kept my footing and flinched as another roar filled the room and made me cringe.
Opening my eyes as best I could, I looked around, the smell of gunpowder acrid in the room, and I looked to see Reg on the ground. I couldn’t see the hole, but I could see the way the gunshot wound was pouring blood, soaking his shirt, mingling with the splatter of Luis’ blood I had put there. My vision was blurry, and my face ached, but I clung to the table, shuffling my legs under me to stand, and I never looked away.
Hatred filled his eyes, but there was something else as well...despair. I didn’t need to look at Leo to know he had fired the gun, and considering there had been no follow-up shots, he had hit his intended target. Reg had lost Luis, and I didn’t know if that was a brother, a best friend, a lover, or what, but he had been vital to Reg. And then he had watched and listened as everything he’d worked for was torn down by the man who was his mentor, and realized his mentor was willing to sell him out and give in to my demand. Now he was dying and helpless to stop it, betrayed and completely alone, broken even as his body was giving in to its wound.
I would never feel sorry for the pleasure that filled me; it wasn’t nearly as good as the feeling of Dom’s arms wrapped around me in the middle of the night while he slept, but Goddamnif it wasn’t better than any high I’d ever experienced.
“Levi,” Dom whispered, struggling to get up off his knees. One of his legs was in a brace, and his ankle had been almost broken when he’d been hit. It was a miracle he’d been able to walk at all, and I reached to stop him, then stared at the object on the ground.
“Wait, what the fuck?” I hissed, forgetting about Dom for a moment, or the pain in my face, or the fact that one of my eyes wasn’t working...at all. I bent down, snatching up the detonator and giving it a frustrated shake. “What in the fresh hell?”
“All that planning and you ended up with a defective detonator?” Leo asked.
“No, it was tested, repeatedly,” I growled, giving it another shake.
Dom somehow got to his feet, glancing at Reg, who was gurgling. He winced before looking at me and reaching out. “Levi?—”
“It’s gone, I know,” I said, thinking of the eye I couldn’t see out of. “What the fuck?”
Dom sighed. “God, why are you like this? Look.”
I did, with the one eye that was working and squinted, winced when I realized that made my screaming eye want to shriek, and I sputtered. “Is that a fucking signal blocker?”
“Keyed specifically to the frequency used in detonators,” he said with a smile, and then held it up to Leo. “Whichcanbe turned off if I hit this switch, so don’t get any ideas.”
Leo gave a world-weary sigh and gestured to Reg. “That is my answer to your demands, Levi. I will be lucky to keep my head after all this. Without either of these two to take the blame for their failures, it will fall on me. But you will get what you demanded. We cannot manage the force to come to Cresson Point, and you have played Russian Roulette with the lives of who knows how many of our leaders. They will not risk it.”
“That was the point,” I said, adrenaline no longer pumping through my system, and I could feel the pain in my face and my goddamneyegrowing stronger. I grit my teeth. “And point out that they have been punished. Luis was gutted by someone he thought was weak prey, and he died realizing he wasn’t as great and invincible as he thought. And let’s be honest, Reg died a failure, having watched Luis die in front of him, and killed by you, absolutely betrayed.”
“There is that,” Leo said thoughtfully. He looked me over. “You’ll get an official response from us, and I expect you’ll hear what you want. But...is there anything else?”
“No, but you’ll find your escort is gone,” I told him with a shrug. “I wasn’t going to risk the men those two definitely brought with them, storming the building before I conveyed what I needed from you...or forcing me to blow the building before you passed along my contingencies.”
Leo sighed. “I can drive myself. A shame, some of those men were still useful.”
“If I’ve learned anything, it’s that good men might be hard to find, but they can be found,” I said, really wanting him to leave so I could properly deal with everything that had just happened.
“We’ll see,” Leo said. “I won’t say it was good doing business with you, Levi. But it was...educational. At this point, all I have left is the hope that you choose this one instead of The Family.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, the pain growing stronger than my ability to focus and keep up with the conversation.
