“You said you took care of one of them, the owner, I’m betting.”
“Mmm, yes,” he said, and I didn’t know whether I should be relieved or bothered that he didn’t sound like he was enjoying the memory. Sure, enjoyment would have been unnerving because, Jesus, how much cruelty and sadism would you have to build up to enjoy something like that even years later? At the same time, the deadpan, almost indifferent response to the memory was just as bad and maybe even worse. It was not the behavior of a man who was bothered by what he had done. “I didn’t think I could do it, especially when I’d already seen what had been done to them. I was given the gun, and I approached. I swore up and down I wouldn’t have the stomach for it.”
“Okay...something changed that then.”
“He looked at me, and two things happened at once, and then two more. The first was that I could see he recognized me, that I knew who he was, and although I can’t prove it, I believe he understood why that was happening to him. At the same time, it was the first time I’d looked him in the eyes, and I realized I had enough hate and anger to do exactly what I’d come there to do...but it didn’t make the pity go away. So there I was, disgusted and angry with him, with myself, with the whole affair. And then he begged for mercy, begged me to help him, that he was sorry.”
“And you said?”
“Nothing. It was no Hollywood moment; there was no speech, no witty quip. I looked him in the eye and squeezed the trigger. That was the last thing to happen. Well, unless you count me throwing up,” he said, and his expression grew pensive. “I remember being convinced everyone there was going to give me hell for that. I told myself I was acting like a kid when I needed to start acting tougher, especially after the deal I made with Augustine. Yet not one person there said a word, and afterward, Augustine?—”
I wanted to say something right then, but I focused on pressing my lips together as tightly as I could. From pretty much the beginning, his dad had been a topic neither of us really talked about, but only because we could never agree. Levi had always wanted me to understand why it was important for Augustine to be in his life, and I had been desperate to get him to understand that you couldn’t have a gangster for a father and expect that anything good was going to come of it. Of course, now I was staring at him, knowing he’d been working intimately with The Family for almost a decade and a half. Hearing the story of the first time he killed someone, I thought that, of the two of us, I was the one proven right by time.
But I wasn’t interested in dragging up old arguments. The subject of Augustine had always been rife with arguments and outright fights between us, and I didn’t feel like renewing that when I was finally getting him to speak to me.
“Augustine...what?” I finally said, after almost a full minute of complete silence between us.
He stirred from staring out the window. “Well, I expected he would be the worst to give me hell for getting sick after killing someone...but he didn’t. He shared some...words with me. I can’t say if those words made me feel better, at least for what I’d done and what I was afraid of for the future, but...I did get to walk away not feeling like I had completely screwed up.”
“Worried about what the other kids would say?” I asked with a snort.
His brow furrowed harshly. “Really?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, is this a delicate memory for you? Do you want me to hold your hand and tell you everything is going to be okay and that ittotallydoesn’t make you less of a man because you threw up after putting a bullet in someone’s head?” I asked him, not even bothering to cover the sarcasm that laced each word. “Do you need to cry on my shoulder?”
Levi stared at me with a blank expression. The stirring of the spoon had stopped, and he just... stared. After a few heartbeats, I watched his lips twitch upward before he looked away and gave a soft, “Jack ass.”
“You’veneverknown me to be the sort of person you call when you need someone to feel bad for you, or be a shoulder to cry on,” I said with a shrug and a grin. “I’m not going to sit here and try to make you feel better because you threw up after shooting a guy and basically ordering that he be kidnapped and tortured.”
“I suppose it’s a comfort to know that over the years, you may not have learned tact, but you’ve certainly learned when it’s appropriate to lower your voice,” Levi said with a snort.
“Well, I’m not trying to announce to everyone what’s been going on in your life.”
“Mmm, I appreciate that.”
“So is that the story? Don’t wanna tell me what Augustine had to say about it?”
“No, that was strictly between him and me, and...” He eyed me, “you wouldn’t appreciate what he said anyway. I’m quite sure it would piss you off more than just hearing his name or any mention of him still does.”
“I’m not going to sit here and pretend to be shocked that I’m obvious about my hatred of that bastard.”
“I would have never expected anything else.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
He stared at me again and sighed. “What are we doing? And don’t say talking.”
“But...that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
“Dom, seriously?”
“What? That’s what we’re doing, and right now, that’s what I want us to be doing,” I said with a shrug.
“Okay,why?”
I stared back at him, trying to figure out how to put into words what I was feeling. A lot easier said than done, because I wasn’t even sure what I was feeling, let alone able to put it into words. I mean, he was Levi, the only person who wasn’t my family that I had trusted with everything there was to trust another person with. He wasn’t the same person he’d been when I’d last seen him, but I wasn’t the same person either, so now we were basically two strangers who had once known each other inside out.
