“Aren’t we all?”
“Not like this.”
“How so then?”
“It’s hard to explain, but he seems...off.”
“Unbalanced?”
“Maybe? It’s just a feeling.”
“Never dismiss what your intuition tells you just because you have nothing concrete to back it up,” I warned him. “But never commit to those feelings until you have something solid to work with.”
“Right, yeah,” he said quickly, but I didn’t think he would take the advice to heart. The more I dealt with him, the more I could see he was a pretty decent person, which meant he wasn’t suited for this kind of work. It was a shame that Augustine had insisted he be involved when it was obvious he wanted to do anything other than stick by my side. Maybe in the future, when I had regained our foothold in this area, I’d find a way to get him moved to something less...intensive on his nerves. Hell, if there was an opportunity to find someone in the damned family who might be able to do something positive in this world that didn’t require them to get their hands dirty, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t take it.
“Well, let’s get this underway,” I said, checking the time and ignoring the message notification at the top of the screen. “I have other things I need to deal with today.”
“Right, yeah,” he repeated in the same nervous, rapid speech that always left me torn between wanting to comfort him and giving him a good, hard shake. Neither of which was going to help.
With Will behind me, along with the door guard, we walked through the maze of shelves until we reached the middle of the warehouse. It was the spot I’d picked for the meeting at the last second. Specifically because it would give all of us a sense of being locked in and provoke paranoia, given so many places someone could hide. Of course, my men had been here from the moment I had chosen the spot, so that would only make them more wary. There were multiple ways to... provoke people, and often the provoked were sloppier than usual and also less careful about guarding secrets or tells. Of course, it could also backfire, but considering this was not intended to be a friendly meeting between equals, I had no reason to be hospitable.
I stepped out from the shelves to look at the table under one of the overhead lights and made rapid mental notes about them as I approached. One of them, I knew, was Luis; the other went by Reg. Luis was the muscle in the area, while Reg was in charge. Both had come, even though I’d needed only one of them. Either they were trying to convey some intimidating aura, or they were admitting that neither of them was more in command than the other.
Or they’re just friends.
Mmm, there was that.
“Good afternoon,” I said as I approached the table, carefully watching their body language while making sure I wasn’t obvious about it. I was presenting an attitude of control and power, and I didn’t need them to realize I was watching them carefully.
Los Muertos had made many gains over the years throughout much of the country, mostly in the southern end, as Eliza could attest, since she’d been feuding with them for the past decade. Their strongest seats were in the southeast, but they still had a good hold throughout the southwest. They had been creeping up through California for a few years, and while I had interactedwith them on occasion while operating out of Seattle, they had mostly behaved themselves.
That was, until the news hit that Will Senior had been taken down. Smelling blood in the water and seeing an opportunity, they had grown much more active in Northern California and Oregon. If I were overly paranoid, I might think they’d had something to do with Senior being caught with his pants down. Los Muertos was brutal in its dealings, but they were clever and cunning when necessary. The thing was, if there was someone the feds wanted to take down harder than The Family, it was Los Muertos. While I could picture them working with an enemy to bring down a shared foe, I couldn’t see them teaming up with Los Muertos.
And now they were in my city, and I needed to deal with them before they got too comfortable.
“Levi, right?” Reg asked, standing up, gripping my hand, then shaking it before gesturing to the seat across from him. “Nice of ya to call us together.”
“Of course,” I said politely as I took the seat, adjusting my coat. “It’s become obvious, I think, that everyone involved could benefit from sitting down and talking.”
“Yeah,” Luis said, his expression never changing. “I’m sure when your daddy sent you down here, he wasn’t expecting to run into trouble.”
“Trouble,” I repeated, meeting his eyes, “is a mild way of putting it. For the past month and a half, you have practically set the city on fire.”
“A few scuffles here and there,” he said with that same unchanging expression that I now realized was probably what made Will so uncomfortable. Doubly so because therewassomething about the way he spoke. I couldn’t immediately put my finger on it, but it was definitely there.
“Scuffles,” I repeated, finding it an odd word to use because it was old-fashioned, and a bit prissy for someone who looked like they worked hard, fought hard, and probably played too hard. “In the past week alone, there have been numerous fights that have bled out onto the streets. Some of them with businesses that do not need your...assistance.”
‘Protection money’ might be an old-fashioned idea, but it was alive and well in the modern day. One of the first things I did upon reaching Cresson Point was make sure all the businesses and people who had originally been under our paid protection were informed that protection would continue well into the future. The problem was that others, not just Los Muertos, since a city like Cresson Point bred its fair share of gangs and criminal groups, had tried to move quickly into what was essentially our territory. Most had been chased off already, but these...brutes had yet to get the hint.
“It does get kind of hard to do business when you’ve got fire licking at your heels,” Luis said, and although he didn’t grin, I could swear I could see him smiling in his head.
Ah, there it is.False face hiding a monster.
She was right. That was what had unnerved Will and had me on edge from the moment I’d laid eyes on him. His words didn’t match anything else about him. He was taunting me, enjoying himself, but his body language said he was bored, and his face said there was nothing emotionally important happening. There was too much of a mismatch between what he apparently wanted to convey and what the rest of him was saying. Some might consider him an attack dog kept on a tight leash, but I was sure I was actually dealing with a madman whose sanity relied on someone strong enough to keep him in line...or a monster held in check by someone mean enough to make him behave.
“Speaking of fire, there’s been plenty of those, in the literal sense,” I said, flashing the madman a smile. “And that is thetip of the iceberg. I haven’t even got into the...scuffles between your people and mine, between your people and regular people, different gangs, and...just about everyone. Incidents I was willing to put on the back burner for a while to see if good sense might win out.”
“I guess you realized you had to come out of whatever throne room you built for yourself to deal with us then,” Reg said, smirking at me. Both men were enjoying the chaos they were causing, which... tracked. Los Muertos was effective not just because it could be cunning when needed, but because its people were not afraid of anything. Brutality was one of their favorite weapons, and they weren’t shy about wielding it.
