“I would comment that there is a limit to how much hate someone should be able to cram into their body, but I think if it is finite, it’s a rather large amount. I have, after all, known people with a great capacity to feel despair, anger, and love, so why should hate be any different? I’m not so sure I want you to be the one who should figure it out, though.”
“Levi, I’m a big boy.”
“I’m aware. But even when you’re dealing with another adult, you can want them to have something better than they have, even if they can handle what they have.”
“Wow, that sounds...weirdly familiar. Didn’t I try to do that once with you?”
“Mmm, I walked into that,” he sighed. “Yes. Augustine assigned me to this job. I didn’t ask for it, and if I had been asked, which I wasn’t, because Augustine does not ask, he tells, then I would have said I didn’t want it. There is too much noise and chaos, too much uncertainty. I have never sought to lead. Lately, even the small decisions I’ve made feel like they will have a greater impact than anything else I have done.”
“You say that, but you’ve clearly been doing...good,” I said reluctantly.
“Good?”
“Well, not like, good because leading a bunch of criminals doing criminal things isn’t good. But I mean, you must be doing the job pretty well, even if you don’t think you are. If you’re really supposed to be taking over for that guy who got killed, then you have to be doing something right.”
“How do you figure?”
“Augustine is a rotten bastard who’ll do anything it takes to get what he wants,” I said and gestured for him to shut the hell up when he turned with a tired look on his face. “And the world would be a better place without him if you ask me. But...from what I remember, he wasn’t the sort to try to make someone feel good for the sake of it, and he wasn’t stupid or wasteful either. Actually, I’m pretty sure he would get a kick out of kicking someone when they’re down, or to bring them down. If you were screwing up or he thought you were going to crash and burn, he wouldn’t let you keep going. Not if he...God, he’s really making you run things in the city?”
“Pretty much the entire middle of the western seaboard,” Levi said in a tired voice.
“Fuck,” I muttered, thinking that covered things quite nicely as I knocked back the rest of the drink and set it down. “For someone who always hated to be the center of attention, that uh?—”
I actually didn’t know what to say. On one hand, it was a horrifying thought, standing here talking to someone who was basically running one-third of a criminal empire. Were it anyone else, I would have been quietly searching for the exits and trying to figure out if it was better to call the cops now or wait until later. Anyone who could get that high up in a criminal family was uh...well, they were someone you didn’t want to get on the bad side of. There was going to be plenty of violence, brutality, and efficiency around.
But this wasn’t just someone, this was...this was Levi, right?
“What’s going through that head of yours?” he asked, and while I could tell he was going for a wry, maybe even a little jaded tone, there were cracks in that mask.
In fact, he looked like he needed to sit down and take a deep breath, maybe even a good nap... for a few days. “I was just...I keep thinking, are you you?”
“Last I checked,” he said, and this time he managed the wryness he’d attempted the first time.
“You know what I mean,” I said. “We’ve already talked about how things have changed for us, and how things have stayed the same. So what’s changed...and what’s stayed the same?”
“God, I wish I knew,” he said, and suddenly the mask faded away, but considering how tired he looked, maybe he just didn’t have the strength to hold onto it. “I’ve been doing this for so long, and I’ve been this person for so long, I just...I don’t know what to think sometimes, Dom. Not about myself, not about mylife, and I was fine with that before. But you just had to be this stubborn ass that wouldn’t let me have a moment of peace.”
“Really?” I asked in surprise. “You’re going to blame me?”
“Yes,” he said with a snort, but there was no bitterness or judgment in his voice as he turned to look out the window. “Because I should be thinking about running this operation, that I have a goddamn war with Los Muertos brewing, and instead...I’m thinking about what sort of man you’ve become. I’m thinking about how much my mother would hate the life I have now, and how much she would be over the moon to know that you wouldn’t leave me alone the moment you got the chance to bother me.”
“Los Muertos?” I asked, and I didn’t think I actually went pale, but it was goddamn close.
It was a name that made people worry even more than The Family. At least with The Family, you could count on an old-world charm and the sort of code of honor and respect that people thought the old-school mafia had. That came from movies and shit, but in the real world, The Family was a lot like that. They didn’t have a problem doing all the fucked up, illegal things, but you could at least count on them not to destroy everything in the process, and from what I’d heard, if you kept your word with them, they would do the same with you.
Los Muertos though? Those were the definition of monsters and demons in the skin of people. Anytime I heard their name, it would be a war crime if it were done elsewhere in the world. Kidnapping, torture, maiming, rape, trafficking, just about everything awful one person could do to another, Los Muertos did as a matter of course.
I stared at him. “Seriously?”
“Yes,” he said, closing his eyes. “And again, you are to blame.”
“What the fuck?” I exclaimed, reeling back. “How the hell are you going to blame me because you’re overworked and because those fuckers are here?”
“I’m not blaming you for those things in the way you think,” he explained with a snort. “I’m blaming you for Los Muertos because you were the one who drew attention to the fact that their activities in my city have caused chaos, unnecessary destruction, and death. I realized that if I was going to get this city under my control, I needed to deal with them quickly. Of course, I probably wouldn’t have cared about them while I tried to get my resources together, until later. But ever since you said something, the thought that they were causing trouble in the city you’re living in, the one you grew up in and had fallen in love with...bothered me. So I went out of my way to confront them and try to get them under heel and now....well, now I’m going to have to do it the hard way.”
I continued to stare at him, shaking my head. “Your city, huh?”
He eyed me sourly. “And I blame you for how exhausted I seem because, goddammit, I’ve been exhausted foryears, Dom. I knew it, and no one else ever knew, not those who worked with me, or for me, and definitely not Augustine. Then suddenly you are a presence in my life, and I find myself showing the cracks, and everything is dragging me into a pit of exhaustion and weariness that I’ve been holding off for years.”
