“Alright,” Augustine said, his voice slightly raised to pierce through the din of conversation. “You can gossip like old hens somewhere else. I have other things to do tonight. Levi.”
“I’m staying,” I replied as I fished one of the small cigars from the hard case I kept in my inside jacket pocket and lit it. I knew full well he was going to want to talk about this new honor, and I had a few things of my own to address, so I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Don’t drift too far,” Augustine told Eliza. “William, don’t go too far either; we’re going to need to discuss a few things personally.”
I couldn’t tell if the guy was so petrified he was left speechless, nodding with a hard swallow, or if he was trying to be respectful by keeping his mouth shut. I concluded it was both. I knew William Senior had been rather...liberal when it came to his flesh and blood, especially his children. They weren’t pressed to keep up with the family business if they didn’t want to, and when they did, he didn’t throw them in the deep end. That might have been one of the deciding factors in Augustine’s decision to bring in an outsider, since William Senior had never groomed any of his four children to take his place, just to be safe. I didn’t think that played a big part, but it would be an excellent excuse.
Few people lingered now that they had orders to march, and I sat in my chair, listening to the noise grow quieter. I peeredup at the ceiling as Augustine pulled out his phone and began browsing something. I blew a cloud of smoke out.
Without a word, I pushed up from the chair, setting my glass on the table so I could adjust my jacket before moving to the large table Augustine was sitting at. He didn’t glance up, but reached out to take an unused ashtray and set it down where I stood. With a wry twist of my lips, I tapped the cigar against the ashtray and sat on the table, staring down at him.
“I assume you have something to say, considering the utter lack of your normal subtlety,” he said as he frowned at something and began typing.
“Just five words,” I said casually, taking a sip from my glass.
“Those being?”
“What thehellwas that?” I growled at him.
“Most people would call it a promotion,” he said calmly as he set his phone down at the sound of heels. Another woman I didn’t recognize right away walked in and set a pile of thin folders on the table in front of him. She flashed us both a smile before leaving without a word.
“New assistant?” I wondered aloud. “What happened to Ramsey?”
“He apparently grew a conscience,” Augustine said, picking up the folders and flipping through them before opening one. He liked having physical pages in his hand when going over business, though he made sure to destroy them afterward. “And grew enough spine to do something about it, but lacked the intelligence to get away with it.”
“And that would leave him...where?”
“Here and there.”
No, he was not exaggerating. “Lovely, now back to my question.”
“Which has been answered,” he said as he flipped a page over and looked at what appeared to be a graph.
I glanced at the page and sighed, plucking it from his hands. “Put your glasses on if you’re going to read the fine print.”
I drained my glass. “Now...why me? There are plenty of people who could have taken the position without requiring me to be thrown into the mess.”
“A mess is precisely what we have,” he said, leaning back in his chair and frowning. “One of our most established and reasonably effective leaders has just gone down in flames. I didn’t mention it at the meeting, but he chose to take his own life rather than get taken.”
I whistled. “So he wasthatconvinced he would go down if they got their hands on him.”
“Yes.”
“And you want me to go in and deal with the mess he left? Wonderful.”
“And who then, do you think I should choose? Anyone with the experience I need would be pulled from something more important. And the rest? Perhaps I should have told Leonard he was up for the position.”
“Am I supposed to believe for a moment you would have considered him?” I asked, rolling my eyes. The last situation he’d been involved in almost had an entire crew behind bars. It was a mystery how he was allowed to live, let alone continue to function within The Family.
“No, but my options aren’t exactly plentiful,” he said, staring at me with a frown. “What I also left out of my explanation was that the entire region was already in danger. We knew he was under closer watch than others, and as steady as his performance was, it had been dropping.”
I had also noticed, but there was no point in bringing that up, not when that wasn’t his point. “And? You can’t tell me there aren’t others who would want this.”
God knew there were plenty of people who would have jumped at the chance to gain more power and influence. The only reason I’d settled into the role I had been in for the past five years was because it didn’t require me to do much more than sit on my ass, keep an eye on things, and make sure production, shipment, and money flow were all working, if not flourishing. It kept me away from the uglier and harsher parts of the life, something I had been focused on from the beginning.
What would my life have been like if Augustine hadn’t decided to take an interest when I was twelve? I hadn’t realized it at the time, but my mother had dreaded the possibility of Augustine looking into one of his many bastards. Back then, I had thought my mom had been leaving the subject of my father’s return alone because she felt guilty about leaving me in the dark about his existence.
I found out who and what he was shortly after I turned thirteen, but that had been...well, I thought it was the coolest thing at the time. What thirteen-year-old really understands the scope of something when all he can see is his dad living successfully on his own terms, by his own rules? There were little things, jobs he assigned to me, nothing dangerous, but looking back, I knew he had been testing me, trying to see what I was capable of, and what he could eventually groom me to do.
