Dom #5
“Not the next me. No one will be me, and anyone who tries is easily dismissed,” he said with a shrug.
“He needed to be his own man. One that knows his place, of course, but still willing to do things his way without living in fear of failure, while still being effective. I could see early on that he had great potential, but there were two obstacles in the way. You...and Lana.”
“This had better not be where you tell me you’re the one who got his mom killed,” I said. “Because I do not give a flying fuck if I’m busted up from the accident, I will get up from this bed and show you what the express route to the concrete below looks like.”
“Lana was...not my fault,” he said slowly. “If anything, I mourned her death. Not nearly as much as Levi, but she was his mother; I would have expected nothing less. It was fortuitous that the owner...whatever his name was, ended up being doubly useful and I couldn’t have planned it better myself.”
Disgust rose in my chest, tasting like vomit. “Her death was fortuitous? Jesus. Levi should have listened to me and realized what a piece of shit you really are.”
“He was well aware. Why do you think he approached me to deal with that man?” Augustine asked with a small, pleased smile.
“I even made sure he knew that dealing with those two ineffectual idiots didn’t come with a price tag.
As I said, I mourned Lana enough that killing the two men responsible for her death would have come without a price tag.
He is the one who decided that it required him to work for The Family. ”
“And I’m sure you worked oh so hard to make him back off and think about it. No, you were willing to take advantage of a kid who was mourning his goddamn mother and let him think the only route he had left was to come work for you,” I sneered.
“I told him there was no price tag. He decided there would be, and who was I to argue?”
“Someone who didn’t give a flying fuck about him, that’s who, just what he could mean to you as a tool and maybe a replacement.
Cut the shit, Augustine. We both know you were crunching the numbers.
You know enough about being human to know he was just some seventeen-year-old kid drowning in his grief and couldn’t be trusted to make a clear decision.
But you let him anyway because it worked for your plan, it’s not because you respected his choice. Fuck off with that.”
Augustine stared at me, and I wondered if he was starting to lose his patience.
He surprised me by laughing, grabbing one of the chairs, and dragging it to my bedside.
“I have spent so many years around people who are too scared to look me in the eye, let alone disagree with me. I had almost forgotten what it was like to have someone look me in the eye without fear and tell me to fuck off.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll do what everyone else won’t, including Levi.”
“Hmm, you know, for years, I wondered if perhaps I had chosen wrong with him. At one point, he simply let me do as I pleased with him without much argument. Little did I realize that he was watching and waiting, getting a feel for the rules of the game, as it were, and figuring out how he wanted to play when he decided to step onto the board. Then I thought perhaps his lack of ambition would be a problem, which is why I sent him here. I have watched him meet with surprising success, both effective and efficient, subtle yet able to pull out brutality when necessary. What he lacked in active ambition, he made up for in spades through his dedication to being good at what he does and a refusal to back down from a challenge.”
“Careful, Augustine, someone might think you like him,” I warned even as I hated that he really did understand Levi to an unnerving degree.
When Milo was in middle school, he’d had an obsession with serial killers.
I remembered him telling Matty about how most serial killers weren’t as smart as people thought.
An exception was Ed Kemper. This Kemper guy was apparently ridiculously intelligent and in control of himself.
Apparently, he had been really good at reading people, knowing how people ticked, and took advantage of that.
While never in touch with his own humanity, he could understand other humans. Just like Augustine.
“I also knew,” he continued, ignoring my sarcasm. “That sending him here was not without its risks. Namely...you.”
“Yeah, he told me you warned him to stay away from me,” I snorted. “I guess he wasn’t as obedient as you thought.”
“From him, I never wanted pure obedience...though when it came to you, I would have. You were the last tie to his old life, and even when you were boys, I could see the hold you had over him. You could bring him back from the edge, and that level of control was...uncomfortable. So long as he had you, you would always keep him stuck here, in this life where his talents would have been wasted,” Augustine said, leaning back in the seat and steepling his fingers under his chin.
“I had considered, at first, the idea of bringing you with him, but unlike Levi, your moral compass was fixed. His could be adjusted with time, as he has been, but you would always be his magnetic north, and you would always try.”
“God forbid someone has morals and thinks killing people is wrong,” I scowled.
“Once I realized that you would never see sense and would always be a thorn in my side when it came to Levi...I did consider killing you. It would have been simple to arrange an accident. Wait enough time after he’d left Cresson Point, have you die in some accident, and never have to worry about you again. ”
God, and I’d thought conversations with Levi could be surreal, but here I was, having it topped by Augustine talking about his serious consideration of killing me. “I hope you don’t expect me to thank you.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” he said in a flash of irritation.
“My one regret is that I didn’t make sure you weren’t in Cresson Point when he returned.
I had hoped, rather fruitlessly it seems, that you wouldn’t be around.
Or if you were, he would have had enough time and space away from you not to seek you out.
I underestimated that particular flaw in him. ”
“Only an inhuman asshole would think that loving someone and having a real friend would be a flaw,” I pointed out. “So let me guess, you wish you had killed me. So we’re going to circle around to you potentially trying to kill me now.”
“That...would be a mistake,” he said, and though it was only there for a second, I spotted frustration flash over his face.
“Really?” I asked with a laugh. “And why’s that?”
“Because I, along with several other people, have witnessed what happens when you are put into danger,” he said, the crease in his brow growing thicker and heavier.
I squinted at him. “What do you mean?”
“I take it you haven’t been kept abreast of recent events in the city?” he asked, tilting his head.
“No, my family hasn’t told me. They think I shouldn’t know until I won’t break something trying to get out of this bed,” I said.
There was no point in keeping the truth from him.
He probably had a good idea how I felt. At least this way, he knew I was aware that I was being kept in the dark and accepted I was a stubborn asshole who wasn’t always going to make the ‘smart’ choice.
“Hmm, a rather insightful choice on their part,” he said with a grunt, getting up and opening the blinds to look out. “You wouldn’t know it from here, but this city is practically burning at the moment.”
“It’s...what?” I asked, confused, pushing myself into an upright position. It hurt like hell, my entire body still ached from almost being murdered by a van, but I had the strength to sit up on my own.
“You have been recovering for the better part of about ten days,” he said. “And since the first day, Levi has been—”
“Is he okay?” I asked, not caring if the bastard saw my worry. Someone needed to be worried about Levi; my family was too pissed off at him to care, and Augustine was too much of a monster to understand how to care, so it was up to me.
“It’s not him you should be worried about,” Augustine said in a wry voice.
“Can we stop speaking in riddles?” I growled.
Augustine reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, opened it, tapped a few times, and handed it over. “Here, I had someone compile a relevant list of videos. Don’t worry, they’re short form, so you should get the sense of what’s going on quickly.”
It wasn’t exactly what I asked for, but I took his phone, tapped the first item in the playlist, and after getting the basic information, moved on to the next one.
“Eight people dead in an explosion that rocked a neighborhood, revealed to be a hidden lab for manufacturing—”
“An inside source from the police states that while the number of members in the Twelfth Street Gang was only a couple of dozen, all but one in police custody have been found dead, other sources—”
“The ‘epidemic’ of fires that have plagued the city has continued to grow as three more warehouses at the edge of town, and the Leo Light manufacturing plant, were all burned down. No official statement has been given, but a source states that there is reason to believe arson is at play.”
“Nine gunned down while—”
“Three car bombs in two hours have left the police stumped and—”
“I don’t think people are paying attention as they should, or they’re just thinking it’s normal, but it’s not.
The violence level in Cresson Point in the past week alone is three times what it should be, and everyone’s treating it like it’s just regular old street violence and accidents.
Wake the fuck up, people, something is going down, and no one is—”
“Okay,” I said, handing the phone back, still thinking enough to make sure I didn’t even so much as brush his fingers. “That’s...the whole city is going to hell. That’s what...that’s what they were talking about before.”