Levi #4
“You’ve already lost,” I told him plainly, keeping the smirk he hated so much on my face just to keep him pissed.
“You lost the moment you decided to play with your food instead of just killing me outright. We both know I made mistakes in my personal security, and you could have had me. But instead, you decided to prove you were the biggest, baddest, smartest person in the room. Now you know you’ve lost, everyone knows you have, so maybe suck up your pride, and you’ll get out of this with your skin intact. ”
We both know that isn’t the case.
No, but when you were going to kill someone, you didn’t tell them they were going to die.
People who had nothing left to lose did desperate, stupid things.
And while I didn’t care if he did something stupid and desperate, I wanted him to wait until I had everything I wanted.
Once that was taken care of, he could do everything he wanted, and I would still win.
Reg opened his mouth, but Leo’s hand came down on the table again, and he growled. “Cállate! You’ve said enough, and done enough, so shut your mouth.”
Reg lapsed into a sullen silence that I didn’t trust for a moment. Instinct told me I had already pushed Reg far enough, but Leo was pushing him even further. If he was pushed too far, that fury could lash out at Leo, and that would be...messy.
Leo glared at him before turning to me and flashing a smile. “I think this is where you tell me what it is you want.”
“I believe so,” I said, leaning forward and fighting the urge to grimace as my right hand squelched against the table.
God, killing people was messy work, which was one reason I hated it.
And no, it did not matter that it had been the most gratifying kill, even down to making it more personal with a knife.
It was still a sticky, gory mess, leaving me feeling sticky and dirty.
“We’ll start with the most obvious. Los Muertos gets out of my city. ”
“That is one of the more obvious,” Leo said dryly, and I could see him becoming more comfortable.
Apparently, hashing things out in a boardroom was more his style.
..even if the meeting had already involved a brutal murder, a half-crazed subordinate, and a bomb strapped to the bottom of the table.
That I could relate to. “I’ll be honest, you could have garnered that without needing to involve. ..Luis, and the bomb.”
“We both know Luis was personal, and I won’t be apologizing for that,” I said, wondering if Reg realized that he, too, was a personal matter that had yet to be dealt with.
I was guessing Leo did, though. “And the bomb is not leverage, it’s already served its first purpose as an attention grabber, and it’s a guarantee against any further.
..what was it Reg used to describe my tactics?
Ah, right, chicken shit tricks. Like the one they first pulled on me. ”
“I won’t apologize for their opening tactics,” Leo said with a shrug. “Taking down a rival leader before he can get traction is smart.”
“But they weren’t smart enough to follow through.”
“No, as you already said, they wanted to play with their food.”
“You speak with the tone of someone who already knew that was one of their flaws.”
“Yes,” he said, the word having enough weight that I realized they weren’t just his subordinates, but two people he had personally trained and tried to guide.
“Now, here’s the real question,” I said, raising a brow.
“Just how long will you keep Los Muertos out? I don’t have any illusions that your eviction will last forever.
Expansion has been the name of the game for your people for years, and I don’t expect that’s going to stop just because I pushed back harder. ”
I could see him weighing his options, but instead of pressing him, I waited.
I had played this game before, and I knew that pushing him could lead to a mistake on my part; it could make me too eager to go for the kill.
What I needed was to see what kind of negotiator he was, how sensible he could be, how diplomatic he wanted to be, and how honest he would allow himself to be.
“Pushing this far north was...a gamble,” Leo finally said, choosing his words carefully.
“Because you didn’t have the resources to commit to it fully, or because you were hoping you might be able to circle around Eliza in the southwest to put yourselves between her and her backup while hemming her in?”
“Both,” he said, clicking his tongue. “As I tried to explain to these two more than once, your representative further south is...let’s just say I have floated the idea of trying to bring her into our ranks if possible.”
That caught me by surprise, and I laughed. “Really? Honestly, I’m not informed about the...politics of Los Muertos. Has that idea been shot down because you didn’t think she could be turned, or because she has the unfortunate luck of being a woman?”
“The fact that she is a woman is the biggest problem as far as many people are concerned,” he said with a stiffness that made me smile.
“But you disagree.”
“Your own organization made changes recently that were less...stiff about that sort of thing.”
“True, but it’s still hanging on like a bad hangnail.”
“My organization has not become as...enlightened. There are too many opposed to the idea based on her sex. Then there is the fact that she is a white American. Even then, I couldn’t care less. She is, however, unwilling to leave your organization.”
I gave that a moment of thought and shrugged. “Perhaps.”
Honestly, if I had read Eliza right, they might have been able to pull her into their ranks, but they would have to drop the xenophobia and sexism quickly.
She already had to deal with the occasional comments about her sex in The Family, and she was not gentle in reminding people that she was more effective and vicious than many of the gossipers.
Her presence in Los Muertos would probably result in her being killed quickly by a rival.
Otherwise, the ambitious woman would turn in a heartbeat if the getting was good enough.
She had always felt she wasn’t getting enough out of The Family.
An offer of something greater, where she would gain the respect she demanded, would be too tempting.
Even then, though, she might hesitate. The Family did not deal with traitors and defectors with a shrug and a polite wave goodbye.
She would have to be put somewhere far enough away from The Family’s reach to ensure she wasn’t in any danger, and even then, she would always have to look over her shoulder.
“But yes, we wouldn’t be able to bring back any real force to attempt another foothold. The Marelli Family is aware of our intentions, and considering how hard you drove Luis and Reg back before they could gain a true foothold, we are left with nothing,” Leo said, his expression growing darker.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I wasn’t going to let Reg leave this building in one piece, I might have been tempted to let him go with Leo.
If only for the fact that I knew that although The Family could be harsh on failure, they were tame in comparison to what Los Muertos did to their own who failed.
And from what I was seeing in Leo, this most certainly counted as a monumental fuck up on Reg’s part.
In fact, I suspected this was a fuck up on Leo’s part by proxy as well.
If my suspicions were correct, they had been under Leo’s direct supervision, and he must have taken an interest in their future.
That he was here with them probably meant he was being held responsible for what they did.
And if that were the case, the only option left for Leo would be to make sure Reg and Luis suffered for their failure so he didn’t have to take their place.
You need to make sure he still loses, but you can’t make him lose so badly that he would suffer more at their hands than he already will.
Trickier and trickier.
“I have to ask,” Leo said, eyeing me. “You’ve been busy keeping these two on the back foot, I think that’s the phrase. So busy I can’t imagine you’ve had time for much else.”
“You’d be surprised what I can balance when properly motivated,” I said, not needing to point out that I had never been more motivated in my life. “But what point are you getting to?”
“The sheer amount of...chaos, and destruction can’t have gone unnoticed by the police,” he said slowly. “And everyone knows that one of your own fell a while ago to the government agencies coming down on him.”
“He did,” I said, now realizing where this was going.
“So how did you manage to keep them out of the mess you’ve been creating? I can’t imagine they would ignore what you’ve been doing when the news has been talking about it all the time.”
“As we’ll get to in a moment, you’ll find my time in The Family before I came to Cresson Point to salvage what I could from William’s failure has garnered me a few habits that have served me well here. I have a great many resources at my disposal,” I told him with complete confidence.
Did he suspect what I already knew? That it was Augustine keeping them at bay.
While I could imagine, I couldn’t begin to calculate the cost of keeping the police and the alphabet agencies at bay.
If I got through this with my life intact, I would be met with a furious Augustine.
Not just because I’d been ignoring, defying, and outright flouting his authority, but I had forced him to become directly involved when he was supposed to keep his head down.
There was no future for me in The Family, and that meant there was no safety in my future.
Without safety, there would always be a target on my back and on those around me.
I could do everything in my power to protect Dom and his family from Los Muertos, but there was only one way I could protect them from The Family. ..from Augustine.