Asa stopped walking.
Tempting as it was to leave him behind, Dante stopped too and turned to face him.
Asa glowered, features darkening with a fury that ran soul deep. “You think I’d come running to you if I was? You goddamn joker.”
Dante appraised Asa’s anger. Matched it to the man he knew and the twisted logic that had kept the crown on his own head for so many cold, dark years. “I think it’s the only reason you’d come to me. You don’t want my help, you need it.”
Asa’s glare deepened, then he seemed to catch himself and flattened his expression. “Always so sure of everyone else’s mind, aren’t you?”
“Not so much these days, but clever as you are—you have to be if you took Martell down—you’re not particularly complicated. Now motherfuckingtell me. What do you want?”
A stalemate stretched out between them. Dante’s hold on his self-control faltered, but Asa spoke before it slipped away.
“Okay,” he said flatly. “Let’s say you’re right and I have a situation I can’t handle alone. What would you say?”
“I’d say I don’t give a shit. You’re nothing to me—you never were.”
Asa smiled a little. “That’s the obvious response. I’d expect it from anyone else. What are you really thinking?”
Dante darted a gaze around them. It was quiet by the lake, but given that Dante rarely spoke to anyone but Sid, their stand-off wouldn’t go unnoticed for long. He jerked his head. “Keep walking.”
With a wry smirk, Asa obeyed. “I’m waiting, Pope.”
Don’t call me that. “I’m thinking you’d have to be desperate to want me involved in your bullshit. That you’ve tried everywhere else and I’m your last option. Who have you pissed off? The St. Michael’s boys or the Albanians?”
“Maybe I haven’t pissed anyone off... yet.”
“So? You want me to do it for you? Because last time I checked, neither one of those crews liked me much.”
“When did you last check?”
“Around the time I got a Glock round fired into my favourite shoes.” Dante braced himself for the bone-numbing throb he carried in his foot most winters, but it didn’t come. It was a changeable summer afternoon. Wet and warm. Windy. But not cold. Not yet. “The only reason they didn’t kill me was because I made a handy scapegoat for all the shit the feds swept up in that sting.”
“You’re wrong.”
“About what?”
“About the Albanians. They never wanted you gone. Martell convinced them you were a weak link because of Luis, and they believed him because they never saw you after Luis got out. He made the most of your absence, brought more Ps to the table, and then you showed up at the meet with Luis at your back, and they believed every bullshit lie he’d fed them.”
“It wasn’t a lie, though, was it? I stopped caring about business the day Luis came home.”
“Martell didn’t know that, not straight away, at least.”
“Doesn’t matter. He guessed right and he got what he wanted. What does any of it have to do with whatever hole you’ve dug for yourself?”
Asa fired his own rapid gaze around them, then leaned in, sneering a little as his closeness made Dante flinch. “The Albanians,” he said. “They don’t like change, and as much as they missed you, they dug their claws into the set-up Martell had going. Only wanted to deal with him, which left us a problem when he was gone.”
“You couldn’t charm them into your new regime?”
Asa snorted. “We didn’t try. We never told them he wasn’t around anymore. Sent Italian muscle to the meets, pretending they were all cousins until they got made a few weeks back.”
Dante had shut off the part of his brain that thought like a road man. It buckled under the strain of any attempt to resurrect it, sparking an ache in his temple. “Now they’re pissed that you blagged them all this time? Or are they gunning for you for taking Martell down?”
“Both. I think. Whatever. That’s not my issue.”
“Then what is?”
Asa stopped walking again. “I need out. Like, completely out of the whole game, and I can’t do it unless they agree to sever the link between us and get their product somewhere else.”