“Can’t say I have,” Levi answered.
“The host—Bobby Vance—is a friend of mine. By the end of this show, I told him he’d receive a phone call with information about the next don of the Torren Family.” Harrison tapped his watch. “We have twenty-eight minutes. I hope he’s not left disappointed.”
Jac grimaced as he sat on the sofa. Augustines, Torrens, they were all the same. Even if Harrison had exchanged casinos for opera houses and Tropps Street for Guillory, he was still running an elaborate power scheme.
Regardless, they still needed him. So Jac sat on the couch and said, “We better hurry up, then.”
Sophia took the spot beside him, and though neither Harrison nor Levi could see it, she hooked her fingers around Jac’s behind their backs. He didn’t know if she’d done it to comfort him or for her own support, but, either way, he liked it.
“I’m Charles’s and Delia’s half sister,” she explained. “I grew up in an orphanage in the Factory District and didn’t know my talents until I met a blood gazer.” It was a sadly common story in the North Side, but Jac didn’t believe a word of it. “Over a year ago, I began working at a Rapture den to get a better sense of my siblings. I was...curious. But by the time I was promoted to manager, I realized how despicable each of them was. So I’ve spent my time interacting with the underbosses, collecting knowledge on the inner workings of the empire, and growing familiar with their Apothecary network.”
“All to become donna?” Harrison asked. “Ruling a casino and narcotics empire hardly seems a likely dream for a young woman.”
A comment like that might’ve made Jac stumble, but Sophia betrayed no such weakness. “At my age, what was yours?” she asked.
A ghost of something unpleasant crossed his expression. “I know better now.”
“Then you’ll sympathize when I tell you I don’t wish to run my Family’s empire. I want to destroy it.”
There was an unmistakable glitter in Harrison’s eye. “Well, that’s...interesting.”
Interesting is good, Jac reassured himself, but his anxiety was much louder.Interesting is bad, very bad. Interesting is a disaster.
“I can get you your votes, but after the election, I’ll watch Luckluster burn,” Sophia said. “That’s the deal I’m offering.”
“I thought I was the one making the offers,” Harrison said with amusement. Then he sat down in the armchair across from her, and the two of them leaned forward, matching each other’s serious expressions. “It’s been a long while, but I know Delia and Charles. They take pleasure in torment. And as much as I hate to support either of them, how can my conscience allow me to supportyou, someone so young and inexperienced, whentheyare your opponents? They won’t care that you’re family. They won’t want to kill you, they’ll want tocrushyou. And they’ll enjoy doing it.”
Jac remembered the terror on Sophia’s face last night when she’d agreed to this. Harrison was telling her nothing she didn’t already know.
Jac squeezed her fingers tighter. She squeezed back.
“I understand perfectly,” Sophia answered coolly. “I’ve always understood this, but even if you choose not to sponsor me, I won’t back down. Delia already sees me as a member of her inner circle. I’ll bide my time until I have the chance, and I’ll still try to destroy her, no matter the price.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Harrison said.
“Actually, I do,” she snapped. She let go of Jac’s hand and stood up, her voice rising. “I have already gone to extremes to see this through, and Iwillwin. Every time I look in the mirror, I see them and the evil they do. I’m tired of that guilt. I’m tired of doing nothing.”
Harrison said nothing for a long while, only examined Sophia with growing unease. Jac wanted to add something, even just useless words about Sophia’s management of Liver Shot, but it was Levi who spoke next.
“Jac?” he asked. “Can I talk to you in private?”
Jac nodded and followed Levi to the room’s corner.
“I think I know why you feel you need to do this,” Levi started.
“Youthink?” Jac countered.
“But even if Harrison agrees to this, you don’t need to stay with her. You could come back.”
Jac hesitated. He liked the Irons—missed the Irons. And he missed his friend. But working with Sophia meant something more to him than the Irons ever had, and he didn’t want Levi to make him say that.
“It would be amazing if you stopped the Torrens from selling Lullaby,” Levi said. “But even if the Torrens fell, one of the gangs or some other Family would pick it up. It’ll never end. And you heard what Harrison said. This isn’t just a game. It’s dangerous.”
Jac rolled his eyes. “Wouldn’t you know a thing or two about that?”
“I would.” Levi’s voice was slipping back into the same weariness from earlier. He’d gotten nearly everything he’d ever wanted when Revolution Bridge fell, but Jac had never seen his friend act so defeated. “So I won’t ask you not to do this. I’m just worried.”
If Levi didn’t want to worry, then he shouldn’t have given this assignment to him in the first place. But he didn’t say that. It frustrated Jac that Levi only seemed to understand pieces of why this mattered to him, but that didn’t mean Jac needed to be cruel.
