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It’s not the violence that bothers Pete. There’s violence everywhere. Uncle Plaa gives everyone the same slap-and-kick who leaves his store without paying but Pete does leave and he does leave with eggplants. Officer Eye gives everyone the same bruising hit with his baton - if he’s shaking you down, if you’re in his way, if he failed to meet some sort of quota. Coach hits his students hard and expects them to hit back hard and so his students hit each other hard too. He leaves the ring covered in scrapes and welts that will darken into bruises everywhere except the parts of his arms his pra jiad covers; his body is a site for kicks and punches and the most important parts of him are his fists, his elbows, his knees, and his feet.
Pete deals violence. At first he’s bad at it. Then he’s good at it. So it’s not a problem. Violence is important and later, kicking in the ribs of someone who couldn’t afford to pay up any more than his dad could, he’ll come up with a system for it. “Violence 201: Is Your Violence Legitimate?” (Violence 101 was growing up. Or something. Pete never went to University.)
One: Is it predictable? Uncle Plaa always gives a slap-and-kick, unless it’s Dad’s payday or you won a match with a payout or Grandma snuck some baht into a pocket and then you have to pretend it was always there or Dad’ll get mad.
Two: Is it personal? Officer Eye swings his baton with the exact same force for each blow and nobody on his beat avoids it because no one on his beat has enough money to persuade him otherwise.
Three: Is it effective? Pete’s heard of coaches who ditch the losers after their first losses and spends their time grooming winners, like the wins are thanks to them and the losses are the fault of their students. His coach takes credit and blame for both which means that he wants all of his students to win, even Pete who starts out small and skinny for his age, who learns to hit harder to make up for it because Coach hits harder to teach him.
His dad hits harder.
Is it predictable?
The first time his dad slaps him, Pete’s been crying. Loud crying, too loud crying. Nobody likes the sound of it and Mom gets headaches so he’s supposed to tone it down, but his knee is bleeding and it doesn’t really hurt but it’s all scraped up and the bright red of the blood is startling.
He’s too loud.
But he’s been too loud before and usually that means a hand on the back collar of his shirt dragging him to his room so when his dad raises his hand, he doesn’t know what it means.
Doesn’t know how to turn his face so it catches the meat of his cheek instead of the bone, the ear, the eye. Doesn’t know that if he raises his arm, he might get lucky and take it there instead. Doesn’t even know that a raised hand means he’s going to hurt.
The slap is startlingly loud and the noise is sharper than the pain is. That won’t always be the case.
It works for the moment. Pete stops crying.
Dad doesn’t like it when he cries. Soon he doesn’t like it when he’s frowning either. “Don’t be sullen. Don’t pout.” Pete learns how to look pleasant, like the weather is always nice and he’s always just stepped into it. It’s a good thing to learn. It helps with teachers and nurses and sometimes even Grandma.
Dad doesn’t like it when he avoids eye contact. “Shifty snot. What are you so afraid of?”
Dad doesn’t like it when he makes eye contact. “Brat. You think you’re so strong? You think just because you won a match that you can look at me like that?”
Dad can turn anything in the house into a weapon which means Mom used to keep the house free from clutter but when Grandma visits she thinks it looks sad and brings things as presents that will only disappear later.
Pete knows the depth of a cut a wooden giraffe can leave when thrown. The shape of a bruise from a spoon. How long shards of glass turn up when a bottle breaks.
The problem is that he doesn’t know until after it’s already happened.
One hundred days after Mom’s death, they make merits together at the wat and then Dad, teary-eyed, tells Pete about how they met. About how Mom and Grandma met. About the power outage in the neighborhood the night he was born, and how Mom forgot her purse at home so he had run home and used a flashlight to find it.
One hundred and one days after Mom’s death, Dad goes out to the grocery store and comes back hours later drunk. He doesn’t like the way Pete doesn’t look at him, he doesn’t like the way Pete looks at him, he doesn’t like the way Pete smiles, he doesn’t like the way he tries to leave.
He takes off his belt.
Is it impersonal?
“You know you killed your mom,” he says to him years later when everything about the night is the same.
That’s not right. Pete remembers his mom’s death and he knows he didn’t have anything to do with it. He also knows it doesn’t matter. He keeps his mouth shut and swallows blood.
One time Pete is over at Chomphoo’s house when her brother brings home a bad report card. Chomphoo’s mom shakes her head, slaps Cola once, and sends him to his room. She hasn’t noticed Pete watching her, hasn’t noticed Pete at all, because she startles when sees him and apologizes. “I’m sorry you were there for that.”
Chomphoo’s mom doesn’t look happy but she doesn’t look upset either. Pete stays for dinner and she serves the meal she had started cooking before Cola had come home, even though it’s Cola’s favorite and he’s still in trouble.
Dad never hits Pete unless he’s mad, and he never hits Pete unless he’s mad at him. Pete is very, very good at making his dad mad at him.
“Loser,” Dad shouts, over and over and after matches he doesn’t use anything, just his hands and feet like they’re back in the ring but at home Pete can’t fight back. Loser, loser, loser and the bruises on his arms and the marks on his face look just like the ones he gets boxing and soon he stops keeping track of which is which.
Pathetic. Weak. Soft fucking face.
Grandma clucks over him, says he’s too young for boxing, she’ll talk to her son about this and Pete begs her not to and something in her expression goes dark and then pleasant, a nice, big smile and she gives in.
He wishes she wouldn’t but she’s so small and always in pain during the rainy season. Sometimes when she’s fixing him up she tells him how much he looks like his father and he gets to spend the night.
“You think you’re so tough?” Dad shouts when he wins and Pete can see a thousand ways to block each hit, has his dad always been this slow, this sloppy, this this obvious? A thousand ways and he takes every one of them and doesn’t cry and doesn’t sulk and says good night with a smile that splits his lip open again.
It’s a small town on an island with a collapsing economy. It doesn’t mean anything for him to win here, not really. He knows that. Dad knows that. No point in losing, no point in winning, but if he goes to school with bruises, he’d rather they be from the ring.
Or at least look like it.
Is it effective?
Well. Pete guesses he stopped crying that one time. Doesn’t really apply when there’s not even a pretend purpose. All his dad has ever really affected is him and that doesn’t count. Pete’s nothing.
Except for the boxing.
It’s his dad that forces him into it, that drags him to a class where the boys are older and bigger, but it’s his dad that won’t look Coach in the eye, just like he won’t look his boss in his the eye, won’t look the collectors in the eye. Won’t look his mom in the eye. Won’t look Pete in the eye, will hit Pete if he looks him in the eye. (Will hit Pete if he doesn’t. Unpredictable.)
It’s his dad that makes him but it’s Pete who improves, who stands a little taller in the shower and when he’s alone in the locker room, who makes bruises instead of taking them, who can smile with a split lip and mean it, who people first start betting on how quick is that kid going down? and then how long is that kid gonna get last?, and then finally, how long until he wins?
Is it predictable?
Every fight starts the same way. Wai khru. Circle the ring counter-clockwise. Honor your teacher (even if he can’t read Coach’s face, ever ever), honor your ancestors (Grandma never comes to watch, Dad only starts paying attention when the fight begins), honor the Buddha and the Sangha who, for Pete, is usually the one mute monk who comes to watch these fights. The kneeling is easy, his knees are used to it. The dance is harder but he can forget people are looking at him, sometimes, if he really means it.
No violence before. And once he leaves, no violence after. He’s pissed people off in the ring before but no one he ever fought hit him when they weren’t supposed to. They follow rules in boxing. Regulations. Moreso for the kids since no one wants anyone poking around and talking about child-safety, shutting them down. There are lots of people who bet more on them than on the grownups. People who lose interest in anyone who isn’t a real star once they come of age.
At a certain point, the scouts stop caring.
So Pete knows exactly when the hurting starts and exactly when the hurting will end. Maybe not always how much it will hurt. Not always what shape he’ll be in when it’s over. But he has the outline of it, like the sort of thing he has to turn in for class, only eventually he’ll get a better grade in boxing.
He knows the when of it and the why of it and that’s important.
Once, just once, someone hits him after a joint session with Coach ends, but that’s outside the gym, so it doesn’t count as being a part of it. That’s different. That’s called bullying and they used to have PSA’s in school about that, in classes that were just, in the long run, breaks between fights.
Legitimate or not.
Anyways it stops being bullying quick because Pete ends up breaking his nose the next time he tries something and then after that it becomes bullying again except for it’s Pete doing it. Only every once in a while though. To remind him to stay back. It isn’t personal.
Is it impersonal?
Pete fights his friends. Or at least people he’s friendly with. He also fights people he really doesn’t like. One time during practice Blast, who lets him copy his homework and sometimes shares his lunch with him, punches him so hard Pete throws up in the garbage. Blast doesn’t apologize, which is good, because that would be stupid.
When Pete gets an elbow at him that makes him cry, Pete doesn’t apologize either. That would also be stupid and Pete’s been trying really hard not to be stupid lately, though it hasn’t seemed to be working so well.
Instead, the next day, they play Batman and Robin during recess and take turns on who gets to be Batman.
One time, after a practice match that left them both so bruised that the school nurse called them each into her office later that week, Blast borrowed some of his brothers’ comics and translated them for Pete. They were Batgirl, the only ones his brother let him bring to school, because they were just about a girl, but the girl was silent and deadly and fought like they did with a mask that covered her entire face.
In one issue, she shoots her father.
Pete starts pretending to be Batgirl, even though he still calls himself Batman.
Blast complains about how nosy the nurse is. It was his first time in her office. Pete’s been there plenty and she doesn’t ask him any questions anymore so he smiles big and acts like she has so he can complain right back.
Then there’s Luxe who’s nasty to him outside the gym, who tells him his dad found Pete’s dad pissing on himself drunk one night and what does Pete think about that? Luxe who imitates Grandma’s accent and says Pete wishes he could be a mama’s boy if only he still had one. Luxe who Pete wants to punch so hard the bones in his knuckles itch, but his dad is Pete’s dad’s boss so he can’t.
In the ring, Luxe barely touches him. At first Pete thinks he’s a coward who’s afraid of getting hit but he takes a beating like it’s nothing, his mouth shut and lips thin.
Pete doesn’t get it. But as long as Luxe holds back, he decides to too, even if when they bump into each other on the street, Luxe calls him a name that makes Pete’s dad spit it back in his face when they’re alone, belt in one hand and a whole chair in the other so Pete has to hope for the belt instead.
Because it’s not personal in the ring. And besides.
Is it effective?
Here’s what Pete learns as soon as he starts winning: the best matches that make the most people happy aren’t too short but end in a knockout.
In other words: people want a show and they want a winner. It doesn’t matter that the boxers they’re betting on are scrawny kids that are still figuring out how not to cry in and out of the ring. For some people, actually, that’s a bonus. What matters is that they are betting. And when people bet on a loser that loses too quick, they get mad.
And when people bet on someone that lost but maybe shouldn’t have, they get aggressive.
(So if it seems like you’re gonna win, draw it out. And if it seems like you’re gonna lose, keep fighting. Even if it means more hurt on both sides. Because it’s not personal.)
Anyways. A long match with blood and drama, preferably between kids from rival schools who are more-or-less evenly matched, culminating in a knock-out hit? People love that. People pay for that. Bookies are happy. Coaches are happy. The crowd is happy or furious but the kind of furious that pays.
Dad is... not happy. But once Pete starts winning, at least he’s unhappy with a winner.
And he does win. And he keeps winning. And people come to watch, new people, people in suits, people with presence, people with cold, well-fed faces brandishing a name that others whisper and nod about.
And Pete’s getting older. His grades are bad. His work history is laughable. He’s stronger, faster, and smarter than his dad but he still lets him knock him into a corner and beat him bloody and he can’t figure out how to stop doing that.
Doesn’t know where he’s going. Probably nowhere. Probably somewhere he won’t like.
There’s a fight he’s going to win. He can read it in the lines of his opponent’s body, hear it in the way he breathes. He’s going to win. He’s going to draw it out. (Not personal.)
But he looks, for just a moment, over at that man watching him, in the fancy suit with the pin on the lapel. Makes eye contact.
Sloppy. Should be keeping his attention on the fight. Takes a punch he should have dodged and then a kick. Stumbles back. Idiot. Fuckup. He looks back at the man anyway. Still watching him.
Draw it out, Pete.
Pete takes him down in two moves. Fast. Perfect. Pete breathes through his fists, through his elbows and feet. The inside of his cheek bleeding but his blood tastes good and the kick he’d taken to his side leaves him high. A rush.
The crowd is disappointed. They’re groaning. It was too fast.
He looks back at the man in the suit and the man in the suit looks back at him. And nods.
So it’s not the violence that’s the issue.
Pran is a perfect shot but keeps flinching at the sound of his own gun. Shine can hold his breath longer than any of them but panics underwater from the rope. French is strong enough to lift and throw any of them but cries the first time he kicks in the ribs of someone who owes the family money.
They don’t last.
Pete trains in his off hours. He learns to exhale with each shot instead of gasping at the sound of it first. How to learn his own little biases in a shot and compensate for them. Where to shoot that will kill someone quickly, where to shoot to incapacitate, and where to shoot to cause pain.
He learns how not to miss. He asks to train with smaller targets and gets them. He asks to train with bigger guns and gets them.
He misses the strain and ache that comes from violence dealt from his own body but doesn’t miss the smell and noise of it. Pete grows to appreciate the range and distance of guns.
Still. He relishes the recoil.
And Pete can never hold his breath as long as Shine can but he doesn’t need to because when the rope is pulled tight around his wrists something settles under his skin and it’s panic that gets you underwater before oxygen strain does. He thinks he might even last longer with the rope than without it.
Underwater meditation speedrun.
Like he can breathe underwater. Like surfacing is harder than it was to go under.
Then with French, well, Pete gets it. He doesn’t like it either. It’s not a fight with people that much weaker. It goes back to the bullying, the school sessions. To Luxe who could never quite bring himself to fight right.
When Pete hits someone there’s still a part of him that expects resistance. That wants it.
An even smaller part of him that wants it to feel fair.
Batman and Batgirl would never break a distributor’s fingers the first time they were caught skimming. Probably. Depending on the writer. They definitely wouldn’t shoot him the second time.
Not even Red Hood would make his kids watch so they got the message.
But Gotham isn’t just crime-ridden. Pete could forgive that, right, because it’s not about the violence and he’s a criminal now.
It’s chaos. It’s crazy. The rogues are unpredictable and overly personal. And the heroes aren’t even effective.
Still, the first time he comes home wearing the family’s crisp suit with the family’s pin on his breast, the family’s gun warm in his hands, evidence of the family’s violence on his white shirt, he decides that he needs a system fast, or he’s going to go under so deep that not even ropes’ll help him figure out which way is up.
He’s not French. The violence exists with or without him, more constant than he’ll ever be, so it doesn’t matter if he’s the one doing it. He’s got that. Accepted that. He’s nothing, the violence is bigger.
It’s just that... his dad was nothing too and the violence was bigger than him, and the kids of the guy he killed today, the one his age who he roughed up, what’s it to them if Pete’s nothing, if someone else would have done it if he hadn’t? Pete was someone to them.
Dad was huge to him.
Maybe his dad didn’t matter, not really, but maybe mattering only exists in people’s heads and not outside them, so if he mattered to Pete, maybe he did matter. And that means Pete matters too, if only to the people he hurts.
He doesn’t like that, he thinks. He doesn’t like mattering so much. But if he’s going to, he’s going to need a system that lets him live with that mattering.
So he thinks, what’s the difference between Dad and Khun Korn? Between his family and the family? Because the violence is there either way, so it’s not that. It’s not the violence. It can’t be the violence (everything) and it can’t be him (nothing).
So Pete thinks for a while. Underwater and under fire, in counter-interrogation trainings where he screams himself hoarse and in interrogations where he’s the boot and he’s the fist. Pran, Shine, and French drop out, only French waited too long and knew too much and when Pete helped him pack up his stuff, he knew who was on the other side of the door, and it wasn’t a ride home, and suddenly the difference is urgent because French was his roommate which meant Grandma knew his name which meant she sent him care packages to share which meant she asked about how he was doing on the phone which meant Pete was going to have to tell her something and it had better be for a reason, there had better be a difference.
So.
Is the violence predictable?
Khun Korn is not a cruel man. He has fostered an environment where Pete can’t help but be impressed that despite the violence they all commit day to day, it doesn’t bleed. Theerapanyakul violence (main family violence) is blue, not red. It doesn’t oxygenate.
When Pete goes to hurt someone for the family, the person he’s going to hurt is already scared because they already know what’s coming. They’ve broken a contract, written or spoken. They’ve done something wrong. Their reasons might be desperate and maybe they lied to themselves, told themselves they were different or that their circumstances were or even, incredibly, that they were going to be the ones who get away with it.
But they know.
They know the truth.
Pete isn’t bringing the violence. He’s only a confirmation of it.
The family isn’t interested in keeping anyone guessing, and when they want people on their toes, they use fear and not uncertainty. He decides there’s something impressive about it. You have to be really strong to look someone in the eye and telegraph your move and still expect to come out on top. Even stronger if the other guy doesn’t fight back.
The violence stays between the lies, in the veins, and the orders to commit it are clear, if coded, and always prompted by something Pete can understand.
Is the violence impersonal?
He notices that it’s not just the sensitive bodyguards that don’t seem to last, the ones with big hearts or guilty stomachs who pull their blows or miss their shots. It’s the ones that get giddy with it, whose breath gets quick and eyes go bright at the opportunity to hurt.
They get weeded out fast. Sometimes they disappear.
Sometimes Pete sees them pop up again when the minor family comes to visit.
This part of their job, it isn’t supposed to be fun and they’re not supposed to be mad. People miss things when they get angry. They kill people when they still need connections, they get impatient when there’s a long game being played. They drive people back toward other families for protection. Worse, even the law.
Sure, sometimes someone’s pride gets ruffled, sometimes someone takes something out on someone else, but that’s not the point of it. That’s not why they do this. Those are brief, bloody exceptions.
It’s not about people. It’s about money. Which makes it about power.
Or maybe about power which makes it about money. Pete’s not high up enough to care about the difference.
So it’s not personal for the family, mostly, and it’s certainly not personal for him, ever. He’s interchangeable. It could be anyone else doing this, but it’s him. It’s not his gun that finishes anyone off, it’s the family’s gun, and he just gets assigned it at the beginning of a mission and turns it in after.
He is that gun. Under contract. When he gets returned, he’ll probably be dead, but in the meantime he’s sent home enough money that Grandma gets a new house.
Is the violence effective?
Things are quiet in undisputed territory. When everything anyone looks at either belongs to the family, is on loan from them, or is indebted to them. The violence surrounds those bubbles but very rarely intrudes in on them. The sort of bubble where an entire neighborhood can operate, all the little individuals going about their business, and in return for some protection money, some rent, some dealings most of them will never even know about, their lives are clean.
Pete never got to live in a bubble like that growing up, but he hears since Khun Korn bought out the largest employers on the island, it’s a much nicer place. Grandma raves about it.
And when there’s real trouble to be had, idiots with grudges or ambition, they don’t just get knocked down by Officer Eye to get back up later. They’re taken out of play.
He hears people walk around at night now, that there’s adequate protection on the streets. He hears that a youth center is in the process of being built. He hears that there’s a program at the noodle stall he used to hover around where kids can get free food if they show the auntie there their good grades.
Funded by the family, of course.
He trusts the family. Not necessarily as individuals. Khun Korn is not predictable but he is impersonal and very, very effective. Khun Kim is unpredictable as well and while Pete has never understood what he is aiming at, he doesn’t doubt his effectiveness either. Everything is personal with Khun Kinn, especially these days, but Pete can count down before an outburst and be accurate to the second, and under his father’s instruction, his violence is effective as well.
Khun Noo is neither predictable, nor impersonal, nor effective. But neither is he violent, so Pete can forgive him that.
Khun Noo has his own bubble, nearly impervious. Pete can’t breathe in it, sometimes. But in the middle of the night with colorful scrunchies in his hair, knocking ankles with Arm and Pol and dodging tossed bits of chocolate popcorn, Pete gets a taste of what it might have been like if he’d grown up as someone else. And Arm’s father used to guard the family and he’d been raised to this job and Pol had been an enforcer for a small time gang since he was a kid and Khun Noo had been...
Well. Khun Noo doesn’t talk about it.
Sometimes he catches him watching them all, clear eyed and steely faced and people say Khun Noo asks for guards that are young and soft-faced, but Pete wonders if he chooses the ones who need it most, even if they hate it. If Khun Noo sees himself as a captain on an isolated boat, tossing out ropes.
But the violence is everywhere and Pete is still a part of it. He knows he’s young but he’s seen a lot and as far as he can tell, the world is divided between Dad and Khun Korn and he’d rather Khun Korn hold the belt.
He can be a target or a weapon and one night a while back, he chose weapon. There are no other options. He doesn’t think much about what else he might have liked to be. Pete is very good at living in the moment. A bullet in a magazine. A projectile in the air. Another sort of speedrun meditation.
Pete is mindful inside the confines of the metal that he lives.
The best deal is that he can be a weapon in the hands of people who should have weapons. An instrument of legitimate violence. Predictable. Impersonal. Effective. If he had his way, the family would have a monopoly on it.
No one else allowed. Definitely not someone like him.
(Before he’s recruited in, Pete tries aiming himself.
No. Try again.
Before he’s recruited in, no one aims him.
He just goes off.
A poorly secured weapon, a faulty gun without the safety on.
Is it predictable?
Everything is the same. He’s won in the ring. Not a particularly rough fight but hard and the other guy got a few good hits in so Pete’s buzzing a bit. Bleeding a bit. Blurring a bit. Smiling, maybe, he’s not sure, but not the smile he should have on his face, not the one that makes his dad’s eyes glaze over with indifference.
Everything’s the same, until it’s not.
Is it personal?
He and his dad look a lot alike. He’s been told that a lot but he doesn’t usually see it. Except that after his dad slaps him, after he asks him if he’s proud it took him so long to beat a mediocre opponent, asks him what he plans on doing winning in such a pathetic venue anyways, does he think he’s going places?, after all that, his dad is bleeding from the same places he is, like looking in a mirror, and then he doesn’t stop, still buzzing, still bleeding, still blurring, not smiling, and his own teeth ache as he kicks him back, beats him back, back, back, back, back and down the stairs.
Is it effective?
It’s not like he means to.
Meant to.
He just went off.
After he’s recruited in, none of that officially happened anyway.)
“How can you live in this filthy world,” Vegas asks him and Pete doesn’t have the language to tell him he was born as filthy as anyone in the family and that the key is to regulate the filth.
The key to living with it is to find the distinctions and cling to them with both arms.
Khun Noo had had a Titantic themed slumber party for his guards, once. A weird cross between nautical and gala and they’d muted the movie so that an actual string quartet could play as the ship sunk. The passed canapes had been awesome. Khun Noo wore tails.
Everyone had shouted for Rose to just move, there was room for both of them to share the board and survive, if only she could be more flexible. But they didn’t get it. If she shared, they’d both be submerged enough in the ice water that they’d succumb to hypothermia and die.
Good for Rose, Pete had thought, for taking up enough room to make it through. And good for Jack too.
Jack would make a good bodyguard.
That was Pete, holding onto the wooden panel of his little system but at some point he’d been edged off or maybe the plank was too narrow to take him, because he’d frozen, maybe even died, and Vegas is thawing him out and it hurts.
It burns. It’s so hard to be alive sometimes and Vegas demands it of him in ways that nobody else ever did.
It’s exhilarating. He hates it. Or whatever the opposite of hate is. Whatever it is that makes him come back and come back and come back, whatever it is that makes him never come back again because instead of leaving he just stays.
There were boys, back in the ring, who when they made their wais to their schools, they meant it. It wasn’t just a ritual to start things up. Pete could tell the difference. These were boys paying homage to a legacy of violence, who felt it heavy on their shoulders, not as an inevitability, but a mantle.
The difference between taking home a trophy and actually being proud.
Pete hadn’t gotten it then. Wasn’t like he chose to fight, not really, wasn’t like he chose to walk or smile or eat. Those were just things that kept him alive.
He gets it now. He committed his second crime of passion for Vegas when he killed Flint by the pool and it had been pretty fucking personal and it had been a choice. And when he waited by Vegas’s hospital bed when everyone else was telling him to move, he’d chosen to freeze his feet to the floor, to weigh his pockets down with rocks, to turn himself into a bolted down piece of furniture instead of the toy soldier in plastic on top of it.
When he smiles now, it’s because he’s pleased.
And when he eats, it’s because he’s hungry.
For the first time in his life, he’s asked what he wants for dinner and for the first time in his life, he chooses it.
Whatever the opposite of hate is, it feeds him.
Whatever it is. Hard to say and Vegas is violent, Vegas lashes out when Pete thinks he’s calmed him down and laughs when Pete tries to provoke him.
He’s horribly jealous, puts his hands over his things and gets confused if he’s supposed to dig his fingers into the one trying to steal them or the things themselves and so Pete finds bruises in places that nobody has ever bothered to target before.
Not on him.
In long, loud moments that Pete looks away from, Vegas is like their fathers, which is to say, pathetic. He overturns tables like a toddler, smashing dishes and wasting food, but they have money so the next day, after the cleaning staff has visited, everything is as it was.
He beats and wounds and kills for the approval of a man who would never give it to him, not before, and certainly not now that he’s dead.
He tortures people inefficiently, which is to say artfully. Better results than the same kicks in the same places over and over and over that Pete himself has known from all angles but everyone knows that torture alone yields unreliable results and Vegas is far less interested in corroboration than in crowbars. And his spies, Pete should know, are full of leaks, as likely to send information to Porsche or Khun Kinn as to Vegas himself.
Vegas’ violence is unpredictable, painfully personal, and utterly, tragically ineffectual.
Pete forgives him all of it.
Pete would forgive him anything.
Watching Vegas twist like a dancer, like silk, to avoid being another of Khun Korn’s guns and another of the people Khun Korn guns down, legitimacy has never seemed less important.
Pete is still a weapon. But he can be enough of a person to hand himself to someone else.