“We got one message about the girl, but fuck them,” he said. “Fuck them up their disgusting Russian assholes.”
“Maybe we should revisit the girl now that he’s here,” Alfonse said.
“What about Kaley?” I asked.
“They’re thinking about giving her back,” Lucas said. “Without the kid though.”
I blinked. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
Arturo shrugged. “Wars are expensive.”
“What happened to killing more Russians?”
He laughed. “We’ll give her back after we do that.”
“No,” I said.
Arturo raised an eyebrow. “No?”
“We have to keep the girl. That boy is my son.”
“We’ll keep the boy safe. Russians don’t want him anyway.”
“And the girl is his mother,” I said. “We keep her, too.”
“It’s a good move,” Gian said. “We’d save money.”
“Arturo,” I said, “listen to me. If we bend to the Russians now, what will people say?”
“True,” he said, nodding. “It wouldn’t look good.”
“No. It’d look awful. We get hit, what, twice? And we’re already giving the girl back?”
“Weakness,” Lucas said. “That would look like weakness.”
“We can’t be weak,” Arturo said.
“But we can’t be dead and poor,” Alfonse said.
“Who said we’d be dead and poor?” I asked him. “We can win this war without using the girl.”
“How do we do that?” Arturo asked me. “Seems like the girl isn’t worth all this trouble.”
I laughed. “This was never about her. You said it yourself.”
“True. I’ve been looking for an excuse to kill Russians for a long time.”
“Don’t listen to these cowards,” I said, gesturing at Gian and Alfonse.
“Yo, motherfucker, who you calling a coward?” Alfonse said.
“I’ll fucking strangle you,” Gian added, standing.
“Gentlemen,” Arturo warned, and the two captains took their seats again, but they looked pissed.
“Arturo, we can win this war. Let me watch over the girl. I’ll take care of her.”
“Aren’t you already?”
“Of course,” I said. “But I’ll keep her out of the way.”
Arturo looked at Lucas. “What do you think, son?”
“We keep the girl. We kill the Russians.” He shrugged. “Seems easy to me.”
“Fine. We keep the girl.”
“Isn’t this something the council should vote on?” Alfonse asked.
“Fuck the council,” Arturo said. “I made the call; now live with it.”
Alfonse sat back in his chair, looking annoyed.
“What now?” Gian asked.
“Vincent here will make a plan to hit the Russians back. Right, Vincent?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“Meanwhile, everyone calm the fuck down.” Arturo nodded at me. “Go get to work.”
I turned and quickly left the room. Lucas followed me out, shutting the door behind us.
“You should have heard them earlier,” Lucas said. “They keep pretending like they want to fight this war, but as soon as we talk about our dead guys, they’re suddenly all about giving Kaley back to the Russians.”
“Fuck,” I said. “I didn’t think this would happen so fast.”
“They’re cowards,” Lucas said. “But they’re more afraid of looking like cowards. We’ll keep fighting.”
“Not sure that’s much better.”
“Kaley unhappy?”
“Very,” I said.
“Understandable. We’re killing her family.”
I grunted. “Having a family is complicated.”
“Yeah,” Lucas said, “it fucking is.”
I nodded at him and walked off, heading back toward my room.
I shouldn’t have been so surprised about that scene back in Arturo’s office, but I was. I had assumed that everyone wanted this war and that everyone was on board, but apparently there was a large group of people who didn’t want to be fighting. Sure, everyone said they wanted the war, because otherwise you looked like a pathetic weakling. But when the bullets started flying, they were talking about giving Kaley back.
I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t want this war much anymore, since I could see what it was doing to Kaley, but I couldn’t let them end it either.
I had to find another solution.
I quickly walked through the hallways, heading back toward my room. But instead of going inside, I walked past it and went down toward Kaley’s place. I quickly knocked on the door.