"Okay, this went from kind of sweet to..."
"And you are very opinionated," he cut her off. "You are loyal. You care about people, even women you haven't even shared a conversation with and will never see again. You're smart and you have good instincts. You'd be good at doing your own thing."
Uncomfortable not only because he was complimenting her but because he had just proved that he did, in fact, know a lot about her, she tried to put some levity into the conversation. "You should save your money. I hear you're about to be unemployed with no job experience except being a world class liar."
"Funny that," he said, nodding. "Apparently not."
"Apparently not, what?" she asked, confused.
"Apparently I am not a world class liar. You had Rhodes look into me. Something tipped you off."
"No one sneaks up on me," she admitted. "And no one disarms a man like you disarmed Anthony without extensive training. And, lastly, you were hyper aware of the cameras. It just didn't all add up to you being 'just a bartender'. But, actually, it was Anthony who had me run you."
"Anthony?" Daniel asked, stiffening, brows drawing together.
"Yeah," Faith said with a small smile. "I guess he was all butt-hurt about you disarming him so he went to check out your file. He found out it was all bullshit. That, added to what I had already felt weird about, was enough to send me to Xander's part of town."
"Christ, I thought he was an idiot," Daniel said with a snort, figuring maybe it was good that he was quitting if he misread the situation so much.
"He's an alcoholic. I'd bet he's every bit as capable as Salvatore or Vin when he's clean. You know," she said, her stomach twisting again at realizing they had been having a stupid, pointless conversation about their individual futures while standing in the hospital a couple floors below where a man she recently realized she cared for could be dying by the second.
"Hey," Daniel said, seeing the wet when it hit her eyes again.
"I don't cry!" she insisted a little hysterically as a tear slipped over and slid down her cheek.
"I can see that," Daniel agreed with a smile as he reached out to swipe it away.
"No, seriously. I am not a crier. This isn't..."
"Faith," he cut her off, putting an arm around her lower back and pulling her toward him, kissing her forehead before he pressed her into his chest, "this has been a hell of a week. I think you earned the right to have a little emotion, don't you?"
"FBI, huh?" Vin's voice called from behind them a long couple of minutes later, just when Faith was starting to feel like maybe, just maybe, things weren't as shitty as she had started to think they were.
Daniel hadn't been planning on fucking her over.
Technically, he wasn't a cop anymore.
Max was okay which was good for Daniel as well as the D'Onofrio family as a whole.
But there was still a healthy dose of bad to go around.
Anthony and his fate for one.
Vin and his reaction to Daniel and Max a close second.
"Not anymore," Daniel said, moving Faith to curl her into his side, holding her there with enough pressure that it was borderline painful, silently telling her she wasn't using the opportunity to pull away from him. "Putting in my notice," he told Vin.
"You knew," Vin said, looking at Faith.
To her surprise, she didn't see accusation in his eyes or anger or even a trace of disappointment in her. That was the thing about Vin, it was hard to tell how he was going to react to things. Someone scuffed his shoes and maybe he would throw a shitfit. But someone plowed into his stupidly expensive car once and he had shrugged it off and said it was just a car and all that mattered was the driver was okay.
She always thought it was partly what made him so intimidating to his men and to the other organizations in the City- you couldn't predict his reaction to something. Maybe he'd be fine if you made a move to take over one of his racketeering gigs, but he would kill a rival he found out was knowingly sold drugs laced with shit that was killing people.
His moral compass was hard to gauge.
"I knew," she agreed with a nod. "That's why I fired him."
"Hm," he said with a nod. "Interesting."
There was no hidden meaning there either, he genuinely just thought that information was interesting.
"Vin, what the hell made Alan snap?" she asked, finally able to talk to someone about what had been driving her half-mad since it happened.