Path of the Vampire forum

Surprise overcame him at Lorelai’s overzealous display of gratitude. As she threw her arms around his neck, she squeezed some of the worries out of him. Levi relaxed and nuzzled into the warmth of her all too easily, happy that she’d come to shed the wintry blanket of the night time air. It was so comforting being in her arms that Levi felt a little drowsy, and he closed his eyes despite himself. Drifting for a while, the Italian had avoided the touch of gravity and yet he wasn’t worried about this floating feeling that was taking over. The few seconds that Lorelai took to debate with herself internally gave Levi what seemed like minutes of serenity, only to be rudely awakened when he felt her pull away. Umber eyes forced open with a slight frown, but the frustration pulled away from him like a waning tide as they looked to her. The blush in her cheeks tugged a genuine smile into his features, but he might have still been dozing off a little as she spoke because Lorelai was chewing on that lower lip of hers; **** knows why, but the Italian found it incredibly alluring when she did that. He leant toward her, fully intent on biting those lips himself, until she mentioned Eddie and her words finally broke through the skin of his daydream. Levi’s focus sharpened once again and he straightened in his seat, taking things seriously again like they were in a boardroom meeting.

The Italian always had room to overthink everything in his own head to form a plan, and he was always confident that he rarely had to explain himself to those involved. That was generally because it didn’t matter why he was doing something – his soldiers didn’t get a say anyway, they didn’t need to be consulted like they were someone special, and Shiro was smart enough and experienced enough to figure the reasons out for himself, and most often agreed at any rate. Levi couldn’t say that those scenarios fitted Lorelai exactly. She deserved to know what she was getting herself into; he loved her, he cherished her, he respected her and he was going to do everything he could to make her happy and keep her safe. Levi also couldn’t expect her to guess his reasons because until now, he hadn’t exactly been volunteering information about his day-to-day business, and Malavita was an entirely different world than what she might be used to. Being a Vampire might have opened Lorelai’s mind to certain atrocities, personalities and ideologies, but Cosa Nostra was a whole other kettle of fish. There were rules and codes of honour that you couldn’t publically cross, but that didn’t mean back alley arrangements and cloaked handshakes weren’t going on regardless. Levi figured he’d be better off explaining exactly what he meant and how things worked if Lorelai was going to be involved, but whether she’d pull meaning from his metaphors was a whole other story.

“They probably still think I’m in Boston right now, so it wouldn’t look too suspicious if we went back there. It’s just, I’d rather not risk it,” he said cautiously – perhaps over-cautiously. “I don’t know Eddie that well and between him and his friends, he might do something stupid. No doubt he think he’s got the goods to get rid of me, so it’s better we stay away from seeing Eddie until we know he’s on his best behaviour.”

That was part one of the problem with going to visit Eddie personally, another part was watching what Gino Valachi was up to. Levi hadn’t forgotten what Lorelai had said about his veritable uncle, and if the Italian opened up on his theory of what had went down tonight, he rather doubted Lorelai could change her opinion for the better. As far as Levi was concerned, Gino had set this **** up from the beginning to either get him killed or have Levi so busy chasing his own tail that he couldn’t focus on whatever Gino was really up to, which wasn’t likely to be good for anyone. Levi knew that Eddie Cavallone and Franco Foraldo were probably scheming away, looking for weaknesses on Levi just the same as Levi was doing to them. The issue there was that Levi probably had more to lose than they did, and if Gino was going to feed them information, Levi was going to be a dead man walking in a completely new way. Though it shouldn’t have bothered him, because he did eventually require an out, Levi wasn’t used to losing things he’d spent years building. He was a natural fighter and he would carry on charging into battle to the bitter end of it. Throwing his hands in the air and declaring defeat just wasn’t his style, so he had to do something, anything, until all of his options were spent and he was dead in the water.

“I hear Eddie’s been having a few financial issues, so we can start by checking out his bank accounts,” Levi offered, his voice calm and impassive like he was talking to anyone of his workers. “He’ll have one in Boston for sure, but that’s just for show. He’ll have one set up in Sicily too where he has to make offshore exchanges. These will be more… suspicious, I guess you could say. But we primarily deal with cash to avoid paper trails, so don’t be surprised if that lead turns up at a dead end. You might want to check on his family members to see if he’s using any of these to pass around funds. His wife, Marcella, would be one to watch. He’s also got a few cousins, Gio and Marco, would be my bet. We can talk about Eddie’s best buddy Franco at another time.”

This was a good place to start, or so Levi figured. He didn’t want to push Lorelai into the deep end, not on her first mission. Unfortunately, all he could really do was give her pointers; he was far too used to everyone else accepting their briefs and getting on with the work without bothering him. Of course, he’d answer any questions she had and hold her hand through all of it he needed to – probably literally. Levi had a lot more tolerance for Lorelai than anyone else in the world, so he thought he would share that information with her.

“You know, you can ask me anything at any time,” he said, pulling out a charming smile. “If you need to do. About this, about whatever. Consider me your open book from now on.”

Far from feeling insulted by her off-the-cuff comment, Levi smirked at the blushing blonde. What he had intended to do once Lorelai had been briefed on the situation, was to deal with whatever fallout that would bring and simultaneously wait on any word from the Wraith. Levi’s main objective was to find Gino Valachi and get that ******** to sing like a canary on what the **** had happened tonight. In Levi’s mind, Cavallone and Foraldo were little more than a burnt-out shack in a world-wide terrorist attack. Surely it was better for the Italian to focus his efforts on the main problem rather than to mop up the trail of devastation and collateral damage. With that thought in his head, Levi wondered whether he’d given Lorelai the right mission here. He could easily send Shiro on this kind of information scavenging operation, and the best part of that would be in knowing that Levi didn’t have to get involved until the final moments; when the results were delivered. So maybe he should have put Lorelai’s talents to better to use in tracking that old ******** down instead. It might have been easier on both of them if he’d done that because Levi didn’t really know what kind of pointers he could give her in looking for dirt. Or, maybe he should stick to his guns on his decision. After all, they could have fun figuring it out together.

“It’s ok, relax,” he told her, still smirking a bit as he made a gesture for her to approach. “I’ve got nowhere better to be right now, so, take a seat where you’re comfortable.”

Laying low wasn’t a terrible idea, especially since he was supposed to be a thousand or so miles away from where he was now. Sometimes it might be easier if the Vampiro could be honest about what he was with his men, but then again, Levi was having a difficult enough time imagining how it would go down if he even entertained the possibility of entrusting that knowledge to Shiro. Granted, the rest of his soldiers might have just looked at him like he was mad, and since they were disposable anyway, he could just have them replaced if they took it the wrong way, but it was still too risky. He was paranoid enough about dealing the knowledge he was currently distributing, anymore and he’d just have more weaknesses to worry about, more holes to plug when dumbshit minions said something they shouldn’t have to the wrong people. As far as Levi was concerned, it was better not to give people too much information. Don’t starve them of course because that just allowed ignorance to blindly make a mess of things, but only give the right information to the right kind of people. Establishing a hierarchy created a descending scale of dependency where the higher ups relied on the reach and numbers of those below, and those below required the protection and superiority of those above.

If he gave his right-hand man the knowledge of what he was, then he could rely on Shiro to take some of the burden and help him out when he had to perform a vanishing act for supernatural reasons. The only problem was that if Shiro took the news the wrong way, he wasn’t easily replaced or silenced. That damn shark had too much of a stake in the business to be flushed away as conveniently as a goldfish. What a giant pain in the ***.

Though the Italian might never admit it openly – not even when pushed – he had his limits. Working with technology in the way Lorelai and Shiro did was one of those. It was like a whole new world to Levi. He knew how to turn his laptop on and use it for work, and that was about it. Yet, sit those two down in front of any computer console and they’ll be hacking away into bank accounts and your social security information with a twitch of their fingers – or in Lorelai’s specific case, a flicker of her eyes. Levi figured this was one of the perks of being a Telepath – he was getting to grips with all this Vampiri stuff, having a Wraith who proclaimed to have been one helped Levi comprehend a little better too. Lorelai seemed very proficient at what she was doing, so Levi never questioned any of it and chose to sit back, watch and trust. He read what he could, looking for anything suspicious, but of course it was all above board. The Mafia wasn’t chock full of ******* geniuses by any stretch of the imagination, but they knew how to hide in the shadows and fall under the radar as effortlessly as opening their mouths and letting the lies pour out. Besides, a lot of these men had connections, friends in high places that could do the kinds of things that Shiro could do or, at the very least, had the access codes in the first place to create whole new identities, omit information and conceal truths. Cavallone wouldn’t have clawed his way so high up the food chain without help, so Levi wasn’t surprised when after around twenty minutes, Lorelai’s search was coming up empty.

Eddie Cavallone was better than Levi had given him credit for and that was something of a problem. While Levi pondered their next move, on where they could start digging the next hole, he remembered something. It was something Cavallone had said off-hand, a remark about bad blood, about his brothers making poor decisions in their choice of friends. At the time, Cavallone had probably only dragged the past up as a way to flounce his vastly superior experience, maybe even to try and pull some familiarity between them both, all reasons for why Levi should just roll over and play dead for him. Now, however, it seemed that information was more a weapon for the umber-eyed Italian. If he could rake up some old bones and see if whatever bad blood was still fresh enough to make use of, then he could force Cavallone into a retreat. After all, if the Cavallone name had enemies, then Eddie had enemies. That opened up two new avenues to Levi, either he could threaten to tip off those fiends and have Eddie fall to heal, or he could extend a degree of courtesy and wipe out whatever spite remained. Even before Levi was a Vampiro, he was pretty good at mopping up the blood, not to mention the fact that he was pretty astute at making that ******* hole in someone’s neck ten times bigger. To make his decision, Levi just needed a little bit more information and that was where Lorelai came in.

The Italian didn’t waste much time giving the blonde the order to track down information about Eddie Cavallone’s family tree. They needed information on Eddie’s brothers and, more importantly, who they’d pissed off. The Sicilians weren’t overly competent in keeping a hacker of Lorelai’s caliber out of their systems, so it really didn’t take that long to track down birth certificates, death certificates and even weasel their way into police reports. Obviously a lot of what the polizia had on these men’s deaths was vague, circumstantial and not particularly helpful, but Levi had the name of the officer in charge of the investigation and that was enough to lead them to think the guy had taken a bribe to close the case quietly. It wouldn’t take a lot of work for Levi to figure out who commissario capo Filippo Grandi was working for. The Italian might not have visited his homeland in twenty plus years, but that didn’t mean he had no connections besides Gino in Sicily. Levi could make a couple of calls and have the name of Grandi’s employer in a matter of hours, so for now, Lorelai’s job was over. He reported such to the blonde with a kiss to the forehead, and since he was obviously pleased with her efforts, gave her a many hundred compliments and confessions of his affections in both English and Italian.

This certainly wasn’t how Levi had expected his evening to turn out. Sure, the meeting with Cavallone and Foraldo wasn’t ever going to be a smooth ride; Levi had doubted his ability to apologise when Gino had first mentioned the meeting. Still, he’d never seen the curve ball coming. He’d never expected Cavallone to feel so insecure about William’s return that he’d throw his only daughter into a nest of snakes to save his own skin. The horseman was desperate, and desperate men made stupid decisions. Worst of all, the acts of desperate men made Levi even more worried about the prospects of his father taking the Patriarca throne. Truth be told, the umber-eyed Italian didn’t know much about his father’s operations, his motivations, and what his overall objectives were. Sure, Levi and William were a lot alike, but the older man was so distant that all Levi ever heard were stories – stories from Gino, no less. Obviously, Levi couldn’t trust Gino tell him the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so maybe the pair of those old bastards had been playing Levi from ******* birth. Given everything he knew about them, it certainly seemed plausible. But he didn’t really have the time to think about the bigger plan when he was busy mopping up the little ****-ups along the way. Gino and William would just have to wait because, for now, umber eyes were set on Eddie Cavallone’s throat.