Part Three

Sera was good; she had a report by the afternoon they buried Federico. She strolled into Xanxus' office and draped herself in the chair across from the desk. "Good news is that I know exactly where they're holding Xanxus," she announced without preamble. Squalo sat up, all of the Varia's budget issues forgotten in his eagerness for news of the boss. "Bad news is that they're holding her on their maximum security level. Guess she's already made a few stabs at breaking herself out and they've decided to take her seriously."

Squalo cursed, low and angry, because of course the boss would, wouldn't be able to do anything but. Probably hadn't been able to think straight enough to hold herself steady and wait for him to work. Hell, it was Xanxus: it was possible that she might not have even thought he was coming, given how he'd failed to keep them from laying hands on her and taking her away in the first place.

Sera waited him out until he'd gotten the cursing out of his system and was able to say, "Tell me about the maximum security level."

"It's where they keep the most dangerous offenders." Sera fell silent, the dark, pointed features of her face going still as she picked her words. "It's underground, four stories down at least. One access point in and out and no backdoors of any kind. Utilities, water, sewage, it all routes in and out through that centralized point, which is always watched. And..."

Whatever it was, it wasn't going to be good. "Just tell me," Squalo said. "It can't be any worse than what I'm imagining."

Sera dipped her chin, acknowledging the point. "They keep the prisoners on that level sedated. They keep them in tanks, chained up just in case one of them wakes up, and that's... they just leave them there until old age gets them." She looked away from him, mouth closed tight enough that she looked like a woman trying not to be sick.

Squalo understood the impulse as his imagination filled in the outlines of the picture—Xanxus, suspended in a tank, all the restless energy of her quenched and still.

He exhaled, careful lest the jagged edges of his breath cut him open. "Okay. How do we get her out of there?"

Sera looked unhappy, which was not a good sign at all. "Prisoners only go in or out based on orders from the head of the Vendicare, and who that is—your guess is as good as mine. Sometimes a prisoner is released, but that almost never happens and we haven't figured out when and why it does. I don't think it's ever happened to one of the prisoners on that level." She paused. "And... no one's ever escaped. Ever."

Squalo forced himself to breath, in and out, until he trusted his voice again. "Fuck." He raked his hand through his hair, sliding it over the softness of feathers, and shook the moment of paralysis off. If no one had ever done it, then they would be the first. Why not, when Xanxus was so exceptional on every other front? "Okay. Keep working on it. There has to be a way." He wasn't going to accept any other alternative.

Sera's expression was blank—too blank—but she let out a breath and nodded. "We're working on it. It's not going to be easy, though. I don't think we have the force to do it ourselves, not on a frontal assault. There might be a way of sneaking in, though no one knows enough about the Vendicare to figure out how..." She spread her fingers through the air, describing an uncertain arc. "Not an easy job."

"If it were easy, it wouldn't need Varia quality to pull it off." That tugged a sharp little smile out of her. "Anything else?"

"Not yet." She pushed herself out of her seat. She carried it easily, but there was fatigue in the movement of her body. "Let you know when there is."

"I'll be waiting."

Sera tipped him a jaunty salute and went out, leaving Squalo to his thoughts and the budget. He sat silently, thinking about tanks of prisoners buried deep in the earth, before he managed to shove the thought aside and force his attention back to the task at hand.

The Ninth left them on what he must have thought of as house arrest for the next few days, which Squalo would have found amusing in other circumstances. That the Ninth thought he had the people to keep the full force of the Varia pinned down in their own damn fortress—that he thought that there was any way a building full of assassins would let anyone not of their number know all the ways in and out of their own headquarters—spoke volumes. But that was fine; better to be underestimated by an opponent than not.

Besides, it gave them room to work in.

But the Varia did report directly to the Ninth, which meant regular meetings at the house and that the Ninth couldn't keep them mured up forever. He sent for Squalo a few days after the funeral, and Squalo could have almost been glad of the summons—Sera hadn't made much more progress, and neither Mammon nor Calla were having any luck in finding the evidence to pin Federico's murder on Enrico. Would have been grateful, if circumstances had been different.

It was still almost worth it to stride into the Ninth's office, Lussuria at his heels, and be greeted with Enrico's sputtering outrage. "What are you doing here?" he demanded, pointing a shaking finger at Squalo.

"Head of the Varia meets with the head of the Vongola." Squalo kept his tone bored, though he itched to feed that finger back to Enrico the hard way. "What do you think I'm doing here?"

It was more interesting to catalogue the people in the room—Staffieri and Martelli, as usual, both of them with the sort of lingering contusions that corroborated the gossip Calla had brought back about how strenuously Xanxus had resisted being handed over to the Vendicare. The Ninth, of course, tired and old. None of Federico's people; what happened to defunct guardians, anyway? The old man's outside advisor, Sawada—that was a strange addition to the usual mix—and Enrico, plus his secretary: a thin, tweedy sort of fellow who gave Squalo and Lussuria distinctly nervous looks that he probably thought were hidden behind the round lenses of his glasses.

So Enrico hadn't wasted any time asserting his place as the Ninth's probable heir, had he? And he was puffing up, outraged as only a man insecure in his position could. "You're the head of the Varia? That's absurd—Father, he tried to kill me, and he was probably in it up to his neck when she killed Federico. How can he still be the head of the Varia? Why haven't you made him step down?"

Rage was so familiar a companion at this point that catching it before it slipped free and drove him to doing something intemperate was almost easy. Squalo bared his teeth at Enrico and saw him quail as the Ninth sighed and Staffieri looked pained.

"Make him step down?" Lussuria sounded amused. Squalo shifted himself aside so that he'd be clear if Lussuria decided to move. "Little man, you don't know anything, do you? We're the independent assassination unit. We choose and follow our own bosses, and we choose on merit, not blood." He looked Enrico up and down. "Not that you'd know much about that, I guess."

First Enrico went white. Then he went red, and his voice nearly broke as he said, "How dare you, you—"

"Enrico." The Ninth's voice was quiet but sharp, and his son cut himself off. "That will be enough. Please do not alienate the head of the Varia or his right hand." His glance slid to Squalo's face and rested on the feathers and beads dangling behind his ear. "We need all the unity we can lay hands on just now."

Enrico's face went a darker shade of red, but he shut up, so Squalo supposed that counted for something. He showed the bastard his teeth and dropped himself into the seat Xanxus had normally claimed for herself, hooking a knee over the arm. "What do you have for us, old man?" Might as well finish making it clear where they stood, just in case the Ninth and his people had any doubts on that score. He didn't suppose there could be many of those left at this point, which was just the way he wanted it.

He watched them from behind a purposefully bored expression. The Ninth and other geezers' mouths tightened, but none of them said anything. Sawada's brows furrowed just a bit, thoughtful, and Enrico was obviously furious. His secretary—what was his name? Squalo had seen him following Enrico for months now, and couldn't recall it for the life of him—just looked plain scared. Squalo filed all that away to think about later as the Ninth cleared his throat. "I assume that you have resumed complete control of the Varia, of course?" Squalo inclined his head a fraction. "Very good. We have a number of jobs that will require some fairly personal attention on your part, I'm afraid."

They wanted to keep him busy, then. Squalo failed to be surprised by that, but it wasn't any skin off his nose if they didn't realize he knew how to delegate. "Well, stop wasting my time and tell me what they are."

The Ninth gave him a long look. "In a moment. There is something else we must do first." He smoothed a hand over the papers lying on the desk before him; the ring on his finger caught the sunlight and winked in it.

Oh, he wouldn't.

But it was the Ninth. Of course he would. He looked at Squalo and raised his eyebrows. "Does the Varia serve the Vongola?"

Damn that shitty old man. Squalo stared at him, trying not to let the grinding of his teeth turn audible. "Yes," he said, "Of course it does."

The Ninth looked at him, utterly dispassionate, utterly unmovable for all the new lines sorrow had carved into his face. "I will have your word on that."

And if he didn't give it, would he make it out of the building alive? He had Lussuria with him, so maybe. But that wouldn't do the boss any good.

Xanxus.

Squalo grinned at the old man, seeing a way through this. "I serve the Vongola blood, heart and body and soul. I will not be forsworn." Did the Ninth know that Federico had visited Xanxus? Did he know what Federico had told her?

Apparently not; the old man's eyes narrowed, but he did not object to the oath. He stood and extended his hand to Squalo. "Very well."

Oh, he was going to regret doing that, one day. Squalo promised himself that and pushed himself up to plant a perfunctory kiss on the Vongola ring. "Are we done now?" he inquired once he'd resumed his seat. "Or do you have some other hoop you want me to jump through, old man?"

"No one is as impatient as the young," Sawada murmured as the Ninth settled back into his seat. When Squalo glanced at him, the sharpness of the man's eyes worried him a bit. He'd never had much to do with the outside advisor, but knew he was considered a man to reckon with, and it was just possible he'd seen through that little act.

"Better impatient than complacent," Lussuria drawled. "But maybe we could get on with things? Pointing the boss at something he can go ahead and kill will make all our lives easier."

Squalo kept his reaction to being called the boss off his face—it wouldn't do to undermine the point Lussuria had made—but part of him wanted to protest it anyway.

He stifled it with an ease that was starting to become practiced.

The Ninth sighed. "To business, then."

Lussuria didn't say anything until they were just about back to headquarters. "So. You got a frequent flyer account? You could get some good use out of it if you do."

"I'll look into it." The Ninth had shoved a whole stack of jobs at him, a smash and intimidate job in Venice, another in Campania, a hit in Rome, another in Munich, a contract for the Cavallone that would take him to London, and a job in fucking Japan of all places—"I get the feeling that I'm supposed to be keeping myself busy." All of those jobs were supposed to need the careful, delicate touch of the head of the Varia, of course, though Squalo had his doubts on that score.

"Does he not know the meaning of the word delegation, maybe?" Lussuria wondered. "Or does he think that you don't know?"

"Beats the fuck out of me." But then, the Ninth seemed to believe that they'd all stayed at home like tame little assassins, too, so maybe. Had the man always been so oblivious, or had senility set in without anyone else having noticed? He slanted a glance at Lussuria. "You'll keep things going while I'm gone, right?"

Wasn't really a question, of course. Lussuria grinned at him, crooked. "Sure thing. Keep you updated if anything comes up." He rubbed his chin, wearing a complacent grin. "I'm pretty good at this right hand thing, aren't I?"

Squalo didn't bother commenting on that. "Whatever. I've got to pack for Venice."

At least there was one good thing about all these jobs the Ninth had dumped in his lap: it was going to keep the money rolling in and Mammon happy.

Several weeks later, Squalo was cleaning the last of the blood from his sword in some piddling little town in Japan when Sawada turned up out of nowhere to greet him with a casual, "Yo!" as he stepped around the pools of blood spreading across the concrete floor.

"The fuck," Squalo replied, because he'd flown out economy class and his temper had not even sort of begun to recover from that, or the fact that he'd been from pillar to post killing people to keep the Ninth happy. "What the fuck do you want?"

Sawada fixed a look on him that was guileless as a puppy's. "Oh! I just happened to be in the area and thought you might like to see a familiar face while you were here."

What, was the Ninth checking up on him now? "Not particularly," Squalo told him, sheathing his sword and walking away from the bodies. As he did, a horrible thought occurred to him: this was the last of the busywork the Ninth had assigned him. He glared at Sawada. "Are you here from the Ninth?" Was the shitty old man even going to give him a chance to fly home and check in before sending him on another whirlwind set of jobs?

Sawada just laughed. "No, no! I'm just here to visit my wife and kid, honest." He smiled at Squalo, though it didn't quite hit his eyes. "Let me buy you dinner. I know where we can get the best sushi in Japan." Just when it was on the tip of Squalo's tongue to refuse, he added, "And I'll even make it worth your while."

The man was head of CEDEF; what "worth his while" meant could be anything. Squalo measured that against the sober look in Sawada's eyes and the knowledge of whom the man worked for, and decided it was worth the chance. "Fine."

"Splendid! Come with me, then." Sawada gestured him along and led him through the streets of the little town—Namimori, that was what it was called—and kept up a steady stream of chatter about the local landmarks the whole way. Squalo tuned him out after the first five minutes and occupied himself by calculating how long it would take to get home and what progress his people might have made on their assignments since his last check-in—probably precious little—until Sawada turned in at a little sushi shop that looked like it could have come straight out of the movies. The guy standing behind the counter greeted Sawada like a long-lost friend. "Iemitsu! I didn't know you were in town! Come in, come in!"

Sawada grinned back at him and ushered Squalo to the chairs at the counter. "Well, you know how it goes. Gotta make sure Nana doesn't forget my face."

The sushi chef just shook his head as he passed a pair of hot, damp towels to them. "It's not good for a man to be so much away from his family. If you're not careful, Nana-san will realize that you never were good enough for her and she'll run off. And then where will you be?"

"Right where I deserve, I suppose." Sawada shrugged, scrubbing his hands clean. "Business is a harsh mistress, Tsuyoshi."

"That it is, that it is." The man, Tsuyoshi, poured two cups of tea for them and fixed his gaze on Squalo. "And who's your young Varia friend?"

Squalo kept his expression blank, but only at the expense of biting down on his tongue. "Who wants to know?"

"Easy, there." Sawada's eyes twinkled a bit. "This is Yamamoto Tsuyoshi. He used to be my senpai until he retired. Tsuyoshi, this is Squalo."

Yamamoto raised expressive eyebrows. "The new Sword Emperor." He fixed a sharp eye on Sawada even as he began assembling things on the counter behind the glass. "Just what are you up to now, you young rascal?"

Squalo wanted to know the same thing himself. A retired CEDEF agent? Really? Who knew enough of him to call him by his title?

Something was going on here. No surprise on that, but nice to have it confirmed.

"Nothing... well, nothing much," Sawada amended himself, rubbing the back of his neck. "Seemed like this might be a good place to talk, though."

Yamamoto snorted. "Seems to me that you're unclear on the subject of retired."

"Well, guess there's nothing for it, then. C'mon, kid." Sawada pushed his chair back. "We're going to have to get our sushi somewhere else." He scratched the stubble on his chin. "Think there's a conbini on the corner..."

Yamamoto rolled his eyes. "Sit down, you idiot. I'm just a sushi chef. I'm not responsible for what people talk about when they're in my restaurant, am I?"

"That would be completely unreasonable." Sawada pulled his chair up again and the two of them shared grins of perfect accord.

Squalo found his voice. "Kid?" he objected.

Sawada grinned at him, so clearly amused that Squalo's fingers itched to slap the laughter off his face. "Oh, yeah. Definitely. Speaking of..." He turned back to Yamamoto. "How's that boy of yours doing?"

Yamamoto lit up, his grin spreading from ear to ear. "Growing like a weed. Looks like he's taken a shine to baseball."

Sawada perked up. "No kidding. He any good?"

"He's eight," Yamamoto said, pointed. Sawada simply raised his eyebrows and Yamamoto relented, beaming. "He's not bad. His coach seems to think he's got some real potential."

"Well, isn't that a fine thing?" Sawada looked pleased, at least until Yamamoto tipped his head to the side and asked, "And how's young Tsunayoshi?"

Sawada lifted an equivocal, rueful shoulder. "About the same as ever, really."

"It takes some longer than others." Yamamoto's voice was sympathetic. "He'll find his way one of these days."

"That's what Nana and I keep telling ourselves." Sawada sighed and peered into the depths of his tea, apparently plumbing their depths for secret knowledge.

Squalo lost what little patience he had left. "Is there a reason I'm here?" he demanded.

"That's the kind of question you really ought to be asking a priest, kid," Sawada replied. "I don't deal in philosophy, myself. Never had the brains for it."

Yamamoto snickered from behind the counter, hands moving swiftly to slice a roll of sushi and arrange the pieces on a small porcelain plate. "Here." He passed the plate over the counter to Squalo. "You'll have to forgive us. We like to take the scenic route."

Squalo growled, not particularly placated by the offering. "Unless you're going to get to the point, I'm leaving. I got places to be and things to do." A flight back home and he might be able to get a day or two to try and figure out the Vendicare problem for himself. Two months now and Sera still hadn't come up with anything. The thought made his throat close up like someone had their fingers wrapped around it and was squeezing.

"I know I was that young once," Sawada mused. "But surely I was never that impatient."

"No," Yamamoto said, already shaping another roll. "You were worse." He glanced at Squalo, his eyes kind, and added, "Have a little mercy on the boy before he explodes."

"You spoil all my fun." Sawada wrapped his hands around his tea and flipped some internal switch. The casual, grinning slacker disappeared and the Ninth's outside advisor sat in his place. "You're retired. Did you hear about Federico?"

Yamamoto's hands went still on the knife he held. "I heard." His eyes were sober. "It's a hell of a thing." He gazed at the fish and rice on the counter in front of him for a long, motionless moment before he resumed his work. "He always seemed like a good boy. Would have made a good Tenth, I thought."

"Thought so myself." Which of course he would have; he'd approved the choice formally as the outside advisor.

Yamamoto's eyes flicked up, looking Squalo's way. His tone was almost casual. "I heard the daughter did it."

Squalo gritted his teeth; two months hadn't made keeping silent while the rest of the Family lied any easier.

Sawada took a drink of his tea. "You ever known a member of the Varia not to claim a kill if they were called on it?"

Yamamoto thought it over. "Can't say as I have. They might try to cover their tracks so no one knows how they did it, but generally they're overjoyed to claim credit for having done it. Arrogance, of course, but then—Varia." He tossed a faint smile Squalo's way. "You lot are a bit predictable that way."

Squalo glared at them both impartially, waiting for them to get to their point, whatever it was.

"They are, aren't they?" Sawada's smile was rueful. "And that's the peculiar thing." He raised his eyebrows and glanced Squalo's way. "Xanxus was the head of the Varia, but she and her right hand insisted that she hadn't done it. Isn't that strange?"

"It's one thing to kills someone on a job, and another to kill the future boss of the Family," Yamamoto pointed out, tones utterly reasonable. "A sense of self-preservation suggests that not claiming the kill in those circumstances would be the prudent thing to do."

"Yes, but." Sawada slid another of those sharp-eyed glances Squalo's way. "You going to eat that, kid?" He reached over and swiped a piece of sushi off Squalo's plate without waiting for a response. He popped it into his mouth and carried on, indistinct around the mouthful. "So the story goes like this. Xanxus asks Federico for a meeting. He goes, along with his right hand. She incapacitates Fedele and kills Federico and then walks away. Four hours later, she denies having done any such thing. Swears she was with her right hand the whole time and he corroborates the story, but Fedele was very clear that it was her."

"It wasn't," Squalo growled, no longer able to contain himself. "She didn't do it!"

Sawada mouthed, "He's the right hand," to Yamamoto, exaggerating each word and pointing at Squalo.

Yamamoto ignored them both and stared into the space over their heads, expression abstracted. "The head of the Varia left a witness alive?" he repeated, as though he weren't sure he'd heard correctly. "Are you joking?"

"Someone's joking." Sawada shrugged. "But not me."

Wait. Wait, what? Squalo stared at the man. "You—you don't think she did it?" Was he serious? If this was just another one of his jokes, the Ninth was about to be short one outside advisor.

"It's my job to provided an outside perspective." Sawada stole another piece of sushi off his plate. "And from my perspective, that story doesn't work. It's too tidy. And too strange."

The emotion that gripped Squalo was too complicated to have a single name as it squeezed his chest. "Then you've got to say something to the Ninth! You've got to make him see!" In his urgency, he came close to grabbing Sawada's shoulder and shaking him. "You've got to—"

"Easy, kid." Sawada looked tired, suddenly. "It's not that simple. The Ninth doesn't want to hear it. He lost his son and he has a convenient way of understanding why it happened. Getting him to question that means he might have to look at a less comfortable explanation."

"Means owning up to having been wrong, too," Yamamoto added. "Ninth never was much for that, as I recall. Speaking of pride."

"But she didn't do it," Squalo repeated, though he didn't know why he was surprised. Or disappointed. God knew her Family never had taken her part, not when it wasn't convenient for them to do so. "The Vendicare have had her for two months now."

Yamamoto passed Sawada his own plate of sushi. "The Vendicare? Then she's not dead. That's good."

"You figured out how to break her out yet?" Sawada asked, casual as a day at the beach. He grinned at the startled sound Squalo made. "Please. If you weren't working on that, that would have surprised me."

Squalo froze, caught between the need to talk to someone who seemed to believe Xanxus' innocence and the fact that Sawada was the Ninth's outside advisor. "They have her on the maximum security level," he said after a moment's indecision. That was neither confirmation nor denial. Not exactly.

"No, then." Sawada attacked his sushi, looking thoughtful. "Well, it's not going to be easy, I can tell you that much."

Not going to be—did they really think he gave a flying fuck about how easy it was going to be? Squalo opened his mouth to correct that monumental misapprehension and Yamamoto said, thoughtful, "Seems to me that the only time I ever heard of someone getting off that level was when they were being released. Scarapetti, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, there's that," Sawada agreed, "but then, I'd keep it quiet if anyone had ever escaped from my inescapable prison. Or if I had escaped. Seems like the smart thing to do, right?"

"You would?" Yamamoto fixed an extremely skeptical look on Sawada. "Really."

"Hypothetically speaking, I would. I mean. If I were the kind of person who'd let myself get caught doing something the Vendicare had me in for." Sawada picked the last piece of sushi off his plate, popped it into his mouth, and added, "Well, probably I would."

"I expect that Scarapetti makes for a better example," Yamamoto said. He leaned against the counter and glanced Squalo's way. "You know that one?" Squalo shook his head, no, bewildered by these two and their idle-but-not banter and the fact that they were maybe sort of on the boss' side. "Didn't think so. It was probably before your time."

"Long story short, Scarapetti killed a bunch of the Modigliani and the Modigliani gave him to the Vendicare to hold onto while they argued over how they wanted to kill him. Took 'em a while to hash it out, but their boss finally sent word to the Vendicare once they had and the Vendicare gave him back up again." Sawada hummed between his teeth. "Wasn't there a bribe involved, too? I mean—Vendicare."

"Probably." Yamamoto rubbed his chin. "Modigliani is Lightning, though. You'll need a Sky Flame to seal the letter if you want a Vongola prisoner released. Not too many of those running around."

"True," Sawada said. "Guess that wouldn't work. Well, makes for a nice hypothetical, anyway. Not like either of us is going to be breaking someone out of the Vendicare's holding tanks." He stole another piece of sushi off Squalo's plate and ignored the way Squalo was gaping at him.

"Precisely." Yamamoto smiled at Squalo. "Amazing what kind of nonsense people will talk about over a meal, isn't it?"

Squalo nodded, speechless, because he didn't know what else to do—had they really just handed him a way to get Xanxus out, just like that?

"Oh, right!" Sawada clapped a hand to his forehead. "There was something I wanted to talk to you about, wasn't there?" He reached inside his jacket and took out a photograph. He set it on the counter and slid it to Squalo with his fingertips. "What do you make of this fellow, kid?"

Squalo stared at the photograph, not recognizing the man in it right away, though he did feel the tug of recognition at the round glasses, the thin face and vaguely scholarly look—no, wait. "That's... Enrico's secretary, isn't it?" Enrico's secretary, who was... what was his name? Squalo tried to recall it and found his mind sliding away from the subject like fingers sliding off the slick curve of wet glass. "The fuck. What is his name?"

Sawada grunted; the sound was both annoyed and pleased. "Thought so." He tapped his index finger against the photograph. "That's Matteo Salvatore."

Matteo Salvatore. Squalo felt the slick curves of the name trying to slide through his fingers again and growled, refusing to let it. He was the goddamn Sword Emperor and the interim head of the Varia and he was not going to put up with this—this—whatever the hell this shit was.

The photograph wavered in his vision, turning fuzzy, then sharpened all at once—that was Matteo Salvatore, Enrico's secretary and presumptive right hand, who had been there the morning Xanxus had stormed away from breakfast and when Enrico had accused her of killing Federico and when the Ninth had demanded Squalo's oath of loyalty—had been there for all of it, hanging back and wearing the same small, satisfied smile throughout.

And Squalo hadn't paid him any mind at all till now. What the fuck?

"One of the things that the outside advisor has to do is be able to see things as they are, and only as they are." Sawada's voice was quiet. "There's a trick to doing it, which is a trade secret, but that's neither here nor there. Because whatever the hell is going on with my Family, this fellow is part of it. Maybe the root of it, even."

Squalo looked up from the photograph. "Is he Mist?"

Sawada's expression was grim. "He seems to be. That's the ring he's set to hold." At Squalo's look, he nodded. "They're pushing for a confirmation of Enrico's position as Vongola Decimo. Enrico's scraped together some guardians and I don't like it. I don't like any of it. Enrico isn't the one who should lead the Family."

The sound Yamamoto made behind the counter was sharp. "You're going to—"

Sawada looked up at him, mouth set and unhappy. "I don't think I have a choice. This is all wrong. And you haven't been there—if Enrico takes this Family, there'll be nothing to left to set the Vongola apart from any other Family. Nothing. Enrico doesn't see the importance of those things. All he sees is the power." He glanced at the photograph. "Especially now that he listens to Salvatore and follows Salvatore's advice."

Squalo sucked in a breath, realization hitting him. "If he's a Mist... fuck, if he's a Mist, Mammon hasn't picked up on him." And Mammon was—well, they all knew who Mammon was, what he was, even if he was keeping that quiet for reasons known only to himself.

"Mammon doesn't—ah. Yes. Mammon." Sawada went silent, then swore, low and vicious, the words cutting through the air like bullets.

Yamamoto turned away from them and silently retrieved a bottle from the shelf, along with three shallow drinking bowls that he filled and passed out. Sawada tossed his back like it was water; Squalo tasted his more cautiously and grunted at the kick of it.

"It's going to have to be a battle between heirs, then," Yamamoto said after he'd drained his own.

Squalo snorted. "Good luck with that. Massimo doesn't stand a chance against Enrico."

They both looked at him, and he thought they might have been disappointed. He drained off the alcohol—it tasted of fruit and fire—and stared back at them both. "Well, it's not like you're going to get Xanxus to do it." No one had ever taken her that seriously.

"Don't you think she would?" Sawada probably thought it was a reasonable question, too.

Squalo gave him a long look. "You know what she found out the day before Enrico killed Federico?" he asked. "She found out that the Ninth has been lying to her about being her father. What do you think?"

Sawada stared at him, then extended his cup to Yamamoto for a refill. "Fuck," he said after tossing it back. "Fuck, we told him...!" He raked a hand through the stubble of his hair, muttering under his breath.

Yamamoto was frowning. "So she has no attachment to the Family itself?"

Squalo opened his mouth to answer that and found that he didn't quite know what to say. "I..." Because she had been so angry, but... would she have been that angry if she hadn't cared, somewhere at the bottom of it? "I don't know."

Sawada raised his head. "Would she fight to keep the ring from going to Enrico?"

That he could answer. "Hell, yes." She'd do it for spite, if nothing else. He drummed his fingers against the countertop. "Couldn't I just kill him, though?" He wanted to leave it for the boss to do herself, but maybe they didn't have that kind of time.

Yamamoto shook his head, no. "Better to wait until there's an heir to take his place. Someone strong enough to hold the Family."

"Which Massimo isn't and Tsuna is too young for." Sawada caught Squalo's startlement and smiled, faint. "Straight from the First when he retired and remarried. We don't talk about it and mostly go into CEDEF to keep the line of succession clear. But desperate times call for desperate measures." He straightened his shoulders. "It'll have to be Xanxus. We'll have to chance it. It'll give Tsuna a few more years, or Massimo's boys, maybe."

Squalo felt obliged to point something out. "The boss is still in prison. And hasn't actually agreed to any of this." Hell, he wasn't sure that he had agreed.

Sawada waved that away. "You'll get her out. Do you need help getting a Sky Flame to mark the letter to the Vendicare? Money? Or can you handle that yourself without drawing on CEDEF's resources?"

"It's the Family," Yamamoto said, not unkindly, when Squalo stared at him. "She's still Vongola, and at the heart of it, nothing matters beyond that, as long as she'll hold the Family and what it stands for together."

Squalo wasn't so sure about that, but—fuck, it was the best chance he'd had yet, and Xanxus could decide what she wanted to do about it after she was free again. "Tell me more about these resources," he said, and watched Sawada begin to smile.

Lussuria was on hand when Squalo slouched his way off the jet; he greeted Squalo with raised eyebrows over his sunglasses. "Something good happen in Japan?"

Huh. He'd felt kind of like he was moving with more purpose again, so it must have showed. "Maybe. Got some interesting ideas while I was there, anyway."

"Glad someone is finding inspiration." Lussuria grimaced when Squalo glanced at him. "No one's getting very far on those special jobs you set them, glorious leader."

Which wasn't any real change in how things had stood when he'd flown out. Squalo sucked a breath in through his teeth, then shrugged. "Doesn't matter now." When Lussuria glanced at him, curious, he added, "Told you. Got some new ideas."

Lussuria hummed, the sound interested, but saved his questions until they were in the relative privacy of the car. "What kind of ideas?"

"Ran into Sawada while I was in Japan. He's set on proposing an alternative candidate for the Tenth." Squalo leaned his head back against the seat and waited for Lussuria to put that together.

It only took a moment for the leather of Lussuria's gloves to creak as he gripped the steering wheel more tightly. "He is, huh?" Lussuria kept his voice calm and measured, but something like laughter bubbled underneath it. He grinned fiercely at the road unspooling ahead of them. "You don't say."

"Yeah. It was an interesting conversation."

Lussuria drove in silence for a few minutes, probably turning all that over inside his head. "So where's he going to get this alternative candidate from?"

"He's decided he wants to delegate that task to us, but he had a few ideas and suggestions for where we might look." Squalo glanced at Lussuria, sidelong. "The old man still looking for ways of keeping me busy?"

Lussuria frowned at the road. "He is, but unless there's something going on I don't know about, there's not anything going on that legitimately needs your attention. He's got jobs he can tap you for, but anyone could do them."

"Good. He tries to pull that shit again, I'll pull Lametti off fifth squad, pair him up with a Mist, and send him to do it." Lametti was good enough with a sword to make it work. "And I need to talk to Mammon." Either the little twerp hadn't managed to pin Matteo Salvatore for what he was, or he had elected not to, and if it was the latter, Squalo had some things he was going to say about that.

"Think we can manage that." Lussuria drummed his fingers against the wheel, staccato. "Better go ahead and warn you, though. Cavilo's been bouncing around like a kid waiting for Christmas since she heard you were coming back in."

Since it was Lussuria, Squalo didn't bother trying to stifle his groan as he rubbed his hand over his face. He didn't need to hear that. "Fuck. What's she up to now?"

"God only knows, but I thought you'd appreciate the heads-up."

Fucking great. Like he needed something else to worry about. Squalo gripped the bridge of his nose, took a deep breath, and added that to his list to deal with later. Not like it made any sense to try predicting Cavilo's plans and whims, since the only thing to rely on with her was that she was always out to improve things for herself. "Right," he said, once he'd resigned himself to that particular incipient headache. "What else is going on?"

Not much, really, as it turned out, which was just as well. Squalo let Lussuria rattle off the updates on the squads and their jobs that had been too sensitive to deliver electronically and settled in for the rest of the drive, comfortable in the knowledge that Sawada was going to get a piece of parchment with a Sky Flame seal and that they both knew the names of some damn good forgers, and that he was that much closer to getting the boss back.

Mammon's cowl made it difficult to tell much from his expression, but Squalo thought he was looking wary when he came wandering into Xanxus' office and hopped up onto the chair. "You wanted to see me, Boss?"

"Yeah, I did." Squalo waited until Calla had come slipping in to join them and gotten herself settled. "How's that job going?"

Calla was the one to press her lips together, tight and prim, before saying, "He's remarkably difficult to pin anything to."

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say he really didn't have anything to do with his brother's death." Mammon's voice was very even, but it didn't take a genius to hear the challenge in it.

"Maybe. Or maybe he's got a damn good Mist working for him." Squalo pulled his copy of that photograph of Salvatore and passed it across the desk for them to look at. "You two know who that is?"

No one lasted in the Varia for long without a strong will. Calla reacted first, hissing through her teeth. "Him," she said, low and tight. "I do know him. And his little smile."

That might have been enough to put paid to Salvatore right there; Calla was a Cloud right down to her fingertips and loathed anything that resembled an imposition on her will. If Salvatore had been fucking with her head, too, well. No wonder her eyes had gone cold like that.

Mammon stared at the photograph. "This isn't possible," he said, sounding distracted. "No one can—"

"Someone did." Squalo watched Mammon reach up to touch something that hung under his robe. "Which is probably how they killed Federico, and why we can't pin it on them." Could even have something to do with the Ninth's apparent senility and how slow Squalo himself had been to react to the charges they'd laid on the boss that day, depending on how much Salvatore had been fucking with people's heads.

Calla's hands dropped to her knives, stroking over the pommels of them, thin brown fingers caressing them. "We can pin it on them now."

"Good." Squalo grinned at them both, knowing they'd see it for what it was. "Build up the case against them and hang onto it so we can drop it in the Ninth's lap when the time comes." And just let the Ninth try and wriggle out of that then. Maybe that would be even better than killing the old man—he talked so big about the honor and pride of the Vongola, so let him live with knowing what he'd done to his adopted daughter.

Well, presuming Xanxus didn't want them all dead.

Calla's nod was curt; Mammon's "Yeah. Yeah, okay" came out more slowly. His tiny fist was closed on something that Squalo couldn't see and he still seemed to be staring at the photograph.

Had to have been a shock, Squalo supposed, dismissing them to their tasks and watching him wander out, still wrapped in that air of puzzlement. When a person thought he was the best and someone else came along to prove that wrong... well. Maybe Mammon would take it as a growing experience.

He'd almost forgotten Lussuria's warning about Cavilo—who had shown up for the squad leaders' meeting and seemed like her normal rabid weasel self—by the time he had struggled through the last few hours of his day and its concomitant paperwork and thought it safe to stagger to bed to sleep off his jetlag. That, of course, was a mistake, and was why he was actually inside his quarters before he realized that Cavilo was sitting on his bed.

He was exhausted and preoccupied; that was his excuse for the seconds he spent staring at her like an idiot. "What the fuck," he managed eventually in the face of her little smirk. "What are you doing here?"

Only he had a feeling he knew what she thought she was doing, given the way her blouse was unbuttoned and she had a distinctly come-hither cast to her expression.

"What do you think I'm doing here?" Her voice was honey and whisky, all but a purr, and she lounged back against his pillows like they were her throne.

This couldn't seriously be happening, except that Squalo gave himself a surreptitious pinch and it actually seemed to be real. For fuck's sake. He would have rubbed his face, except that he didn't exactly trust Cavilo far enough to take his eyes off her for even a split second. "I think you've miscalculated." He folded his arms across his chest, ready to drop the blade out of his sleeve at a moment's notice. "I'm not interested, thanks. Now get out."

"Aren't you being just a little bit too hasty?" Cavilo crossed one leg over the other and smirked at him. "Think about it. You hook up with me and the Ninth will assume you've moved on and loosen that leash he's got around your neck. Give it enough time and you'll be able to get things done again."

Okay, he had to hand it to her: that was fairly clever. If she'd waited a little longer, or caught up with him before Sawada had, when he'd been starting to get desperate... he'd still have said hell no, but it would have been more difficult to do it.

Squalo gave her a moment to think he might have actually been thinking about it. Then he snorted. "Are you kidding? No way in hell am I going there. When the boss gets back, she's not going to have any reason to doubt my loyalty, thanks." More to the point, he wasn't going to give Cavilo any more chances to stick a knife in his back than he had to. He pointed at the door. "Now get the hell out of here so I can get some sleep."

The seductive smirk slipped off her face as she sat up. "Some day you're going to regret this," she promised him as she did up her blouse with nimble fingers.

"Not fucking likely." Squalo stood back, matching her glare for glare until she finally huffed and skulked the fuck out of his room. Once he'd locked the door after her and jammed his chair under the knob for good measure, then he permitted himself a short bark of laughter, because what else could he do?

He just hoped Xanxus would laugh, too, when he told her about this.

Squalo slouched lower in his seat, listening to the Ninth and his people talk the business in Campania over, not particularly interested in their dithering. They'd gotten what they'd wanted, or thought they'd wanted—wasn't really his fault if the infighting they'd expected hadn't materialized after he'd introduced the former head of the Frentani to the edge of his sword. Could end up being something he'd have to care about, eventually, maybe, but for the time being, it was more interesting to watch the geezers interact with Enrico and his people.

Either Enrico had moved really fast after Federico's death, or he and that bastard Salvatore had been plotting for a while beforehand. Whichever it was, Enrico'd mustered a full complement of guardians out of the ranks of the underbosses. He had a clutch of them with him for this meeting. Squalo projected all the apathetic boredom in the world and studied them from behind its shield. Suretti, Enrico's would-be Storm, Squalo already knew. His elevation to potential guardian to the Tenth hadn't done much to calm him down; his was one of the loudest voices in favor of sending someone to kill some more of the Frentani. Capolino wasn't much better, either, for a Sun—he was just as aggressive and pushy as Suretti. Salvatore didn't say much himself, just sat back with a bland expression as the two of them backed Enrico's argument for a show of force against the Frentani while the Ninth argued against it just as vigorously, pointing out that doing so would be to invite a war.

"Let it happen!" Enrico swept a hand through the air. "The Frentani are nothing more than puppets for the Cetrulli anyway, and we've been dancing around them for too long. It's time we went ahead and put them in their proper places."

"At what cost?" the Ninth retorted. "The Cetrulli are allied with half our enemies and courting the other half. We might be able to crush the Cetrulli, but then we would have the Orsini and the Valetti howling for our blood and the Tomasso and the Macrini right behind them. We might survive the bloodbath, but what would we become in the process?"

Huh. Interesting. Squalo sunk lower in his seat as Enrico thrust his jaw forward. Dissension in the Family ranks already, and it sure looked like Enrico had gathered all the hotheads in the underbosses for his guardians. Maybe Sawada was right to be worried about letting Enrico take the Family.

"If we can't handle it, then what are we?" Enrico demanded. "How could we have let ourselves become so weak that we fear our enemies like this?"

And why, Squalo wondered, did that make Salvatore smile so? That was a damn good question, not that he was likely to get an answer to it. Not anytime soon.

The Ninth let Enrico go on a bit longer before cutting a hand through the air. "Enough. We are not going to send the Varia to kill still more of the Frentani. Frankly, I regret that we sent them in the first place. Spilling blood so rarely solves problems without causing a dozen new ones to spring up." He sighed and Staffieri stepped in to move them to the next order of business.

Also interesting, that. He hadn't been there when they'd hashed out the decision to send him to Campania, but right then he would have bet anything that it had been Enrico who'd come up with the idea to do it.

No wonder Sawada had his shorts in such a twist about getting Enrico out of the way. No one was ever going to call the boss temperate, but at least she wasn't stupid about strategy. Her first solution to any problem generally was a bullet, but only when she knew she could follow through afterwards. Enrico didn't seem to have much of a grip on long-term tactics—it almost seemed like he just assumed that everything would go the way he wanted it, just because he was Vongola.

If this did end up going to a trial of heirs, Xanxus was going to chew Enrico up and spit him out.

Squalo occupied himself with that pleasant thought, plus estimations of how long Capolino would last in a fight against Lussuria, until the old man had established that no, the Vongola wouldn't be starting any new wars this week. He accepted the assignments the Ninth parceled out with a grunt—Lussuria had been right, none of them actually needed the Sword Emperor to execute, despite the old man's lip service to the contrary—and stood when the Ninth dismissed them.

Enrico glared at the room impartially and stomped out with his people trailing after him, all of them but Salvatore looking just as pissed as their boss. Salvatore just looked blandly pleased with the universe, which was the most damning thing of all.

Before he and Lussuria could make their escape, too, the Ninth said, "A moment of your time, please."

Squalo schooled his face to bored disdain and turned back to the Ninth. "Yeah, what?" No sense in letting the Ninth think that they were friends, after all.

The Ninth's mouth tightened infinitesimally beneath his mustache. "You had very little to say in our meeting today."

Squalo waited a beat and raised his eyebrows. "Wasn't aware that you were much interested in what I had to say."

The Ninth's expression didn't change. "The input of the Varia's boss is always valued in these meetings."

"I'll keep that in mind," Squalo said, though what he wanted to say was something else altogether. "Was there anything else?"

"This wasn't my fault, you know. I wasn't the one who made the choices that brought us to this place," the old man said, abrupt and harsh. "I'm not the one you should be angry with."

Squalo sank his teeth into his tongue rather than say anything he shouldn't—there were too many things to do to waste himself on the satisfaction of telling the Ninth exactly how wrong he was. "Was there anything else?" he repeated, once the taste of copper and iron had washed the need to scream out of his mouth.

The old man's mouth went even tighter, but he shook his head. "I suppose not."

Squalo jerked his head, the closest he could get to bowing, and went, Lussuria sticking almost as close as his shadow.

"I am going to enjoy making him eat those words," Squalo said, as conversationally as he could manage, once they were away from the house. "I really am."

Lussuria slanted a glance his way. "Yeah, I just bet you are."

Squalo permitted himself a moment to enjoy thinking about that, then shook it off. Once they had Xanxus back, they'd just see what the boss of the Varia had to say in those meetings. Until then, wasn't going to do him much good to keep dwelling on it.

Besides. He had a forger to meet and a job to commission.