Lucy stared at the picture of Natsu, her chest aching with an intensity she hadn't felt in months. She hadn't seen him in almost a year, ever since his arrest from her bedroom. She had begun to accept the fact that she would never see him again, but it was hard. But now, his laugh echoed in her mind less and less; gradually being replaced with the steady drone of Jacob's voice on outlays. The shine of passion in his black eyes was fading to the cold detachment of her father's brown eyes. She could hardly recall the sound of his voice; joking at the pub, firing off some hot remark, or even just saying her name.
He was slipping further away.
"Your father has been looking for the Salamander for years. Anyone involved with Don knows he has the Salamander on a tight leash; that's how his pub stays afloat. Most dives in this city's underground don't survive half as long as Don's has. If you want to talk to Don, you gotta get through his pet first. And Jude couldn't—"
"He isn't a pet," Lucy said, angry at Capricorn's term. "N—" Lucy caught herself on saying Natsu's name; she wasn't sure how much Capricorn knew. "He isn't kept on a leash or ordered around. It's more like… a mutual relationship. Don gets protection, and he gets a place to go back to." Lucy paused. "What does Don have to do with this exactly?"
"Don is quite an important man in the Underground, I'm afraid. But more importantly, I get the feeling you messed up quite a lot of both Don and your father's plans with the Salamander, yes?" Capricorn's stare bore into Lucy, but she was missing too much information to follow any of the tangents he laid out.
"Plans? What plans did I mess up? And how?"
A pulse of silence followed her questions. Capricorn hummed thoughtfully before answering. "Well, from your, and forgive me, naïve rendition of the Salamander's position of power at the pub, I'm now assuming Don lets the kid roam free as long as he keeps a low profile. But make no mistake, Miss Lucy; he is under Don's command. Don's a crafty man, he just doesn't look like it." For the first time in months, Don's fear-filled dough face floated up from the depths of her memory, and she tried to imagine him doing anything slightly clever. Her lips twitched at the thought, but she didn't argue with Capricorn. She knew next to nothing about the man, as Natsu had always been careful to steer her clear of him.
"And what about plans my father may have had?" Lucy asked, trying to learn as much as she could. Capricorn obviously knew some things about both Natsu and her father's empire, and she needed information on both.
"Your father had his sights set on Don's pub for a while, trying to get the pub's business to complete his control of the industry, according to the information I've gathered. I believe that's the reason you first went there." At Lucy's nod, he continued. "But I have the feeling he also sent you to see if you could draw the Salamander out. He was the one obstacle to gaining industry domination, and sending in a pretty girl to do a grown man's dirty work is a classic tycoon move, I'm afraid. Easier to distract a teenaged boy with someone like you than someone like me."
Lucy stared in bewilderment. "He knew about N—the Salamander? I thought no one knew he definitely existed! Much less any concrete evidence about him."
Capricorn chuckled. "The press and common people didn't know anything about him. But money, as I'm sure you know, goes a long way these days. There are other people with skills like mine that take much higher dollar, and I'm sure after a few visits to that pub anyone sober enough could figure out what the kid was." Lucy hummed in agreement.
"But as for your father's plans for him, I'm assuming he wanted to use you to find the kid's weak spot. But you running off wasn't part of his plan, so he had to make it look like a kidnapping. And later when you came back, he couldn't just erase the charges. But the Salamander getting arrested means legal groups getting involved, and the last thing your father needs is the law inspecting his affairs."
Lucy swallowed. "What do you mean by that?"
"Miss Lucy," Capricorn said, tilting his head as if to look over the rims of his sunglasses. "Your father and Alyssa Cobeson almost fully control the underground distribution of illegally concentrated alcohol in the entire Hargeon area."
Lucy spit out her latte. The words Cobeson and illegal stuck in her brain as she sputtered and choked. "I'm sorry," she finally panted. "But could you explain that a bit more?" Lucy was impressed with how nonchalant she sounded.
She could almost see Capricorn blink behind those impossibly dark sunglasses. He hummed in thought before speaking. "Jude always had lofty goals for the future, and I guess he finally realized that walking the good path would only get him so far. I don't know how, but he somehow got involved with the Cobesons and their affairs, which are as selfishly prosperous as they come, but that's a different matter altogether. I'm sure that Cobeson and Jude split a deal for industry domination about 10 or so years ago, as their stocks have been rising at a steady rate ever since then.
"This was a little after the time Layla came to me, but I only recently found proof of what she had suspected all along. They're getting desperate for Don's holdings and affairs, so they've made some mistakes in bribes and blackmail. A few of the more sober in that pub of his have admitted seeing Jude and Don fighting on a few separate occasions, your Salamander having to intervene more than once." It brought a smile to Lucy's face to think of her father's face when Natsu stepped into the argument.
But a thought suddenly struck her. "Capricorn, if I may ask, why are you telling me all of this? I'm of no use to my father professionally; I can't help you in any kind of investigation."
Capricorn chuckled good-naturedly. "Well, Miss Lucy, I beg to differ. If you're still as fiery as I remember you to be, you simply haven't taken an interest in your father's affairs. But if you just tried, I'm sure you'd be of plenty use to both me and your Salamander. And even if not, I felt it was your right to know what the Heartfilia name is truly worth."
Lucy's brain, however, had caught on to only one sentence. "What do you mean, be of use to you and the Salamander?"
Finally, those sunglasses lowered just enough to see Capricorn's eyes: kind yet sharp orbs of gray. "I mean, Miss Lucy, that both you and he can help me take down your father's dirty business, if you so wish."