Page 37 of The Cat's Mausy

“-but I wouldn’t have taken it. Then you would want to know why, and you would pick and pester and pry until I either told you the truth or found a lie you would believe.”

“But why,” Dimitri asked. “Why wouldn’t-” He paused as what the Cat said about Issac taking the Cat’s role in stride came to mind. “You knew what my family did- does? The Cat wasn’t the one who told you. You knew back then.”

Issac just sighed.

“When did you figure it out?” It had to be the day after the bathroom. Dimitri had nearly lost it when the video was sent to him and Issac had been behind him when he had called Adrian to see if there was anything they could do-

“First time I saw you,” Issac said, and Dimitri’s gasp got a small chuckle. “It wasn’t the first time you saw me. I saw you moving into the dorm room with your brother’s help. Russian mob tattoos are not exactly subtle. Italians tend to look like men with too much money if you don’t notice the guns or knives. Russians might as well wear a neon sign that says Underground Contact.”

Dimitri swallowed. “So you know the Cat is-”

“A Capo and a Reaper,” Issac said, suddenly sounding annoyed. “Yes, I am very fucking well aware of that.”

Dimitri frowned. “Reaper,” he repeated. He thought he knew that title but he couldn’t seem to place it. “What is- I don’t-”

“Do you actually need help with the citations, or was this just an excuse to try to butter me up,” Issac interrupted, his voice carefully controlled. “You can’t come here but I may be able to talk you through it.”

“I always need help with Young’s work,” Dimitri said, feeling himself smile. “That man has a stick shoved so far up his ass, I’m surprised he can bend over, and we both know I don’t learn well by listening alone.” He took a deep breath through his teeth. “Maybe you can go over it with me tomorrow? After his class? At the usual table?”

There was a pause where Dimitri hardly dared to breathe. “Sure,” Issac said finally. “That’ll be fine. Just make sure you have your sources ready to go over. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Hey, Issac,” he said, looking up towards the light-polluted sky.

“This is the part where you say ‘goodbye, Issac,’” Issac said and the smile grew. He didn’t know if Issac was still pissed at him for yesterday but he was at least talking to him, and the fact that talking included that gentle mocking when Dimitri tried to draw out the conversation was reassuring.

“Goodbye, Issac,” he said, not wanting to push his luck any further, and waited until Issac hung up to lower the phone from his ear.

* * *

Felinus stepped out of the restaurant, holding the door for Adrian, to find Brutus and Lucio both smoking. Damn traitors. Felinus had quit after Nona ranted and raved at him when she caught him smoking in her garden one Sunday dinner three months ago, but neither his brother nor cousin felt particularly inclined to follow his example. Lucio said it was Felinus’s own fault for smoking at Nona’s, and Brutus said that if anyone needed a smoke it was him for putting up with Felinus. Fritz also had a cigarette and lit a second one for Adrian as he leaned against the wall next to the door.

Dimitri was finishing a phone call further down the sidewalk, but not so far away that Felinus didn’t hear Issac’s name.

He was more annoyed by that than he should have been. Dimitri wasn’t going to just disappear out of Issac’s life, he had known that. Setting aside the Pakhan’s desire to find out who let a Casualty Orphan slip past them and wanting to be involved in correcting that mistake, Dimitri and Issac’s career paths would have brought them into the same circles anyway and Dimitri was nothing if not persistent. But that didn’t mean his baby boy should let Dimitri off the hook so quickly for the mess Dimitri had created. Felinus would have made Little Volkov suffer for at least a month if it had been him, but maybe Issac had more forgiveness in him than Felinus had thought.

“Let’s go,” he told Brutus as he tugged on his collar, cold air biting at his neck.

Adrian lowered the cigarette between his fingers to frown at Felinus. “You aren’t staying for dinner?”

“I have someone to get home to,” Felinus said, watching Dimitri start to walk back with a faint smile on his lips. “Besides that, we had Chinese last night. It is the best way to end a particularly bad day.”

“For some reason, I can’t imagine the Cat having a bad day without it ending up on the news,” Adrian said, folding one arm over his chest and eyeing Felinus wearily.

Felinus smiled at him and saw both Russians just barely manage to keep themselves from cringing backwards. The last time he’d seen Adrian and Fritz had been a little over two years ago when he had helped Tiger gain a bit of closure by hunting down men who had hurt him and taken his childhood. One had tried to cross the border, near the garage that Adrian owned and built the custom muscle cars the Russians liked, and Adrian had to make a point of reminding Felinus that his men couldn’t cross the line with a show of numbers and mean mugs. They hadn’t looked mean and puffed up when Felinus simply threw the fucker back over the line and Tiger wasted no time in starting on him using the nearest wall before Bat reigned him in. They both very clearly remembered that day, too. He had seen it in Fritz’s eyes when he had approached Dimitri in the hall to put Little Volkov in his place. The Cat and his “Zoo” were not ones to fuck around with, and the Russians and the Irish knew that. “I didn’t say I was the one having a bad day,” he said, making sure to look at Dimitri and felt the satisfaction of that smile falling from Dimitri’s lips.

He couldn’t teach Little Volkov a lesson, or make Issac punish or stay away from him, but he could remind him of what he had done. “But the food here is excellent,” he continued, the black sedan that Bat preferred driving pulling up to the curb. Tiger got out to open the back door without a glance at the Russians. Felinus smiled as the two made men tensed at the sight of him. To be fair, Tiger had made a real mess of that fucker with no warning to the Russians. He moved to the car, waving to Lucio, who barely acknowledged him. “Enjoy yourselves. I’m sure we’ll see much of each other moving forward.”

“Looks like things went well,” Bat said as they rounded the corner. “Are the Russians going to back off?”

“Not exactly.” Felinus took out his phone and read the updates from Snake reporting that Issac had been fed and was in his office studying.

A second update said his program was working on unsealing records and that he had scrubbed the video of Issac’s attack off the Internet.

“They are going to sniff around and it has been very pointedly suggested that if anyone besides me needs to enter their Ring to get him it is just one person.” He smirked. “It was implied that they’d rather it not be you two, at all.”

“Aw, no fun,” Bat whined. “I wanted to see more college hotties.”

“I don’t think it is that kind of college,” Tiger said in his slow deep voice.

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