Page 79 of The Business of Blood
He leaned forward, capturing my gaze like a cobra. “Every single man deserved the execution I dealt them, Fiona. If you knew their crimes, you’d have wielded the knife, yourself. Believe that.” He sat back, releasing my mesmerism, and drank deeply.
I never knew what to believe when it came to the Hammer, but I nodded all the same. “What do they have against you, these other gangs? Why don’t they want you in charge?”
“Many do, and those men are currently squelching the rebellion as we speak.”
“And those who don’t?”
“People in this world hate anyone who is not familiar. Who is not them. Men are forever at war with their counterparts. The rich and the poor. The dark-skinned and the light. The law and the anarchist. The conqueror and the conquered.” He made a flamboyant gesture around the café. “The gentile and the Jew. It is human to fear what you don’t know. To hate what makes you feel afraid. To declare war against one who would bring peace. Because, in times of peace, a warlike man can too often only hate and destroy himself.”
“You would bring peace?” I ventured.
“I would bring order. I am not like the government. Despite my reputation, I do not make money by killing innocent people and starting needless wars. To men like me, peace means profit.”
“Are you not a warlike man? Do you…harbor such feelings about yourself?”
He tilted his glass at me. “I like you because you dare ask me such complicated questions.”
I’d another one to ask. “If you are such a man of peace, why are you called the Hammer?”
The ghost of a smile haunted his lips. “It comes from a hero of ours, a legend. Judah, the Hammer, was a rebel. A brilliant strategist, and a man who prevailed against unconquerable odds.”
“I see.”
“That isn’t to say, I haven’t used a hammer a time or two in my life.”
After what I’d watched him do today, I no longer doubted it. I hadn’t realized a man could kill with such grace. With such ease.
The thought chilled me to my core.
“Is your name Judah?” I asked, desperate for a distraction.
“No,” he answered simply.
“Then he is…someone to whom you aspire?”
“Fiona,” he said with a wry sort of impatience. “Men like me—men who have titles rather than names—we do not choose them, you understand? They are allocated to us by way of distinction or infamy. Which, depends on who you are speaking to in my case.”
“Do your friends know your name?” I wondered aloud. “Your real name?”
He made a caustic sound. “Friends? A man like me does not have friends. I have enemies and allies.”
He was like a king in an empty castle, I realized, surrounded by a moat that not only kept people out but also imprisoned him inside his own fortifications. How very sad.
“You pity me,” he remarked with a droll sigh.
I was irritatingly expressive when sober, I couldn’t imagine how easy I was to read after nearly three glasses of strong Israeli wine. “I just…such a life sounds awfully lonely.”
“Perhaps, but someone like me is never betrayed.”
“No?” With such a large army—such a dangerous and lucrative lifestyle—betrayal seemed not only likely but also inevitable.
“It is only possible to suffer betrayal at the hands of someone you love or someone you trust,” he explained, reading my thoughts. “I only trust that a man—or woman—will act in their own self-interest. I am never disappointed. And I am never betrayed.”
“Is that what you did today when you rescued me? Was that done in the name of self-interest?” Because it felt like altruism to me.
He stared at me for a heartbeat longer than I expected. “If something happened to you, who else would hide the bodies, Fiona? Who else would clean up the blood?”
“Plenty of people, I imagine, if you appealed to their self-interest.”
