Chapter Text
A dozen signs of damage had led up to the end. But when it came, it came with no more ceremony than any other difficulty they’d faced.
Through a phone call. It was Horatio who answered it – Viktor wasn’t there to see it, but Zib later told him that he turned a funny colour and nearly dropped the receiver. All he could get out was ‘Mr May’ and ‘upstairs’.
Viktor rushed to find Mordecai, but he wasn’t in his office – he wasn’t in the cafe! The Slovak had been sure he’d heard him making calls there last night, but he hadn’t come in this morning...?
No, there was no time for that now. All he could do was race to Atlas’ home – he found Mordecai already there, his partner trying to push his way through anxious Lackadaisy staff and being ignored.
The tuxedo cat’s pupils turned into slits, reaching into his coat to get his pistol. Viktor grabbed his shoulder and raised his voice –
“MOVE,” he boomed.
They parted like the sea. Mordecai didn’t even look back before he took off running into the May’s house, Viktor failing to seize hold of him in time.
“Mordecai-”
He growled his frustration as he hurried after him, not able to keep up with the faster cat on the stairs – Mordecai reached the top long before him.
“Mordecai!” Viktor yelled after him, but the tuxedo cat swung around the bannister and kept running, nearly skidding on the carpet as he went.
He heard Dr Quackenbrush say, “Mr Heller, no – don’t go in there –”
Then there was a cry. No, not a cry – a wail. It scarcely sounded like it could have come from his co-worker, it was such a noise of pure animal despair.
Viktor slowed down, a cold chill in his blood. He made it to the top of the stairs, almost staggering down the corridor. Dr Quackenbrush stood by the door of Atlas’ bedroom, looking within, shaking his head in despair. He spotted Viktor, sighed.
“It’ll be a shock,” he warned.
Viktor ignored him, pushed past and headed inside.
What he saw struck him like a bullet to the chest.
Atlas was collapsed on the floor on his back, eyes shut, brilliant fur now pale and stiff. He was riddled with holes – his torso, his limbs...the carpet was a rust stain beneath his body. Mordecai had thrown himself over the boss’ body, his ear pressed flat to their leader’s chest. Atlas’ eyes were glassy, staring...it was already far too late.
Viktor choked on his own breath. “No,” he said. “Fuck. No.”
“Call a doctor!” Mordecai snapped at him, raising his head. “What are you waiting for?”
“Mr Heller,” Dr Quackenbrush said, his voice soft, “I’ve already ascertained that-”
“A real doctor!” he yelled, paws still gripping at Atlas’ suit, nearly ripping it with the force of his claws. “Not you, not a goddamned horse doctor! Someone who knows what they’re doing – someone -”
The doctor turned to Viktor, ignoring Mordecai’s ranting. “You two need to get out of here. Anyone bothers to mount an investigation, it’s probably not wise for the two of you to be on the scene. I have to call the authorities.”
“Vhere is Mitzi? Is she safe?”
And Mordecai actually laughed – a frantic, false laugh. “You didn’t notice? She’s not here.”
Viktor frowned, perturbed. The doctor put a hand on his arm, lowered his voice. “Get him out of here.”
“No,” Mordecai said, running his paws over Atlas’ jacket like he expected to find something useful there. “No, I need to check-”
Viktor seized his arm, yanking him off of Atlas’ body. Mordecai’s claws ripped Atlas’ clothes as he was pulled off of their leader, his front stained with their boss’ blood and his resistance reduced to a series of frantic, unintelligible protests as Viktor towed him out of the room.
In a crisis, Viktor’s old wartime experience reared its head. There was sure to be massive upheaval in the wake of Atlas’ death, so he simply couldn’t process his feelings or his grief towards their lost leader now. He’d do that later, when he had the luxury for it.
Right now he needed to take the doctor’s advice and get them far away from here. Back to the cafe, maybe, where everyone else could be gathered and an emergency council could be formed.
Mordecai clearly wasn’t thinking on that level, if at all. His partner was still resisting as he towed him down the stairs and since Viktor didn’t think it wise to expose Mordecai to the crowd of Lackadaisy staff outside he took them through the kitchen and out the back door instead.
He kept going until he got to an alley a couple of streets down, then let go of Mordecai’s arm. His partner didn’t immediately try to head back to the house like he’d worried. Instead he just stood still, showing no inclination towards doing anything.
“Take break,” Viktor told him. “I know. Is… lot to deal with…”
His voice trailed off as Mordecai slowly raised his arm. The tuxedo cat didn’t look consciously aware of anything around him as he reached into his jacket – and withdrew his pistol.
The image of a grieving Mordecai staggering around the streets with a gun in hand struck Viktor as a disaster waiting to happen – he had little desire to see another colleague peppered full of bullets. He lunged forwards, the lack of distance between them working to his benefit so he could seize hold of Mordecai’s arm and twist the pistol out of his grip.
“Let – let go of me!” Mordecai snapped. “I have to – I’m going to –”
“You have to calm down!” Viktor cried, fury creeping into his voice. “Or you vill get yourself killed-”
The reprimand he’d been getting wound up to deliver was cut off abruptly, when Mordecai hunched over and he began breathing rapidly.
Viktor frowned; he’d seen men dissolve into his kind of panic and hysteria in the War before. He kept hold of Mordecai’s wrist but locked his other arm around the tuxedo cat’s chest to try and hold him together. It worried him that Mordecai didn’t even try to twist free; instead he began to shake in Viktor’s arms, clearly no longer able to form words, let alone move.
After a moment Mordecai’s legs gave and the two of them sunk to the floor, Viktor having to kneel awkwardly to support him.
But he bore with it, releasing Mordecai’s wrist to lock his other arm around his partner’s body, effectively hugging him from behind. Mordecai was still shaking like a leaf, both paws coming up to hold onto Viktor’s arm.
And still he didn’t try to get free. He just held on tightly, as though he was hanging on for dear life.
“Breathe,” Viktor told him, tears stinging the Slovak’s eyes at the sheer weight of the distress he could feel radiating from the smaller cat. He knew the weight of his own grief was coming for him later, but Viktor had seen many men die in the War before. He suspected this was the first time Mordecai was losing someone he actually cared for in such a violent way. “You vill get through this. Breathe.”
“Can’t,” Mordecai panted, normally composed voice airy and breathless. “Can’t. Can’t…”
“Breathe,” Viktor said again, keeping the pressure of his arms in the hopes the squeeze would help ground Mordecai without suffocating him any further.
“Have to,” he gasped, “Kill them. Let me. Go. Have to. Let me go.”
“Not like this. You hurt yourself.”
“Sorry,” Mordecai gasped. “Sorry. Sorry…”
And he kept saying it, enough that the word lost its shape and he was soon back to panicked, gasping breaths.
Viktor just held him through it, occasionally shedding tears of his own, mostly trying to direct him to breathe. It felt like long minutes had passed before Mordecai began to calm even a little. The Slovak couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind right now, but he was scarcely thinking himself. He couldn’t begin to imagine what would become of the Lackadaisy without Atlas, what would become of Mitzi when someone found her and told her the news…
Instead he was trapped in the hell of the present moment, distracted by how his limbs were beginning to ache from holding this unnatural position for so long. And how small Mordecai felt when he had him trapped in his arms.
Viktor didn’t doubt his partner could kill any number of people in a vengeful rage if he put his mind to it. But he wasn’t invulnerable; he couldn’t take a hit as well as Viktor could.
And he was clearly not thinking straight right now. Mordecai might have been Atlas’ shadow for all these years, but the Slovak wasn’t about to let him die with him.
♣
Viktor had enough experience to know that sustenance was a good solution for shock, so once Mordecai began to calm down he escorted his partner back to his apartment where tea and food could be procured.
Mordecai didn’t have much appetite, which was to be expected, but he mechanically drank down a cup of tea when Viktor put it in his hand. He didn’t even complain about Viktor’s lack of ability to make a good blend.
He didn’t complain about much, actually. Every suggestion Viktor made was met with vacant compliance: disposing of the bloody clothes covered in his boss’ blood. Putting his pistol away in a desk drawer out of sight and out of mind. Getting him to lie down on his living room sofa, the events of the day having exhausted him enough for Mordecai to fall into a light doze.
All of it reminded Viktor uncomfortably of his days in the War. When he’d lost a compatriot, his first instincts were always to hunker down in the nearest safe spot and turn his mind off.
He wanted to stay until morning, but he knew he owed it to the other members of the Lackadaisy to at least check in on them. With that thought in mind he left Mordecai a note – more a series of bullet points, really – reminding him to remember to eat and finish cleaning the blood out of his fur when he woke, to meet them at the cafe before he did anything rash – and headed out.
When he got to the cafe, Mitzi was now there. She looked incredibly relieved to see Viktor, jumping up and throwing her arms around him.
He hugged her back automatically, but it was only when he noticed the sharp eyes of the others on Atlas’ payroll that he realised the reason for her relief: some of them blamed her. Suspected her, even.
It looked like Mordecai wasn’t the only one Viktor was going to need to look out for. Viktor hugged her closer, once again boxing up his own feelings to ensure the people Atlas had left behind were going to make it through all right.
♣
The next few days passed in a blur. The atmosphere of the Little Daisy was much like it had been after the New Year’s party in 1926: a reluctant realisation that the party was over, leaving everyone to squabble about who was going to clean up the mess left behind.
Ironically, the one Lackadaisy member who actually excelled at cleaning kept his distance all through those days. Viktor had thought he was collecting himself from his grief, then going to ground until he could gather the intelligence he needed to re-emerge and help set the Lackadaisy back on its feet.
But as the days passed and Mordecai still didn’t materialise, Mitzi began to grow bitter.
“Look around, Viktor,” she said. “Half of the old staff aren’t returning my calls, no matter how many times we tell them we can keep the business going. Even the Arbogasts haven’t picked up the phone. You really think Mordecai of all people is going to come back?”
“He vill,” Viktor insisted. “Mordecai is just lying low now. He’s smart. He’ll be back, vith a plan. Vith information about vhat happen to Atlas.”
He wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it, but he was sure he’d seen Mitzi’s eye twitch. Viktor still hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask her if she knew anything about Atlas’ death. He had to believe that if she did, she’d have been long gone by now. They all knew the band would be loyal to her no matter what, but they wouldn’t be enough to protect Mitzi from anyone seeking revenge for Atlas’ sake.
Mordecai hadn’t come kicking in the door looking for her, after all. For now that would have to be all the proof Viktor needed.
♣
Even Viktor had his limits, though. After a week passed and he started to hear gossip on the grapevine that Mordecai had been seen around town, Viktor started trying to track him down. He started with the most obvious place – Mordecai’s apartment.
After managing to tailgate his way inside the building, Viktor pounded on Mordecai’s door to no answer. He must have stepped out, then. The Slovak turned to go, but then spotted another cat peering out of their door at the noise.
Viktor was about to apologise for the racket when the young man said, “’S not here any more.”
A cold chill ran down Viktor’s spine. “Vhat?”
“Yeah, he moved out. Pretty sudden, but I saw the place emptied out.” He shrugged. “Are you, like...a friend of his?”
The disbelief in his tone only compounded Viktor’s bad feeling. He longed to say you don’t know him like I do but the evidence against that was right in front of his face. Pulling a drastic move like this could only be a bad sign.
“I...I have to go,” Viktor said. He got to the end of the corridor before he stopped, looked back. Sure enough, the neighbour cat was still staring at him. “He say anything about vhere he going to go?”
The neighbour cat shrugged. “Dunno. Sharp dressed creature like that, bet he’s got money enough to land on his feet.” His face scrunched with distaste. “Was never sure why he was slumming it in a place like this from the get go, to be honest.”
Viktor sighed, running a frustrated hand down his face. Tired. He was so tired, ever since Atlas’ death he’d felt tired down to his bones.
“If he happens to come back,” he said, knowing the unlikelihood of that even as the words left his mouth, “Tell him – tell him his family’s waiting for him to come back.”
It was a loaded worded, Viktor knew it. But he couldn’t stand that look on the cat’s face, or the way everyone had been talking about Mordecai. The last couple of years had to count for something, didn’t it?
♣
With a heavy heart Viktor returned to the cafe. He knew that at this rate, the business was going to completely fall apart – they hadn’t managed to get hold of a single supplier or keep hold of most of their staff, so the speakeasy basement had been sealed up and silent ever since its founder had died.
He opened the door with a gloomy, “I’m back-”
“Viktor!” Horatio immediately got up in his space, taking a hold of his paw. “So glad you’re back. Listen, could you – um – help me, uh, outside-”
Viktor fixed him with a hard glare, making the smaller cat’s hair stand up on end. He pulled his hand free. “Vhat are you doing? Get out of my vay.”
“Uh, um, but – I really – I wouldn’t-” The cat only grew more flustered as Viktor pushed past him, finally crying out, “Don’t go back there!”
Viktor frowned, about to ask what the hell had gotten into him when the door to the back suddenly swung open and Mordecai entered the cafe, a briefcase in hand.
His eyes widened when he saw Viktor, then narrowed again. There was nothing except a hollow neutrality in his expression and he looked far more put together than the last time Viktor had seen him – his suit was sharp, hat perched on his head, glasses polished to perfection and reflecting the shine of the Little Daisy’s lights. Every last part of him had been put back in its proper place. Viktor relaxed.
This was a good sign. It had to be.
“Viktor,” he greeted, his tone flat.
“Mordecai,” Viktor said, taking a step forward. “Thank God – been vaiting for you to get back. Ve need to talk about vhat ve’re going to go now.”
Horatio fidgeted, backing behind the counter. “U-Um, Viktor-”
“Be quiet,” Mordecai told the doorman without even looking his direction. “I already told you not to get in my way. Don’t do so now.”
Horatio shrank in his suit, ears drooping.
“Vhere are you going?” Viktor asked. “Ve need to talk. You need to talk to Mitzi.”
“I have nothing to say to her,” he said, expression turning colder. “I suppose it’s better you hear it from me, now I’ve cleared out my office. Viktor, I – I’m leaving.”
“Vhat?”
“You’re going to have to work on your grammar and your dress sense without me,” he continued, taking a step forward. When Viktor didn’t move, his eyes narrowed. “Did you hear me? I said I’m-”
“I heard you,” Viktor growled. “Vhat kind of joke is this? You run to New York?”
“No. St. Louis is my base of operations now.” Mordecai took another step forward, squaring up to Viktor. The Slovak still refused to move, hands planted on his hips as he glared down at his partner. “I’m joining up with another gang, where my talents can be better utilised.”
Viktor saw red, seized the front of his suit in his fist. “You lie!” he snapped. “Ve are going to rebuild – this is just setback, ve can vork our vay back up-”
“Unhand me,” he said, still damnably calm. Viktor shook him, desperate to rattle something other than cold indifference out of the tuxedo cat. But there was no sign he felt anything – even Mordecai’s tail and ears didn’t give him away. There was just… nothing there. “I warned you about being too sentimental multiple times, Viktor. But you never learn.”
Viktor made a disbelieving noise, releasing Mordecai. The triggerman clicked his tongue and pulled his clothes back into place, but in doing so Viktor caught sight of something hidden under his suit jacket, a flash of red pinned to his shirt.
A marigold.
“No,” he said, taking a step back. Mordecai’s eyes darted down, widening for a moment before his expression snapped back into a grouchy glare. “You vouldn’t.”
They’d been civil with the Marigold gang for many years, especially with Asa Sweet having visited the speakeasy for the New Year’s party, but they were still the Lackadaisy’s main rival. It was a standing joke that anyone who defected to the other speakeasy wouldn’t be easily forgiven – but no one ever had.
At least not before Atlas had died.
“Ohhh, dear…” Horatio said shakily, shrinking further into himself.
Mordecai sighed – actually sighed, as if all of this was just a hassle to him – then tried to push past Viktor to the door. Viktor seized his arm with a hiss of, “Vhy can’t we just-”
An unmistakeable click, a sound Viktor would know anywhere.
Mordecai was pointing his pistol at him, hammer down.
Viktor let go, making the mistake of backing up a few steps right as Mordecai did the same, widening the distance between them enough so that the Slovak couldn’t easily use his superior reach to disarm him.
“You want to talk? Then I have a simple question,” Mordecai said.
“Mordecai,” Viktor said. He glared right back at his partner. His friend. “You vouldn’t…”
“What do you intend to do, Viktor?” he said. “Once the Lackadaisy folds, will you retire?”
Viktor growled, baring his teeth. “Lackadaisy vill not fold!” he said, banging his hand on the counter and making the paintings on the wall rattle.
Horatio jumped. The cat was practically flattening himself against the wall of the cafe, tail trembling in terror. Viktor pitied him, but he was too deep into his own fury to think straight.
He’d put everything on hold – all his own grief for Atlas, all his own pain – to protect Mitzi and Mordecai, and for what?
To be stabbed in the back like this?
“This is our home,” he continued. “You vant to join up with rivals minute things get rough?”
“Dear God, there’s no talking to you,” Mordecai snapped, despite how little of an attempt he’d made to do anything of the sort. His eyes flashed and finally, finally there was some feeling in his expression – pure rage. “The business died with him, Viktor! I’m done reasoning with you – give me your guarantee you’ll retire and not let Mitzi drag you into any more foolishness!”
Viktor’s anger turned white hot. “Retire?” he roared. “I vould sooner die than run away vith tail between legs! And besides, vhat you think you can do vith Marigolds by yourself?”
Mordecai raised his pistol. Aimed right at Viktor’s chest.
“Atlas put you vith me to make me your minder!” he said. “You destroy your own life before you twenty years old! You reckless mess vithout me to keep you alive! You vant me to let you get yourself killed –”
Mordecai steadied his pistol in both hands, finger squeezing the trigger.
Viktor’s fury gave way to fear, the thought flashing through his mind – he’s really going to kill me – right before Mordecai adjusted his aim… but just a little.
And fired.
Viktor’s knee exploded in pain and he collapsed to the floor, howling in pain. “Fuck!” he cried, hand uselessly pressing against his wound. He could see bone sticking out, bits of it and his blood spread out across the cafe floor. “MORDECAI! Damn… damn you!”
Through his pain and his blurry vision, he looked up. A dark shape loomed above him, dark fur, dark clothes… a living shadow with bright green eyes.
Viktor looked up into those eyes, the eyes of his co-worker, his partner, his friend and finally part of his family… and he couldn’t tell what he saw there. If he saw anything at all.
All he could do was admit to himself the thing he’d been trying to deny ever since Atlas had died: nothing was ever going to be the same.
The golden age of the Lackadaisy was over.
And so were Viktor’s days out in the field.
♣
With Viktor’s kneecapping, the mood at the Lackadaisy was cemented: hopeless misery set in. There was an unspoken understanding from those remaining that they would follow Mitzi’s lead on this one and since she insisted on rebuilding the Lackadaisy, that was what they would do.
Viktor got the distinct sense that no one but her really believed it was possible, though. He’d been well aware how valuable an asset Mordecai was to the Lackadaisy, but he hadn’t realised until now just how much the other employees had been quietly afraid of him this entire time. As a result, the news that Mordecai had gone to the now dominant Marigold gang meant it was hard to find volunteers to fill out a new team of rum runners to build up a new supply chain to rival them.
Viktor had volunteered, of course, but been unceremoniously benched behind the bar by Mitzi.
Despite his injury, she hadn’t even suggested he retire from the Lackadaisy for good as Mordecai had. Whether it was because she thought it would sting his pride or because she was just that hard up for help, the two remaining members of the old guard never really discussed it.
They did have several discussions over her choice of rum-runners, however.
Horatio had once again ducked for cover when Viktor yelled that in no uncertain terms was Ivy to participate in any operation, whether the girl volunteered her help or not.
Mitzi yelled right back that it wasn’t his choice and if he had a problem with it he could take it up with the band since none of them had had the guts to volunteer to be the new driver. When he told her to just hire someone, she promptly retorted ‘With what money, Viktor?’
He had no answer to that. What odd jobs he was still able to do with his bad knees and bad eye were limited and most of his money had gone on rent and food. He knew full well that everyone else was in much the same boat; no one had the luxury of treating the speak easy as their full time job any more.
With a heavy heart, he watched as Ivy formed a new rum-running team with their loose canon violinist, Rocky. Soon enough, Rocky roped in his impressionable gun-nut cousin to the operation, the next generation forming a trio instead of a duo.
Viktor curled his lip. He was glad of that. He didn’t think he could stand any echoes of his former partner.
That Atlas wasn’t around to coach the trio was both a blessing and a curse. Viktor didn’t think he could take witnessing them take the same path both he and Mordecai had, but on the other hand they were so inept at the job that he was now spending much of his time worrying Rocky was going to walk them into a shallow grave, all for Mitzi’s sake.
♣
Unfortunately, spending much of his time worrying about the young ones still left him with a lot of time. The bar was slow, which meant work was even slower. Viktor was left with a ton of free time to mull things over and as much as he didn’t want to think about it, his thoughts inevitably turned to his former partner.
Of course, everyone else had already seen fit to weigh in on the whole affair. Viktor’s kneecapping had quickly become an infamous story around town, just as often treated as a joke as it was a cautionary tale for anyone looking to underestimate the Marigold gang’s newest hire.
But he’d take the jokes over the reactions of some at the Lackadaisy. His injury had really rattled Mitzi, turning her mild dislike of Mordecai keeping his distance all the way up to a seething loathing that threatened to boil over for several days while Viktor recovered from the worst of the damage.
Worse still was Ivy. She’d confessed to him once that she’d had nightmares just from hearing Horatio’s account of the whole event. Dreams where Mordecai would turn up in the doorway to the Little Daisy with black fur and blank eyes. Dreams where Viktor would fall dead at his newly polished shoes.
Viktor couldn’t say how he himself felt.
Angry, obviously. More than that – furious. Frustrated.
Afraid.
Like his worst memories of the War, Viktor found the memory reoccurring in his dreams, when he closed his eyes, when cars backfired on the street…
And each time he struggled to remember what exactly had happened. What had they even been fighting about, for Mordecai to do something like that to him?
He was leaving. He was defecting to the Marigolds.
But why? Why?
The most obvious reasons were the hardest to accept: that Mordecai was a cold-hearted pragmatist, through and through. Just as everyone had always said and Viktor had wilfully ignored.
He thought on it several times a day, especially in the early days manning the bar. He remembered how he’d felt about Mordecai in those early days, how sure he’d been the kid had something missing in either his head or his heart.
He couldn’t decide whether the kneecapping proved it or not.
Mordecai could have just killed him. Taken him out of the competition for good. In some ways it would have been kinder than subjecting him to this – this damnable half-life he had now. And yet Mordecai didn’t do it.
But then, so what? How could anyone do this to all his former colleagues? More than just Viktor’s kneecapping, defecting to the Marigold gang had granted them a great boon in terms of man power and experience. If they could find Mordecai a partner who’d work around his eccentricities, they’d be a force to be reckoned with. The Lackadaisy would always be on the back foot even if they did manage to get their supplies back.
Worse still, Viktor couldn’t help but wonder – had Mordecai been planning this from the get-go? He’d assumed his falling apart at Atlas’ death had been sheer panic and grief, but what if it wasn’t?
What if Mordecai had been struggling because far from short-circuiting, he’d already been thinking far ahead of Viktor into the future...and he knew exactly what he was going to do?
This thought brought one of the worst feelings out of him: futility. Viktor wanted to believe it could have turned out differently, if only he’d visited sooner or stayed with Mordecai until daybreak on that terrible night.
But if he was wrong about that…
When Viktor failed to get an answer by weighing up all the factors logically, he instead fell back on brooding at the bar.
He kept revisiting the moment Mordecai had shot him.
Had he hesitated to do it? Had he regretted it after? That look of shame Viktor had seen when he’d met his sisters again, had it been there when Viktor had stared up at him from the floor?
He thought he remembered Mordecai steadying the gun in both hands. But then, maybe he hadn’t.
Maybe Mordecai had shot him with no more ceremony than he’d execute someone in a back alley.
It was hard to ignore the possibility Viktor was just fixing the memory how he wanted it to be.
Other memories came back to him, in the long hours spent polishing the same shot glass over and over. Little things, mostly – happier times.
He remembered the board games they used to play in happier times. All of them played – the Mays, some of the band and Mordecai, too, when Viktor could rope him into it. They’d realised quickly that anything involving maths or strategies surrounding numbers were a non-starter, because Mordecai would calculate the optimum method to win, thrash them all and then complain about how boring and pedestrian it was while Viktor had to make sure the others didn’t strangle him.
Anything requiring patterns or symmetry held Mordecai’s attention better. His favourite of all was chess, due to the huge number of combinations and beautiful checkmates that the board could conjure up.
It helped Viktor wasn’t bad at chess, either. They’d often passed long hours on one game alone.
But that wasn’t what Viktor remembered now. He remembered how they’d found out that the one type of game Mordecai struggled with was anything requiring co-operation or the ability to read his opponents. He frequently struggled to get anyone outside of Viktor or Atlas to willingly ally with him in order to win.
“I fear you’ve simply got the wrong aura for this game, Mr Heller,” Atlas told him once, chuckling. “No one wants to trust an obvious killer.”
It was just another thing Atlas had been wrong about, in the end.
Viktor had trusted him, despite all the warning signs.
He’d never truly believed Mordecai would hurt him, right up until the moment when he’d pulled the trigger.
In the end, Viktor figured, all this introspection was useless.
He was never going to make his peace with this unless he came face to face with Mordecai again.
But whether he’d kill or be killed… even he couldn’t say.