A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(102)

“She also tricked me, though. She called me as the Seven of Spades and manipulated me into spilling my guts so she could use my voice against you. How could she do both?”

Levi removed his cap and raked a hand through his hair, fluffing up the curls. “Some people believe that the ends justify the means. But usually those people have something in their brain that stops them from taking that belief to its extreme, that warns them when they’re going too far. Natasha . . . didn’t have that. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with tricking you, because she believed she was doing it for a good reason, and that made it okay. The part of her brain that should have told her it was wrong-the part that should have stopped her from doing the things she did-it was missing.”

Fiddling with the tissues, Adriana continued scowling at the grave. “You can’t know that for sure. You don’t know she actually cared about me. She could have been laughing at me the whole time.”

“I do know that for sure.” Steeling himself, Levi turned to face Adriana instead of the grave. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

She gave him the side-eye.

“Last week, your former foster father was murdered.”

Adriana’s jaw dropped.

“It was an apparent home invasion,” Levi said. “He was the only one in the house at the time. There aren’t any suspects, and the only lead is a neighbor’s report that they saw strangers with hornet tattoos outside the house around the time of the break-in.”

“Los Avispones,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“They don’t have territory in Reno.” Her eyes were wide and shocked. “There’s no way they would have been there unless . . .”

She clearly understood, but Levi had to say it anyway. “The working theory is that Natasha put measures in place to order his murder in the event of her death or capture. The Seven of Spades told you that they couldn’t kill him because it would reveal a connection to you. Now that she’s dead, that’s no longer a concern.”

Adriana looked back at the grave, blinking rapidly, her face twisted with confusion. “I . . .” She darted a glance at Levi that was full of shame.

“It’s okay,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay if you’re glad he’s dead, and even if you’re grateful to Natasha for arranging it. You don’t have to feel guilty.”

“How can I hate her for everything she did, but then be happy about this one thing that’s personal to me? That’s so hypocritical. It’s-it’s not fair.”

“Is there a reason it should be?”

Adriana paused, considering, and then shook her head. “I guess not.”

“Human beings like to pretend we’re rational.” Levi shrugged. “We aren’t. It would be easier if we could write Natasha off as completely evil-if we could say that everything good she ever did was a lie or a trick, and then cut her out of our hearts like she never existed. If we could deny that some of the terrible things she did ended up having positive consequences.”

He put an arm around Adriana’s shoulders. She slipped her own arm around his waist and leaned against him.

“But people don’t work that way,” he said quietly. “It’ll never be simple. It’ll never be easy. We just have to learn to live with that.”

In the aftermath of Natasha’s Pyrrhic victory, some people were hailing her as a hero, as if one grand gesture repaid the years of murder and torture. Levi knew better. Natasha’s final sacrifice, like every action before it, had been motivated by selfishness. There had been nothing heroic about her.

But she hadn’t been evil, either. This wasn’t a comic book, and the Seven of Spades hadn’t been some genius villainous mastermind. She’d been nothing more or less than a broken human being who’d wreaked untold grief and destruction in her quest to feel whole.

Standing at her grave, Levi was no longer angry. All he felt was sorrow.



In a lifetime of being othered, Levi had never felt more keenly out of place than he did at Gibbs’s wake.

The rowdy bar was packed past capacity with people honoring Gibbs by getting uproariously drunk, just like he would have wanted. The atmosphere was lighter than it’d been at the funeral-celebrating Gibbs’s life, rather than mourning his death.

But Levi, without meaning to be, was a total buzzkill. People didn’t know whether it was okay to approach him, and those who decided against it gave him the kind of wide berth they’d give a man who hadn’t showered in a month. The ones who stopped to chat had no idea what to say, bumbling through a blend of gratitude, sympathy, and determined cheerfulness that resulted in one painfully awkward encounter after another. Dominic did his best to smooth things over, but even his legendary charm was no match for Levi’s unintentional downer aura.

Half an hour in, Dominic returned to the bar for a second round of drinks-though only after asking Levi a dozen times if he’d be okay by himself. Levi tamped down his instinct to snap an acerbic response. He truly appreciated Dominic’s concern; he wouldn’t imply otherwise by lashing out.

Alone at their table, Levi studied the half-melted ice in his glass to avoid looking at anyone’s face. How the hell was he ever going to work with these people again?