Billy shook his head.

"Well that's some bullshit if I've ever heard it. Not crazy my ass. Look around you. Look at how many guys have to guard your house day and night so that people you know want to hurt you and your family don't just show the fuck up one day. Some might say that's a bit crazy. I say it's a bit crazy."

He took a drink and waved his hand before she could reply or get too mad.

"Don't get me wrong, I get it, and at this point you're damned if you do damned if you don't. Might as well live with the crazy you know. Same boat here Bella. I chose my bed. I worked my ass off for this bed as a matter of fact. So I get it. But don't you ever lie to me and tell me we're not crazy for doing it."

He sipped his drink again and then looked at the desk.

"So. When were you planning on wiping out my city? Was it going to be before, or after you told me to fuck off and never speak to you again?"

He smiled and put his glass down.

"I'm kidding. The maps were a good play, they might have been intimidating if I thought you were serious. I'm just trying to break you really. Make you say some stupid shit so that it opens up the dam and you let it all out at once."

He stood then and took to a knee next to her, pulling her into a hug into his shoulder.

"I don't play the hero. I just do what I know is right and is best for everyone around me. And you didn't lose me tonight, so everything is alright Izzy. Don't worry."

She sat there, unreacting to everything he said, deep in thought.  He joked about wanting to make the flood gates open and then, either to be ironic or because she was just too drunk - they did.

"I'm always planning for it."  She admitted.  "It wasn't a play.  A good Don knows it isn't if... it's when.  Why do you think I don't want you to date her?"  

She looked to Billy, there was a coldness to her eyes.  "Every day I think through what would be necessary if that phone rings and it's Detroit, or New York, or LA... or wherever.  All of them.  All the time.  It's my job to be, at a word, ready to send our people to die.  I need to know whose gun will shoot you, and Joey, and Rebecca... I have to be ready to send them after a name of people I care about and that isn't hypothetical.  Billy... I have notes on ever operation in the country.  Where they have businesses, how many made men then have, what their names are and who they might run to for protection so I can shoot their protectors before they get there."

She shook her head, "It's real to me.  It has to be.  It's my job or people - my family, they'll die and it's been that way for years now.  THAT is the crazy I am, the crazy you will become, always knowing that with one hand you'll shake and hug these people but the other hand... it's writing down facts and figures to find the best most efficient way to wipe out an entire city."

Her lip quivered, a tear ran down her face.  "I hate that I've thought about how to kill you, but cards on the table, if you haven't thought the same about me... you're failing them, Billy.  Your whole family.  Your city."

She knocked back the whole glass of whiskey.

"Yeah.  I'm crazy."  She admitted.  "And tonight, for all my fucking planning and protections, it's coming to this.  It's my hand, not someone else's that ruins it all."

She wiped a tear away with the back of her hand.

"I'm sorry I'm not who you think I am.  I remember her.  I like pretending to be her from time to time, but sometimes I think she died a long time ago and I'm just waiting for this old body to catch up to her."  She chuckled through tears that ran rivers down her cheeks. 

Billy put both his hands on her lap then.

"Hey, you know none of what happened tonight is your fault. There's no way you could have anticipated any of it, and the only people who got hurt were Durden's men, and Will's face. To be fair, his face was as much his own big mouth as anything."

Billy reached up and patted Bella on the head.

"I may be failing my city, but I have never planned on, or even thought about how to kill you. There are other people in Detroit that will do that. I'm an enforcer. I'm not a planner. So maybe, just maybe I need you to stick around a little longer. Please? Maybe teach me to be better at what I'm supposed to be doing. Lord knows I can't teach myself."

He sat back in the chair next to her desk then and sipped at the whiskey again.

"For the record, I'm not the man I was even a week ago. Life changes us, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Sometimes it's just change. Only reason you're alive today is because you let life change you. If it doesn't change you, it kills you instead."

He finished that second glass of whiskey and put it down on the desk.

"I don't know what you did tonight. Hell, for as much as I know you could have Durden's love child sitting in your stomach right now. Not a pretty picture, but I need to make it. i need to make it because I need to point out that whatever you did tonight means that you get to live, and so does Aurora. And no matter what you did, you're gonna do everything you can to get back at that fucker and make it right, and I'm here for you when you do. Me, and your dad."

He put his hand on her shoulder and looked out the window into the darkness, keeping quiet for a good time. He let Bella just cry, silently. It was telling of who she was as a person. Even now, even in her most vulnerable moments, she was going to put on her strongest appearance possible. She wasn't going to crack.

"I'm going to bed. I'm here in the morning to make any and every plan I can with you and help you along the way. Oh, and I'll never say it in public ever again, but if you and I are ever behind closed doors, someone needs to remind you of the woman you once were, and the woman you have the potential to be. So from now on, to me, you're Izzy."

He squeezed her shoulder then and made his way toward the door turning back to smile before he was out in the hallway alone.

"Billy..."  She said with a hint of desperation in her tone.  "I need you on a plane to Montreal... tonight."  

She swallowed the lump in her throat.  

"I have no right to ask you this.  None at all.  I'll regret it in the morning, I know I will but it's exactly the sort of thing I could ask him and I'm praying that maybe... just maybe... you're more like him than I know."

She stepped close to Billy and whispered, "Tara.  Gavin's twin.  She's at a cabin in Montreal... or she was.  She isn't answering now.  And... I... to get Durden to leave and not hurt us, I told him where she was."

Bella shuddered as she held in the sob.

"I need to make sure he didn't kill her and I can't tell Gavin... not yet.  Can you... will you help me?"

Billy nodded.

"Of course I can. But you can't tell anyone where I've gone. If I'm going into potential danger, I don't want to have to worry about anyone else coming with me and getting hurt."

He looked her in the eye.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of it. One way or another. Make the call and have the plane ready."

He closed the door behind him and made his way to the guest house. He needed to grab two things, and wake his men.