As Billy spoke, Gavin and Bella glanced at one another throughout.  No words were spoken. 

"Sometimes they do."  Gavin agreed, nodding.  

Bella passed the artwork to Gavin and he pulled the journal out of his pocket, placing it within.  Then, looking sad, Bella stood up.  "Excuse me a moment.  I'm going to the powder room."  With that Bella left the table and headed for the bathroom.

Gavin turned towards Billy as soon as Bella was out of the room.  

"You said you want and appreciate advice from me.  I want to tell you some things about my girl and give you a word of advice.  I don't expect you to do everything as I do or say of course, but the question is ... how open do you want me to be here?  Would you rather you did this without input from an old man who has no idea what you two have shared ... or would you like me to at least give you some more information that could be helpful?"

Billy responded, "Gavin I respect you, and if there's one thing I've learned from you and your wife so far it's that your advice, while not always applicable, is priceless." 

Gavin nodded.

"What do you say about us going out back to smoke?  You got any of those cigars on you?"  He smirked.  "I might also have a pocket full of cash and a few dice in my pocket... if you're interested?"  

Billy nodded.

"Gavin, I always have at least two cigars on me. On top of that, you know me well enough to know I can't say no to dice."

Billy stood and then looked to Gavin to lead the way to the patio. He would know better after all. On their way Billy pulled out two cigars. The foil had a blueish hue to it.

"These were like the ones I gave you last time. I can't say I have anything new I like yet, so it'll be the same boring stuff again."

He smiled and held out the lighter as they stepped outside.

Gavin took the lighter with a simple, "Thanks."  He didn't mind the same old thing.  The excitement of new things was good but there was something to be said about the familiar as well.

"I'm not perfect and my ways aren't the only ones out there..."  He began, taking a long drag on the cigar, exhaling like a man who truly enjoyed not just the taste but the act of smoking.

"...but, speaking from experience, people who we love the most are able to hurt us the most.  And the amount of pain you feeling is proportional to the amount of trouble you should be willing to go through to preserve that in your life."

"Remember that 'love is a choice' thing?  Yeah, well, my wife just left the table ... not because of what you said... but what I said.  She has done some things that haven't always left me feeling that I was first in her life.  There were moments I felt betrayed.  Moments where maybe I was, if not in deeds then in spirit."

That was clearly NOT something Gavin felt great about sharing and probably NOT something, by the look on his face, he thought should be shared outside of this moment.

"But I decided a long time ago exactly how much I was willing to endure for her.  For as much as bullets and fists hurt, they're easy.  I'd rather be shot all day long than have her betray me.  And I'd rather fight through forgiving her for her fuck-ups, than to give her up.  Isabella is a good woman, just like our daughter."

"Aurora is honest to a fault.  Loyal.  Devoted.  Kind.  Brave.  Fierce.  She believes in doing the right thing, not for profit but because it's right and she believes that wrong is wrong, no matter the reasons for it.  You know I did some research into the guys she was killing for profit and not one of them didn't deserve a bullet six times over."

He shook his head, clearly proud of her.

"But she's also prideful.  She knows what she's capable of and she demands respect.  She expects perfection from herself and when she fails at something she's so brutal on herself that she's almost incapacitated with fear and frustration.  She has equally high expectations from other people around her and when they let her down... she's just as brutal on them as she is on herself.  Unfairly so.  And she's typically slow to completely trust people because, well, in her experience people who are your friends are just people looking for something.  I've watched her discover that people she deeply cared about ... were only around her for what they thought she could get them and the girl broke.  Shattered by the betrayal.  And, because of this, Aurora pushes people away and usually is alone."

Gavin had said more to Billy about Aurora than he wanted to, but he loved his little girl and he liked Billy.  He couldn't and wouldn't tell the boy what to do, but he could make sure the man had information to help him make choices that would spare them both a lot of pain or bring them closer and so, he decided to share it.

He dug into his pocket and pulled out a thick wad of cash and a few dice.

"You're the guest here... I'll let you pick the game and determine what we're playing for.  Dice hasn't really ever been my game and with me talking like Bella... I don't think I've got a snowballs shot in hell of winning this time."

Billy took the dice from Gavin.

"Chicago it is. Round two, here we go."

He looked around and settled on a table that was sitting outside, he brushed it off briefly and rolled the dice. A three and a one.

"Not me yet, your shot."

As he pushed the dice over he took a puff on his own cigar.

"You know Gavin. Aurora told me as much about the people around her, in her own way that is. The problem with me is. I already have everything. I have money, I have power, I have position and authority. Honestly, what could your daughter possibly give to me that I don't already have myself? i can only think of two things, and one of those things I can get without Aurora specifically giving it to me. Point of fact, I'm here and she's not. We will never be blood Gavin, but you're always going to be the closest thing I've got to a father figure at this point, so congrats, get used to that shit."

He ashed his cigar and watched as Gavin took the dice.

"Oh and as far as expecting perfection. Well."

Billy shrugged.

"She can expect me to be damned near close as I can be, but she's gonna be real disappointed. I'm kind of shit at most things I try. Except for dice and money. Those I've got a handle on at least."

"I'm pretty sure that everyone we know would tell you that there are better choices for father figures than the guy sitting out here with you now." 

Gavin laughed. 

"And I don't think she's looking for perfection.  Additionally, it's probably fair to say that she can't think you're only here to use her as some manner of stepping stone.  You are different than the other guys who have been sniffing around in the past.  So far as I know there were three serious boys before you."

He smiled as his dice came up favorable.  He wasn't one for gloating but he honestly had no talent for dice and he suspected that his next roll would not go half so well as the first.  

"Maybe there's something to be learned from their tales & the impact they had on Rora ... but I don't know if that's something you care to hear anything about?"

Billy nodded as the dice came up with a two for Gavin. He won the first round and Billy slid him two hundred dollar bills.

"Winner tosses."

He said clearly and then took the cigar out of his mouth again. As Gavin mentioned Aurora's past Billy growled involuntarily.

"I know about one. Well, knew, about one. Not gonna fuck with anybody ever again, that's for fucking sure."

He looked around and realized they had nothing to drink with them.

"Hey, you wouldn't want to get a drink too would ya?"

He watched as Gavin tossed the dice and they came up with a two and a one.

"Son of a bitch. Maybe you should talk more often."

He slid the man another three hundreds.

Gavin laughed, "Maybe that's why Bella talks so much?"  

He went into the house and came out with a decanter of golden colored liquid and two tumbler glasses.  He put them down on the small outdoor table.  

"Careful, it's got a kick."

He poured himself a small shot.

"Well, I'm not sure which guy you're talking about, but I'm going out on a limb to guess Mancini?"  He chuckled.  "Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.  That smug little fucker.  I would have shot him for hitting my girl, but the way I hear it she handled herself fine."

He shrugged.

"I'm not going to cry about hearing that you finished the bastard off though."

Billy raised his eyebrows.

"Hit? Not what he told me. Gavin, you ever rip a man apart with your bare hands? I mean really rip a man apart? Take all the strength you have in your body and tear at his flesh? I lost myself with that guy. One of my guys shot him, and he went down and then I just. Oh boy the things he told me..."

Billy grit his teeth again. He could still feel his eye half closed bleeding in the back of his mind. Mancini had gotten the better of him. He had thought he had the guy, but you never underestimate a cornered animal. Billy knew that now.

"I cut him open Gavin. I cut him open and I gutted him like a fish with my bare hands. He was screaming the entire time and he deserved every second of it. And then I just left him there pulling at his own innards trying to put them back where they belonged. I stood at the end of the alley, wiping my hand off on his jacket until he stopped moving. To his credit, he got some of his guts back in. Just some."

Billy looked away from Gavin then and took a deep breath to calm down. All of his pent up rage and anger was going slowly away. He picked up the shot Gavin had poured for him and downed it. He would likely need another before he went to bed tonight.

"I need a moment." 

He said standing up, slamming his liquor and walking off towards the water's edge.  The sort of anger Billy had expressed created images in Gavin's mind, images of what might have been done to the light of his life - his little girl.  He was beyond incensed.  It was HIS JOB to protect her.  His job and he didn't just fail at doing it, once again he'd failed at even knowing she needed saving.

He wanted to hit something.  It should have been his hands ripping that bastard apart!  Images flashed through his mind, thoughts of someone he hadn't reflected on in years - a pretty blonde brutalized in Chicago.  Another pretty blonde he could protect, unable to stand or walk, in Sicily.  And then the people it always came back to, his parents.

He fumed.  He paced.  There was no one to get revenge upon.  No place to put his rage.  Silent the wolf stalked alone along the moonlit shoreline until it came back to his daughter and why he'd failed her.  Why didn't she tell him and more importantly, how did Billy know?  Did she tell him?  If she had, it said mountains.

He looked back to the house.  The boy loved her.  He was deeply troubled by what he'd done for her, but clearly, he loved her.  Did she trust him, had she opened up to someone at last - was it him?  Did she really love him that much?

Gavin began walking back.  Distantly thunder rolled.  An autumn storm was far off, but it was headed their way.  Gavin ignored it as he stepped up on the patio.  His cigar was long gone.

"How did you find out?"  He asked.

"Horse's mouth."

Billy said succinctly as he put out his cigar.

"I heard the guys name back when Will got his nose busted. Will have mentioned it, and then I got some more information from some of Tyler's guys. I had one of my own track him down. Found him operating in Philly so, I took a plane, and that was that."

He looked down at the table and then back to Gavin.

​​​​​​​"It's your roll by the way."

Gavin's brow furrowed.  "Will?"

He shook his head trying to put together how and why Will would have mentioned Mancini to Billy.  Had she talked to her brother about him?  Or, about what happened?  Surely Will would have told his parents... wouldn't he?

Gavin thought for a moment about whether or not he would have told a secret like that to anyone if Tara had shared it with him and he realized, no.  He wouldn't.  He would have handled it personally.  But his son wasn't very big.  His son had no business trading punches with a man who was the size of Mancini.  So...

"She... hasn't talked with you about it, has she?  Did you ask her?  Is she... okay?  I mean ... do you know?"  

He shuddered and tossed the dice not really caring what came up on them so much as he cared what Billy might say.

Billy shook his head.

"No idea."

The dice tumbled to reveal a two and a three. A Five, finally Gavin's lucky streak had run out. He picked up the dice and rattled them around in his hand.

"I haven't seen her since I went. Honestly though, I'm not sure I want to talk about it now. It's in the past. It's buried deep, and it can't come bubbling back up again. I took care of it. Simple as that."

He tossed the dice, a four and a one. Luck hadn't shifted entirely then, it was waiting to see who deserved it.

Billy had an odd sense that luck was some weird thing. Not quite a creature. More like an angel. He couldn't see it, but he knew it was there. And it knew who it wanted to help, and when, and why.

"Your throw."

Gavin sighed.

"You're different. I guess I'd hoped that maybe she'd opened up to you."

He picked up the dice.

"She's had three relationships before you, at least that I'm aware of.  The first one was a ladder climber, Anthony Russo.  He wanted to be a made man in the Race Street Operation.  Started out young.  Ambitious.  Smart kid.  Sought out Aurora at school knowing that she was his ticket out of poverty.  This was back when she was about seven.  He... maybe eleven?  Russo pounded the fuck out of a boy who had been giving her a hard go of things, from that point on, Aurora took him everywhere with her."

"I didn't dislike the kid but,"  He refilled his glass. 

"I think she knew as well as I did, why he had started hanging around her.  Of course, all of his hard work paid off, she talked him up with Louis and the kid got noticed.  He moved up in the operation & when she was a teen I caught wind they were sneaking off together.  I guess what had been business for the kid eventually became something else.  So... she was cutting school and ditching her bodyguards to get a moment here and there with him.  The boy was a gangster, by 19, and everyone knew that he was getting special attention from Louis and Bella and would be made inside a year or so"

Gavin leaned back in his seat, tossed the dice, and smiled at the double set of two pips.

"One of Louis' wise guys, either because of jealousy or out of ambition, decided that the boy had to go.  He later claimed some goombas spotted the boy with his hands all over Aurora in speakeasy.  He thought he was doing a solid for Bella, or so he said.  I'm more inclined to believe it was petty jealousy that caused him to send Russo out on a hooch run."

"He told the boy the deal was so big he'd make his bones on it.  What the moron didn't expect was that the boy told Aurora about the run.  My daughter realized how dangerous the situation really was, so she didn't let him go alone.  She cut school, ditched her protection detail, and climbed in the car with the kid to go off on something I wouldn't have asked most wise guys to do alone."

Gavin shook his head.

"My understanding is, on their way back, the pulled over in a roadside park ... that's when the fellas caught up with him.  They thought he was with a working girl when they double tapped him."

Gavin took a drink and wiped his lips before continuing.

"Aurora killed one before the other even knew what was happening, or who she was.  As the story goes... upon seeing that they'd aced the boy all over our kid he ditched his weapon and begged for mercy.  Aurora apparently gave it to him cause the guy lived to tell the tale.  She drove off.  She didn't tell anyone.  Just came home while Bella and I were out, cleaned up, and tried to pretended it didn't happen."

"Mezzo was the one to tell us the story after the survivor came crawling back.  It's my understanding the bastard who gave the order met the business end of Mezzo's baseball bat repeatedly right in his office.  But she still hasn't talked with us about that day... I don't know if she's talked to anyone about it.  All I know is... seeing shit like that, it changes a person.  She should have been different.  I didn't notice a damn thing and again, now here we are with this shit Mancini did to her.  She apparently didn't tell anyone... maybe Will... and I, her own father, knew nothing."

Billy sighed. Slide four hundred dollars to Gavin and then picked up the dice.

"To be fair, I didn't know anything until Mancini opened his big mouth. I just get a hot head for guys who do wrong by women. It could be something as stupid as not holding the door for them. I once pushed a guy up against a door for that exact thing. He didn't hold the door open for a girl he was with. I grabbed him by the throat and used him to hold the door open. 'After you Miss.' I said, and she walked in. I looked at the guy and told him that's how you treat a lady and left the place."

He threw the dice then.

"I have a thing for how women are supposed to be treated. I have a thing for how the world shits on ladies so much. I figure the least we can do in the position we are in is teach a lesson or two to the scumbags. Maybe, just maybe, we can go a little ways toward making things right. Even if it's only for one girl every day."

He shrugged and watched the dice tumble to a stop. Six and One. Not the five he needed.

"We're not so different,"  Gavin admitted, picking up the dice and throwing them.  

Gavin looked at the dice, "You're not throwing the game to make an old man feel better are you?"  He smirked.

"I'll talk to Will.  If she's talking with him that's something, though I can't imagine what help he can be for her aside from just a friendly ear."  He shook his head.  "I wish she felt like she could tell me about it.  I thought that we had the sort of relationship where she could.  I guess... I guess she worries about what I think too."

He finished off his glass.

"You'll need to keep an eye out for her need to do that.  We all have our weaknesses, our dark shit.  Takes time for some of us to learn to open up.  It's not easy, but she had a good upbringing.  I guess I hoped that it would be enough to counterbalance all the heavy things she's seen and faced.  We tried to protect her, tried to make her ready to face whatever came her way.  Maybe we succeeded too well.  Maybe she thinks she needs to carry it by herself when, very clearly, she doesn't."

He paused.

"Thank you."  He finally made himself say.  "Thank you for what you did to that bastard and I'm sorry that it was you and not me that has to live with that.  I'm sorry that I glad you did all you did.  I'm glad he suffered.  You shouldn't have had to do it... I know you were willing, clearly capable, but... I should have done something.  It should have been me.  I'm her father.  I'm sorry, but I'm grateful to you."

Billy reached over to the whiskey bottle and poured two glasses. He then slide one to Gavin and picked up one himself.

"Gavin, I would like to make a pact with you, right here and right now. I am never going to apologize to you again for so long as I live, and you aren't going to apologize to me either. I'm not going to claim to love your family as much as you do, but I love them all as much as I can, and I never want you to be sorry for how much I love them. I never want to be sorry for the things I will do for them. i never want you to be sorry for the things I am in the position to do. I want to make a pact with you right now that we will never be sorry with each other for protecting the Byrne family. It doesn't matter which one of us does it, sometimes it'll be you, sometimes me, sometimes both. What matters is the protecting."

He raised his glass and waited to see what Gavin would do or say.

Gavin nodded and picked up the glass. 

"You have a deal."

He took another drink.  He was starting to feel it affecting him.  Again the thunder rolled distantly.  

"Gonna be one hell of a night.  I haven't seen a front like that in a while." 

He squinted looking into the dark of the night sky, lit up occasionally by distant lightning all hidden up inside clouds.

He pulled out the journal from his pocket then. 

"While I'm thinking about it... I wanted to give you this back.  I appreciate you sharing something so personal with me.  Not too many people do that sort of thing in our line of work."

Billy reached out and took the Journal with a nod.

"Mmm, I gotta give it to your wife to look over. I told her she could after she showed me..."

He gestured to the house behind him and realized for the first time how much he'd had to drink so far that night. He spun too fast. At least he was already standing, he didn't have to worry about getting up and getting the spins from that.

"...this."

He heaved a labored breath then and opened his mouth but shut it again. Instead he stared at the sky with Gavin for a while. He wasn't sure what to do now, where this was going, or what to do next. He was afraid that he was going to hear the old adage of 'best laid plans' sometime in the near future and he really didn't want to deal with that. Most of all, he was very very concerned suddenly with how thin the walls of an old house like this were. On a night when Bella and Gavin were going to be under one roof, talking about the things kids do, with nobody around to interrupt them? Billy might very well be thankful for a little bit of thunder tonight.

"Soon as it starts raining I say we head inside. Bella said she would draw me tonight. I kinda hope she's still up for it. She's real good after all."

Gavin laughed.

"We'll be lucky she didn't fall asleep with how long we've been out here chewing the fat.  I've probably said more to you tonight than I've said to any six people in the last month.  I usually leave the talking to Bella."

He looked back at the house, "We could head in.  See if she's still up and about.  I know I interrupted your day together.  Though, between you and I, I don't know if you want to share that book with Bella.  She's... well, she's likely to feel pretty bad she didn't know about your father's feelings.  Though most of us would find that silly, she's... well, she's got a big heart and can be sentimental... as I'm sure you now know.  I mean... just look at this house."

Billy shook his head.

"Nah the house is nothing. The crap in the house has only a little to do with how much she loves people. It's got more to do with her not being able to let them go when they're gone. Her heart? Me being here is more a show of her big heart than the house itself. She don't owe me nothin' and she don't even know me. Like you said just now, she didn't even really know my dad. So why did she bother with a nobody that day I walked into her office?"

He shrugged and touched his chest.

"Big heart."