I can't believe this. I just can't--Jesus Christ, Armand, cover me.

He slams his fist against the side of the car he's currently crouched behind with a furious cry, clenching his fists and taking deep breaths to calm himself, to get seeing straight again.

Sometimes silence wasn't golden. Sometimes silence could be torture. Sometimes silence could be the thing that drove you to the brink of insanity. This would've been one of those times.

He had been avoiding the Stingray lately.

It had a little to do with the fact that the scar from being stabbed by a fucking letter opener was still very visible and a lot to do with the fact that his mask just hadn't been up to his own standards lately. He lacked the patience to deal with small talk he could normally keep up for hours and the force of will to laugh at the humorless jokes so many of his clientele swore were funny, and given his usual behavior, the change would be extremely noticeable.

Somewhere along the line the fury that had crushed so many of his whiskey tumblers had drained out of his feet into the floor; the anger that had slammed Sandy McKenzie into the wall of his office had melted into the shadows his bowed frame cast on the world. The lips that had so recently been cast into some kind of limbo between spitting expletives and finding the mouth they missed now fell open with words he didn't know, couldn't speak.

He felt nothing.

Was this what his life had come to? Had he made this far just to be robbed not only of his natural emotions at birth, but now of his fabricated ones, too? There seemed to be some great injustice in it to him: he wanted to be filled with an elemental rage, the kind that shook the ground and cracked the earth, that had gotten him stabbed, and instead he was left standing in the half-light of the setting sun existing in the space of a measured kind of apathy that was more nothingness than living.

Such was his lassitude that the distant sounding of sirens and the serpentine curling of smoke toward the heavens hardly gave him pause. It crossed his mind that it was probably mob-related, if past events were any indication. She was more likely than not involved, and if her history of violence was to be trusted, her life was probably threatened.

He wanted desperately to worry for her. He wanted to run toward the site of the current emergency, to search fearfully for what he knew in his heart would be her corpse, to feel regret and hurt and the impulse for violence coil deep in his gut and drive his feet forward and a bullet into the forehead of whoever had wronged her so.

But he didn't. He couldn't.

One pointlessly-spent hour spilled over into the next as Charlotte chain-smoked the morning away on the fire escape of her apartment. Something had prompted her to wake up early enough to actually watch the sunrise, something she hadn’t done since she was a child, with Aidan right alongside her. The city had gotten so quiet as of late - no interesting work, no good parties, not even the faintest whisper of any gossip or otherwise minimally-engaging conversation. She hated it, and she hated herself for being stuck in that position. Then again, Charlotte was never quite one to be entirely happy with the world, regardless of what it presented.

That was, of course, not including Rory. Regardless of what Smokey had said about him, there was still something about the very thought of him that made the corners of Charlotte’s lips tip upwards. Christ, she was in deeper than she had ever meant to be, certainly deeper than she had bothered to realize before, and the more the woman thought on it, the more she wanted to see him, if only to have him help her understand - or possibly distract her from understanding-  her feelings.

It was still early, but that only meant that she had time to either try to cook something for breakfast or pick something up. As per usual, Charlotte swayed towards the latter, walking just across the street to Buona Terra after fixing herself up for the day. It was one of the fancier, and therefore more expensive, Italian restaurants that populated this part of the city, and, thankfully, she had done enough dealings (on behalf of Smokey) with the owner that he gave her a pretty remarkable discount. Before she knew it, her hands were full with a small tin of cookies and other delectable sweets - certainly much more than she knew what to do with, which, of course, gave her the perfect excuse to go and visit Rory.

Hailing a cab, she slid in, placing the sweets beside her as she gave directions to his apartment as best she remembered. Not more than a few moments into the ride, just barely a few miles past her apartment complex, a deep, hollow boom resounded, shaking the very earth itself. The car came to a grinding halt, the screech of the tires more than audible, and she looked back towards the area, the car's rear window thankfully still intact. Two more explosions reverberated even through the taxi, and she lowered herself to the cloth of the seat, her hands shielding her head and neck from the flying bits of shattered glass as best as she could manage. 

Once it seemed as though the worst had subsided, Charlotte returned to a passenger's usual sitting position, locking eyes with the young cabbie who was rather fearfully staring at her, his voice quavering in fear. "Y-You alright, miss?" She didn't respond at first, instead choosing to gaze back at the smoke and rubble polluting the streets. There was too much fire and debris, but if her mind wasn't too rattled from the state of things, she could have sworn that was her fucking apartment blown to pieces. The brunette squeezed her eyes shut and turned back around to face the driver, inhaling and exhaling sharply before saying, "Fucking drive, would you? Now."

The second he could skid his car to a stop as close to the action as he could get, he ran. He shoved through people running away and running toward it all. //

Victor grunted, forcing his eyes open. He was still lying in the rubble of the store he'd ducked into for cover, must have passed out again at some point. The time he'd been unconscious had done nothing to actually help any of his pain, however-- if anything it was just all the worse. He was relieved he'd managed to wrap up his bullet wound with his tie to stop the bleeding before that happened, but he knew it definitely needed some tending to and preferably in a clean place far from any Macini mobsters. The blood on his head had dried too, leaving dark reddish-brown streaks all the way down to his jaw and speckled across the collar of his shirt. 

Getting up felt like torture, but he'd been in worse skirmishes than this (he didn't really know what that said about him as a person at this point, considering this one was pretty damned bad). He pointed his pistol out the window first, moving cautiously to the door. He only had the bullets in his chamber and a few in his pocket, having never expected something of this scale to go down. He supposed that was a mistake on his behalf.

Still, he needed to get to Fran, see if she was all right. If Giovanni had planned something like this-- or even if he hadn't-- he knew she was in danger. Fran could handle herself just fine, but he didn't just have this position for show. Besides, there were likely other Lombardi members injured in the blast, possibly even killed, and it'd be easier to round up their forces if he started with the leader. At least he knew exactly where she had been at the time.

The smoke wasn't quite as bad when he stepped back out onto the street, but he still coughed as it entered his lungs. He was weary from being thrown by the explosion and from the blood loss, but he just tried to keep his vision focused and listened with his working ear for any sounds of attack or of distress.

Where the hell were the police? He would have thought the place would be crawling with them, unless of course they couldn't get by the debris.

...He really didn't want to think about the police right now.

Still, why blow up both sides of the street? Macini mobsters were just as trapped as Lombardi mobsters now, and he was sure all the explosion had managed to do was piss Fran off royally. It just didn't seem like a move that made any sense, unless...

Perhaps Giovanni didn't set it up, or... if he did, then he didn't set up all of it.