But the sound seemed unfamiliar even to him.
Manny’s anger softened.
“Why?” he asked.
Vincent looked around the diner.
“Because twenty years ago, when nobody would serve me after midnight, you did.”
Manny’s eyes lowered.
“You paid.”
“You didn’t shake when you took the money.”
“I was younger and stupider.”
“Exactly.”
Manny pulled out the chair opposite him and sat.
“What happened to you, Vince?”
It was the same question Claire had asked minutes earlier.
This time Vincent answered it himself.
“I got tired.”
There was no dramatic confession.
No speech about glory.
Just those three words.
He told them that younger men had begun making decisions around him instead of with him.
They used his silence as permission and his reputation as a weapon.
Every time he resisted, someone reminded him how many enemies he had, how easily an accident could happen, how few people would stand beside him if the Corvinos declared him finished.
So Vincent had withdrawn.
He stopped making calls.
Stopped visiting old friends.
Stopped correcting stories told in his name.
He told himself that disappearing was protecting people.
Some of it was.
Some of it, he admitted, was fear.
“You?” Claire asked.
Vincent looked at her.
“You think being feared means you stop feeling fear?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He stared at the white cloth wrapped around his hand.
“The worst part wasn’t thinking somebody might kill me.
The worst part was waking up every morning and realizing nobody needed me to be alive.”
Manny said nothing.
Claire pulled out the chair beside the booth.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“As what?”
“Nobody needing the version of you they used to need.”
Vincent watched her carefully.
She continued.
“Maybe they don’t need a dangerous man anymore.
Maybe that’s good.”
Manny raised an eyebrow at her bravery.
Vincent did too.
“And what exactly do they need?”
Claire looked at the broken coffee pot on the floor.
“Somebody who fixes things when he says he’s going to.”
Vincent stared at her.
Then he looked at the curled rubber mat.
Manny followed his gaze.
“That mat is getting replaced tomorrow,” Manny muttered.
“Tonight,” Vincent said.
“Stores are closed.”
