Well, crap.

Those were the first two words going through Fiona’s head when Greg made this less-than-stellar announcement, and she’d wondered if she had missed the signs. Or some of them, at least. She’d known for sure he knew how to handle himself in a fight, with his weapon stance and ease at which he handled the weapons in the vault. Not to mention his Greg-fu footwork, especially against the alley thugs. But this?

This was beyond her comprehension. “Let me get this right, Greg. Your family is like the magical mafia. Am I off base here?” She wanted to trust Greg here. It was exceedingly unlikely he'd torch his own success.

“What’s a mafia?” Greg inquired, looking confused.

“A family of crime doers, typically with a literal family origin, or from a shared location of origin,” she answered.

“Then, yes, my family has a reputation for being suspected–and correctly so–of being a magical mafia. It’s the family business,” he grunted, and Bonnie was stony-faced.

“Greg, you’ve got baggage, too? Sheesh, I know how to pick friends that keep it lively, don’t I?” Bonnie sighed in a possible moment of self-reflection. “Okay, yeah, I get it, we don’t all get born to the best of families. That’s not a big deal!”

“It is, when your father expects you, as the favored son, to follow in his footsteps,” Greg countered lightly. “My mother made it clear she did not want me on in this, and warned me repeatedly to be wary. My father made me sit in on some of his ‘business meetings’ at times. I saw quite a few unsavory things. I’ll spare you the details unless they become pertinent to the present. My father is of ill repute, and has avoided the town watch for years, because he has never had his hands directly on his ‘activities’ of questionable repute.”

“Oh, how bad could it be?” Fiona asked, ever the hopeful skeptic. Greg raised an eyebrow at that question. “No really, how bad could it be, Greg? I’ve always known you to be the no-nonsense guy, a complete straight-shooter.”

Greg grunted audibly. “Oh it could be pretty bad. Gambling, illegal contraband substances…women of the night, money laundering, and possible murder of family rivals. Of course, I can’t prove all of those, my father did choose compartmentalization to isolate himself from the business, and trained me to do the same. Or he would have, had I not walked out and never looked back,” he added with a hint of irritation. “He was not happy about that, to say the least. The first time he tried to bring me back…I left a few men crippled and on the floor. But breathing, at least.”

“Damn, Greg, I knew you were holding out! You’re this reserved badass, I knew it!” Fiona said with glee. But he didn’t look amused in the slightest. “Okay, I get it, you’re not proud of it. But, how do you know that this is related to you?”

“When Gendry showed up at the shop. He’s a…client of my father's. I knew I took a risk when I took him on to do some above-board accounting work,” Greg uttered while steepling his fingers together, and Tucker kept purring on his lap. “That was my mistake. I thought I could keep myself insulated against all that.”

“Damn it, I liked that guy! His kid was cute!” Fiona fumed. “No more business with him!”

“No, he does only above-board activities for my father. But he also talks to my father on occasion and likely learned I was servicing his accounts of late. My father, the elder Travis Lockheed, has not forgotten our falling out, and is now probably jealous of my legitimate success,” Greg offered with a measure of restraint.

“Oh, oh that won’t stand,” Bonnie uttered with gritted teeth. “I’m gonna go put a hex–”

“Don’t do anything reckless,” Greg cautioned. “I don’t think my father would attempt to burn down our business within a week. That would not be a typical behavior pattern for him, and he’s not utterly vicious. He has principles.”

“It sounds like that jerk’s face has a kissing date with my hammer,” Fiona growled. “Greg, c’mon, just go to the town guard, if you have a suspicion! They’ll take care of it!”

“I don't have concrete proof it was him, for sure,” he countered. “There is one other possibility. A rival family, looking to strike at vulnerable members of my father’s family. Since I left the fold in a very visible way, they may figure I’m the softest target, to send a message.”

“Greg, let me tell you something: I solve my problems one of two ways. One of them involves my hammer,” she added with a subtle pounding motion into her fist. “The second way is to give them an offer they can’t refuse. Which sometimes leads to the first option, the hammer. I seem to like using my hammer a little too much, to be honest. It solves monster problems."

Greg let out a soft exhale. “No, Fiona, we are not going to be smashing up the criminal underworld like you would a slime monster, or overly arrogant dragons. The winning move right now, is to be diligent. We want the town watch on our side, and vigilante acts will lose that support.”

“But, I wanna hit stuff! They could have seriously hurt Kali! He might have been a bit of a thief, but he’s got a good heart! He was paying dutiful attention today. And he came to us first!" Fiona declared with passion.

“For fear of the judicial application of your hammer,” Greg stated dryly. She frowned at him. “You were thinking about it.”

“No, Greg, I wasn’t. Bonnie, what’s your take on all this?” she asked. Bonnie tilted her ears, and put a hand to her chin.

“Well, we have fire suppressants and my wards. But, if someone was determined to cause some damage, they could. Greg, I gotta be real with you, This is a notch above what I was expecting. You could have told us you have family problems.”

“What good would that have done? I haven’t talked to my father, or my younger brother and sister, in a few years,” he replied with a wrinkled brow. “I thought this was long past me. And no, before you ask, I did not participate in the family business. But, I did learn a few things on how to fight, from them. The…brute class, as it's been nicknamed, has a bit of an unsavory reputation. Which is why I am annoyed that, had I just chosen to get training in a class, I wouldn’t have that stigma.”

"You just chose to wait till 18? Put yourself at the mercy of a random class?" Fiona now understood some of the things he'd said lately. It now put a lot of his words into a new light. "And you got picked by the gods to be a bruiser. That sucks."

"Yes. It does." He rubbed at his wrist gently, before rolling his sleeve back up. "If I'd run away sooner...I could have...not ended up with such a stigma."

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“You were young, you didn’t know better,” Fiona said in a supportive way. He slowly swayed his head, a dark look crossing his eyes.

“Want a piece of advice, Fiona? If you ever have children someday, don’t let them roll the dice on a destined class.” She narrowed her eyes at him.

“It’s there for–”

“To be a fallback, I know. But the gods don’t always have good intentions, when they occasionally stick their noses into mortal business. Which is why I regret my initial reaction to Kali, who has demonstrated himself to be quite competent.” he leaned back and finally gave Tucker a scratch on the head, and he started purring again. “Hmm. Guess cats do know when someone is stressed out. Well played, Tucker.”

Bonnie scooched closer to him on the couch. “You know you can talk to us about these things. Especially if you start getting a bad feeling about stuff.”

He nodded a second later. “That is why we are having this discussion, now. I didn’t start making friends, until after I left home. And, meeting you two…well, it has opened my eyes to what to expect from the world, in great contrast to the forced decisions my family would have made for me. Thank you.”

“Just one thing, Greg,” Fiona asked as she rose up, as did Bonnie, once Tucker scampered off. “If they come after the shop, you can bet your cute butt that I won’t let anyone do damage to it, or the people in it, while I’ve got a say in the matter. Let’s keep our ears to the ground on this one, and see if we can find out more. In the meantime, we should probably up the protections, and get more staff. I already know of a guy or two in the guild that might be interested.”

"Not gonna smash heads with hammers?" She rolled her eyes at Greg's casual response.

"I could. And my gut instinct says, that's the play. But we don't have proof. And...I do have you guys to think about. I also can't rule out Barry getting underhanded. Hammer time comes only for the proven wicked." I hate how I can't solve all the problems with hammers and luscious looks. Ugh. Greg, however, looked relieved at the restraint on her part.

"Then I shall do my part not to try to solve this in my own. I do agree with Bonnie, we could use extra hands on this one. And a security upgrade."

“I could certainly use someone in the shop with me, too. All the rune work I’ve been doing has me tasked to capacity. I started turning down smaller jobs,” Bonnie said with a small tsk sound. “Sounds like we’ll be busy for the next few weeks. If we keep moving business like this, we won’t have that blonde dweeb gunning for us, it might be the Lockheeds.”

“See, that’s the thing. Usually, they ask for ‘protection’ money." Fiona cracked her knuckles. “The way I see it, once we know who's behind this, we should try some…aggressive negotiation.” Greg gave her that silent glance of disapproval. “No, my hammer is not the negotiating tool, for the record.”

“Maybe we can offer employment to a certain, recently humiliated dragon, to protect our place?” Bonnie suggested with a wry smile. Both Fiona and Greg glared at her, and her confidence melted into an anxious smile. “Too soon?”

“Too soon,” they uttered in unison.

----------------------------------------

The next day, Fiona was peering at the broken window with ire. But the expression didn’t last, as the craftsman gently pried out the broken fragments, and was able to seal up the window with a new one in record time.

Thank you guy, you’re super quick,” she applauded them with a warm smile. The lean, middle-aged man bowed stiffly and rubbed at the glass with a cleaning cloth, before nodding satisfactorily.

“Your enchantress will need to reinforce the runes–when you break them like that, it compromises the rest of the rune structure. You should have this all replaced with magicite glass, to be honest. I could run a quote for you. It’ll stop vandals, and even will stop some magical munitions if–”

“We’re not in a warzone,” she cut him off. “Do you think you could get me a quote for that kind of upgrade?”

“Hmm. It’s not cheap. The building is old, the frames don’t follow a standard sizing–except the ones in front, luckily. When you have custom frame sizes, we have to cut the glass to size. Custom jobs have a way of creeping up in cost, fast. Let me have a quick look around, I can get you a number.” Fiona was impressed--he wasn't trying to BS her? Everyone on Earth was trying to hustle money, it felt like.

“Thank you for the expedient fix. What’ll the cost be for the damages?” Bonnie asked, already in motion to reinforce her security runes on the glass in near-invisible filaments. The man scratched his head.

“Well, nothing. This is on the house. Jake told me they’d pick up the tab on this. It’s only the one pane, so it’s not that expensive. Jake’s a great guy, I love that giant furball, he’s always getting business for me all over the city. I busted my knee adventuring, but I still can cut glass like it’s art,” the man sighed. He tapped the heavy brace around one leg, a soft ringing of metal audible. It did little to deter his mobility, but his motion was a little stiff. He took a notepad out of his bag, and started jotting down numbers. “Miss Swiftheart, how come you can’t come back adventuring? The guys miss you, from what I hear from my buddies over there.”

“I can’t. I gotta sell off this dragon hoard to pay taxes, because Barry is a problem I can't beat with a hammer, and the official word from Rikkard, his father? I keep getting stonewalled by his assistant, but I know he's alive because I heard him in the background. I think he knows I'm pissed at him."

"Sheesh. Must have been a cold day in the hells for Rikkard to put him in the hot seat," the repairman grunted.

"That is everyone's sentiment," Fiona stated with a follow-through growl. "I wasn’t going to earn that by making boots out of monsters." She gave an armor set a bit of polish with a clean cloth before the morning crowd came in, and Bonnie was already firing up her oven for some kind of toasty hot rune. “Stupid dragon horde historical find. Know what I should have done? Offered Doug his treasure back, if he chased Barry off."

"Haha! I'd have paid money to see that, Fiona! You'd have to change your title to the dragon layer, though!" Bonnie cackled from her workbench.

"Dragon slayer! I made boots out of ugly, nasty, not cute monsters!" Fiona fumed. "I know where you live, you mischievous vixen."

“We could have had Queen Lucy, and then Barry gets put on the throne?” the crafter asked hesitantly, while still taking measurements of the windows, and putting a few more scribbles down. “Hah. That kid couldn’t run a lemonade stand, let alone a kingdom. I hear that blonde viper is twined around his finger–or is it the other way around? I dunno, I see a hot ticket lady, and I think, man, he's whipped!"

“Hennaway makes vipers sound like positive saints,” Bonnie responded with a glint of anger in her tone. Fiona was too busy cleaning the display–everyone wanted to touch the merchandise, it seemed. Luckily this was a cheap set, the real strong stuff was in display cases.

But, Fiona did notice Bonnie lean in, with her ears doing that twitchy thing, along with her tail, and she had a glint of insight in her eyes. “What else did you hear about Hennaway, out of curiosity?”

“Me? Nothing. It’s my buddy, he did some service work in the castle, doing renovating. Barry’s ringing up a tab right now like he got some windfall. I suppose with the dragon and his kobolds getting the fight knocked out of them, he can redirect money back to some much-needed maintenance work,” the man shrugged. “Anyway, he says he heard from this maid that Hennaway is running around, barking out orders like she owns the place. Barry’s whipped as all hell, heh.”

“Well, now. Sounds like a nefarious advisor,” Fiona commented with a smile. “How much were these renovations, exactly, mister…”

“Murdock,” he answered with his casual posture, scribbling away at numbers. “Well, I can’t say for sure, but, given the size of the palace, custom windows, a stinking crawdad ton of stained glass windows he’s gonna change out, for a picture so rosy it’d make the virgin Celestine blush…Hmm. I’d say, ‘bout a thirty thousand gold, maybe, if my buddy is an honest worker, and he is. Really steady hands, almost as good as me,” he added with a chuckle.

Bonnie looked her way, eyes filled with mischief. And not the kitsune kind, either. Fiona returned the look right back. “And, where do we find this man? I do want a competitive bid. I have a business to run, but, surely, I want to hire the best.”

Murdock laughed softly. “Miss Revere, Miss Swiftheart, there’s no man who I’m second to. Though, there’s a few that are close. You got the Murdock Diggins seal of approval on that. Heck, I’ll give you his relay, you give him a call. Sometimes when I’m too busy, I let him take some business off my hands.”

“Why yes, I would love to know just what effort a blushing bright stain glass mosaic would look like in my establishment,” Fiona added with a toothy smile.

“Oh, boy. Here we go again. I can feel it in my bones,” Greg sighed as he prepped the till for the day “The Fiona chaos machine is winding up. Spoilers, I already filed the trademark on that."