Chapter Text
He supposed that one shouldn’t be surprised that Beau had limited information regarding his son. Hannibal sighed as he sipped whiskey and sat in a chair he had brought from the main house to the cellar they were keeping Will’s troublesome father in.
He had been curious to learn that Will had very simple tastes, but classical. He liked steaks and whiskey, southern vegetables, even fish when he could. Not that living in the city and their lifestyle was very condusive to such a thing. He gathered what information that he there was from the man but it was regrettably scarce. Most of what he learned he had already gathered from simply watching his soulmate. Will was a fighter with a keen sense of survival. He might not be a hunter like Hannibal but he had the patience and cleverness for traps and for picking just the right bait.
Something similar but different, alluring in it’s own way.
He was ‘scrappy’ and ‘uppity’ as his father described him between groans of pain. He wanted nothing of the life that his father had but he wanted something better for himself. Thus the meager job and the long hours to pay for what he could at the local college. Not that Graham Sr. knew about that of course. This was a one way gathering session.
Just as he was tiring of Beau’s attempts to placate or bribe him and he was deciding which scalpel he wanted to use to end the man’s life he gave up one last surprise.
“Whatever you’re planning his brother will never let you get away with it.” Beau’s voice was hoarse and quiet but Hannibal heard him perfectly all the same.
He paused in his reflection looking at the brown liquid in front of him. He glanced up at Beau, his face a mask but the monster inside straining for this new tidbit of information. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. His brother? I wasn’t aware he had one.”
Beau snorted “Half brother, but he keeps his eye on Willy. Woulda passed the business on to him but he’s got strange ideas that one. Strange and dangerous.”
Hannibal thought they might be getting somewhere interesting. He brandished his scalpel in the dim light, watching it reflect the man’s weathered face. “Please go on.”
“Goodnight Will!” Beverly called as he stepped out into the light chill of the evening.
He turned and gave her a fond wave back. She seemed to have forgiven him for all the weirdness he had brought to her lately. In fact she almost seemed thankful for it in her own way. Maybe she was bored and he had given her a little excitement for awhile. He wondered if he should give her a gift or if that would be weird. He settled on weird and just paying for her next lunch. Money wasn’t as tight as before, it felt good to be able to be generous.
He had turned down the block that lead back to the hotel when he sensed someone near him. He looked up just as a hand draped casually along his shoulders and he saw someone he supposed he should have been expecting.
“Hey Willy. What’s dad gotten into now?” Anthony looked down at him with a rakish smile and a glint in his eye.
If it hadn’t been for the strange timing of the event and the odd romantic angle to it Will would have assumed some of the gifts he had gotten were from his older brother. Older half brother. Their father was always very quick to remind them of that. Many assumed that when the heard the world half that it had been their father that had stepped out on the marriage. Rather it had been their mother who did.
At the time Beau was still making a name for himself and carving out his chunk of the city. To have his wife cheat on him was a sign of weakness that he couldn’t afford. So when she told him the truth they swore to keep the secret between them and raised the boys as Beau’s. Will was born nearly seven years later. Much had changed by then. Mostly that Beau had secured his grip on his part of town and he had begun grooming Anthony to take over for him when he got older.
But Anthony wasn’t like other boys. His mother hadn’t kept her part of the bargain. As Anthony grew older and more headstrong she worried that the clashes he had with his father would become bigger and more dangerous. She worried about Beau’s temper and Anthony’s place in the family now that he had baby Will.
So one night she told Anthony that his father wasn’t his father and that he would be kept around only as long as he made the older man happy and proud. Instead of pushing him closer to his ‘father’ the truth only revealed something he had felt for a long time. Despite raising Anthony as his own Beau couldn’t always hid the contempt that he had for him. The reminder that he served as a failure of his masculinity.
When his mother told him the truth it was as though he was finally free. His father didn’t hate him for no reason as he always feared. His father was not his father and he had a very good reason for hating him. So Anthony decided that not only was he going to follow in the man’s footsteps. He was going to surpass him. As a teen he studied on his own about business and politics, how some successful families made their way into legal businesses and how they were able to hide in plain sight. Even better sometimes the laws protected the businesses better than they could ever be used to protect the families alone. That and one didn’t have to worry about constantly paying off the police. The tax dollars took care of all that.
That was much bigger than Beau could even comprehend. Legitimate businesses and politics? It sounded foolish, but he still wasn’t seeing Anthony’s big picture.
When he was eighteen Anthony left home and went to Europe to further educate himself. By that time his mother had passed on and the only remaining tie he had left was to his little brother Will.
Some might think because of their family history that Anthony might despise his little brother. Being the legitimate son and often used as a threat to replace him that might not have been so unusual. Except from the very first day Anthony had seen Will bundled up and fresh from the hospital he had known that what ever their family did. Whatever became of them. They were brothers and they would out survive them all.
Before he left home Anthony often looked after his little brother. He knew long before their father did that Will would want nothing to do with the business. He was too tenderhearted and sensitive. Too quick to care. The violence the drugs the death that left Anthony unmoved disturbed Will.
Anthony liked to give him little gifts to distract him. He had been the one to fight with their father about Will keeping Winston. In the future that he envisioned he wanted to see Will safe and studying away at university. Far away from any of the grit that followed them. Even from afar he had kept his eye on Will. Tried to ease his way when he could but he was building his own empire. When he heard whispers that there was blood between Beau Graham and the Count he had been interested but busy. When the reports started coming in that his father had been taken down, that Will hadn’t been home at the time, and most interestingly that he had received a sponsor for his education...Anthony knew it was time to come home and pay his family a little visit.
Mostly because as he looked down at Will in the yellow streetlight he could see that one blue eye didn’t perfectly match the other anymore. He smiled widely as he tapped his finger under the left eye and said. “Now why don’t you tell me about this?”