I call Rocco.
My brother answers on the second ring. The background noise is quiet—he’s alone.
"Rocco."
"Ale? Where are you? Pop is tearing the city apart."
"I need you at the penthouse," I say. "Service corridor, freight elevator access. Bring four men you trust with your life—not Father's men, yours. Men who answer to you and will stand behind your orders regardless of what they hear."
The pause on the line is heavy. Two seconds. In those two seconds, Rocco runs the calculation. I am asking him to choose me over our father. I am asking him to position himself for a confrontation that could tear the family apart.
"I'll be there," he says. No hesitation. He chooses me. "Give me forty minutes."
"Bring the heavy gear, Rocco."
"Understood."
I hang up. I look at Killian.
"Your turn."
Killian picks up his primary phone. He dials Brennan.
"Brennan. Gather the boys. meet Rocco Falcone at the service entrance of the penthouse tower."
"Falcon? Boss, are you sure?"
"I'm sure. We're taking the house back, Brennan. Bring the Sig."
"On my way."
The penthouse feelsdifferent when we return.
Walking through the door is a temporal dislocation. The space is exactly as we left it—the marble counters, the glass walls, the city burning beyond them. The whiskey glass with the crack in it is still sitting on the bar, a brown ring marking the stone.
But we are not the same men who left this morning.
I walk to the glass wall. The city stretches below—the grid of lights, the traffic, the anonymous infrastructure of a metropolis that doesn't know two men are standing in a penthouse planning to dismantle the power structure that has governed its underworld for a generation.
"The cage," Killian says behind me.
"Not anymore."
"No." He joins me at the window. Our reflections ghost against the glass—his bulk and my leanness, his dark hair and my dark hair, two silhouettes imposed on the city like a double exposure. "Not anymore."
We kill the lights.
The penthouse goes dark. The only illumination comes from the city itself—cold blue, sodium orange, the shifting palette of a skyline that never sleeps.
We sit on the couch. The same couch where the distance between us was once measured in feet and hostility. Now, the distance is measured in inches and intention.
He sits close enough that our thighs touch. His hand finds my knee in the dark. It rests there, warm and heavy, a tether keeping me grounded.
We wait.
The silence is thick. It isn't the strategic silence of two predators assessing each other. It is the quiet of two people who have said everything that needs to be said and are waiting for the world to respond.
My hand covers his on my knee. Our wedding bands click—gold against gold. A small, private percussion in the dark.
