"He'll come," Killian whispers.
"I know."
"He taught me how to shoot. He taught me how to drive." Killian’s voice is hollow. "He was the one who picked me up from the police station the first time I got arrested."
"He used you," I say. "He groomed you to be a weapon for a war he helped create."
"I know. Doesn't make it hurt less."
I squeeze his hand. "We end it tonight."
Ping.
The elevator.
The sound is a bell. A starting gun. The hydraulic mechanisms of the building delivering a payload to the sixty-third floor.
We don't move. We stay on the couch, obscured by the shadows.
The doors slide open with a soft hiss.
Seamus Maguire steps into the foyer.
He is wearing a heavy wool overcoat, collar turned up against the wind. He looks large, imposing. His white hair is combed back from a forehead lined with worry. His face is flushed.
He is not alone.
Two men flank him. Russians. I recognize the type immediately—paramilitary posture, dead eyes, the subtle bulge of shoulder holsters under cheap, ill-fitting suits. A third man stands at the elevator, holding the doors open with his foot—controlling the exit, ensuring extraction capability.
Three operatives and a traitor. Against two men on a couch in the dark.
"Killian?" Seamus's voice carries the careful warmth of a man managing a crisis—avuncular, concerned. "Killian, lad, where are you? I'm here. I've come."
I reach behind the couch. My fingers find the switch of the floor lamp.
Click.
The light floods the living area—a pool of warm amber that catches Seamus's face and holds it.
His expression cycles rapidly—concern, then confusion as he registers both of us sitting on the couch, then a hard, cold realization as his eyes take in the details that don't match the scenario he was sold.
We aren't panicking. We aren't frightened. We are sitting calmly, side by side, watching him.
"There's no federal prosecutor," Seamus says. The warmth drops from his voice like a heavy coat. What’s left underneath is cold and sharp.
"Sit down, Seamus," Killian says.
"I'll stand."
"Sit down."
The command is absolute. The Reaper’s register. Low, flat, brooking no argument. Seamus reads it the way every man in the Kavanagh organization reads it—with reflexive compliance.
He walks to the armchair opposite us and sits. His movements are stiff. His men remain standing, hands drifting toward their jackets, eyes scanning the room for threats.
"The joint venture agreement," I say. "Dated twenty-three years ago. Signed by Salvatore Falcone and Padraic Kavanagh. Witnessed by—" I pause. "—Seamus Maguire."
Seamus’s face doesn't change. The composure is good—better than Hargrove's. But his right hand, resting on the arm of the chair, tightens. The knuckles whiten.
