"I'm driving," he says.
He doesn't wait for agreement. He slides behind the wheel of the sedan. I barely have the passenger door closed before the engine roars and we're moving—not driving, launching. The vehicle’s acceleration presses me back into the leather seat with a force that borders on violent.
He drives like he fights. Aggressive. Precise. He takes corners at speeds that would make Marco brake and reassess. He doesn't brake. He leans into the physics of the turn, his hands steady on the wheel, eyes fixed on the rain-slicked road with an intensity that has burned away every trace of the hungover, guilt-ridden man from this morning's kitchen.
The city blurs past in streaks of neon and grey. I watch his profile. The tension in his jaw is palpable. He isn't just angry; he is terrified. Not for himself, but for what this means. The escalation is too fast. The targeting is too precise.
"Murphy's," I say, breaking the silence. "Is it secure?"
"It was," he says through gritted teeth. "It's a members-only club. Back room is where we run the numbers. You don't get in unless you're family."
"So they breached a secure location."
"Or they were let in."
The implication hangs in the air between us. Treason.
We skid around a corner, the tires screaming against the wet asphalt. We are in the docks now. Kavanagh territory. The buildings are older here, brick and iron, crumbling under the weight of neglect. The streetlights are yellow and dim.
The bar is on a back street behind the main shipping terminal. Murphy's—a low, flat-roofed building with no sign, no windows, and a steel door propped open by a brick.
There are men outside. Six of them.
They are armed. The firearms aren't concealed—they're held at low ready, muzzles pointed at the ground, fingers indexed along the trigger guards. These are not security guards. These are soldiers. And they look like a pack of wolves whose territory has been breached.
Killian slams the car into park. He exits before the engine dies.
They see him. The tension recalibrates instantly—deferential, urgent, the pack recognizing the alpha. They step back, making a path.
I exit the car.
The recalibration reverses.
Six weapons come up.
It happens in a single, fluid motion. Not aimed, not yet, but no longer at low ready—held at chest height, a wall of steel communicating the distance between tolerance and lethalintent. That distance is measured in the time it takes me to breathe.
"The fuck is he doing here?"
The voice belongs to a man I recognize from the surveillance photographs—Doyle. One of the old guard. He is fifty, heavy-set, with a face like a clenched fist. His weapon is a Sig Sauer, and it is pointed at a spot approximately eighteen inches to my left.
"That Falcone son of a bitch is not walking into our house," Doyle spits. "Not tonight. Not after what they did."
"What exactly do you think we did?" I keep my voice level. My hands are visible, away from my body. The Beretta is on my hip, but reaching for it would be suicide.
"Two of ours are dead inside!" Doyle shouts. "And they've got your silk around their necks. Your people's signature. So don't stand there in your fucking suit and ask me?—"
"Stand down."
Killian's voice cuts through the noise like a blade through fabric. He hasn't shouted. He hasn't raised his volume past conversational. But the frequency of his command carries an authority that is biological—something in the lizard brain of every man present that recognizes the top of the food chain.
The guns don't lower.
"Boss—" Doyle starts, his finger twitching near the trigger guard. "He's the enemy. You can't bring him in there."
Killian moves.
He steps in front of me.
