The house is quiet. It always has been. I kept it that way. This place was never an asset.
It was a memory.
I light the first line of accelerant and sit down.
The pill bottle is already in my pocket.
They will come.
Marco will come.
I allow myself one small smile at that.
Rourke is dead. The board is gone. The network is ashes.
There will be trials. Hearings. Stories.
But not about me.
I will not sit under fluorescent lights and let small men summarize my life.
I will not let strangers decide which parts of me survive.
I swallow the pills with a glass of water and smooth my jacket.
The fire will take the house.
Marco will take the files.
And I will take my name with me.
That is the only legacy that matters.
97
Saint
The building is quiet.
That’s how I know it’s over.
Not the calm of preparation. Not the silence before violence.
The empty kind.
The kind that comes after something has finished burning.
I’m in the operations room with Wolf and Havoc, staring at a screen that hasn’t changed in ten minutes.
No new pings.
No new threats.
No new names.
“Say it again,” I tell Marco.
His voice comes through the speaker, steady in the way only exhausted men get.
