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Hardy begins to break down the rifle with the same calm he used to build it.

“Club night,” he says.

“Club night,” I agree.

Below us the garden looks innocent again. Heaters. Ornate chairs. Snow banked at the edges.

No Tito. Only the shape of a later hour and a new Lucci room where he wants to be seen in public ahead of what he thinks is the beginning of his takeover of the city.

The climax of this beef is bubbling up to the boil. I can feel it in my teeth.

I put my hand on the window frame and watch the empty tables until the waiter comes to reset them for people who will never know how close a shot came to their pretty winter garden.

Elias is moving through the hotel toward the exit we chose.

I will meet him in the car. And I will not ask the boy if Zane’s hand felt like anything worth remembering.

Either way, I already know what I will do to make it right.

That evening the penthouse is a quiet armory.

I dress in all black. Shirt. Trousers. Coat. Nothing that catches light.

Hardy is already in the living area with a case open on the war table. Mackensie stands by the window with his phone face down and his eyes on the city.

Below us, out of sight, our best assassins and soldiers are gathering near the Lucci club… hidden in service alleys, in a shuttered loading bay, in a van that looks like it belongs to a caterer. They will not move until I call.

Elias pours vodka into a heavy glass and sets it in my hand. “I’m coming,” he says. “There’s nothing you can say that will stop me.”

I look at the boy. I take a moment. He has been integral from the side room at Keller’s to the false file to the wire in my ear. Holding him back now would be pride, not sense.

“All right,” I say. “You come. You stay where I put you. You do not improvise in a gunfight. Not until you need to.”

Elias’s mouth almost smiles. “Yes, Daddy.”

Hardy clears his throat in that English way that means he has already solved a problem I have only just agreed to.

“I had a feeling young Elias would insist,” he says. “I prepared something.”

Hardy lifts a pistol from the case. Modified semi-automatic. Military grade. Compact enough for a coat. Serious enough for a room full of men who think a club night is cover. He holds it out to Elias across the table like a butler presenting a decanter.

Elias takes it, checks the weight, the slide, the safety. He does it without theatre, the way a person checks a tool they intend to use.

I smile. For sure this is the boy for me. Not a tourist. Not a toy who only kneels. A boy who will walk into a Lucci club with my mark on his throat and a gun Hardy built for his hand.

Mackensie’s phone lights. He reads. Looks up. “Confirmed,” Mackensie says. “Tito will be in attendance soon. He’s making a night of it. Most of his senior allies with him. Alphonso included. They think they’re going to win. The think they have intel on you, Pakhan. The file. They have the USB.”

“Of course they do. But if we get tonight right,” I say, “wiping out the rest of the family in the days that follow will be work, not war. But it is a big if. One wrong sound and they scatter. One body in the wrong doorway and the city fills with men who want my name on a slab.”

No one argues.

They know this is the endgame to this deadly game.

We drink a final shot. The vodka is cold and clean. Good luck is a story men tell but I toast to good luck all the same.

We leave the apartment. Hardy. Mackensie. Elias. Me. The elevator drops to the private lot.

Engines wait.