Chapter 9 - The Fall of Marcus Kane
Marcus hit the hardwood floor hard, coughing blood as gasoline splashed over his suit.
I stepped through the shattered wall, rain dripping from my hair, my face illuminated by the flash of lightning outside the window.
"Damian..." Marcus choked out, scrambling backward on his hands and knees, grabbing a broken leg from a coffee table to use as a weapon. "Please... we were brothers! Fifteen years!"
"Brothers don't murder innocent men," I said, walking toward him like an executioner. "Brothers don't put poison in wine. And brothers sure as hell don't threaten women and children."
Marcus swung the wooden club with all his remaining strength.
I didn't even dodge. I caught the thick wood in my bare palm, snapped it in two like a twig, and kicked Marcus squarely in the chest. He crashed back against the fireplace, the heavy iron poker falling to the floor beside him.
Desperate, Marcus grabbed the poker and lunged upward, aiming for my neck.
I sidestepped, caught his arm, and slammed his head into the stone hearth. He slumped to the floor, gasping for air, his gun rolling away across the wet boards.
I stood over him, my chest heaving, holding his own gold-plated pistol pointed directly at the space between his eyes.
"Do it," Marcus rasped, a bloody smile on his lips. "Kill me, Damian. Show them you're still the monster everyone fears. Prove to that doctor and her kids that you're no different than me."
My finger tightened on the trigger. Everything inside me—fifteen years of bloodshed, survival, and underworld violence—demanded that I pull it.
Then, from behind the pantry door, I heard a small, trembling voice.
"Don't."
I froze.
Nora stepped out from the pantry, followed by Maya and Evelyn. The little girl looked at me, not with fear, but with pleading eyes.
"If you shoot him," Nora said softly, "you're the man who killed our father. But if you let him live... you're the man who saved us."
The silence in the room stretched long and deep, broken only by the sound of rain against the roof.
Slowly, deliberately, I lowered the gun.
I turned to Marcus, whose face had gone pale with absolute defeat.
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"You're not worth the bullet, Marcus," I said quietly. "You're going to spend the rest of your life in a federal supermax facility, where every man you ever betrayed will be waiting for you."
Sirens wailed in the distance—federal agents, tipped off by Gabriel, arriving to take Marcus Kane into custody.
