"One shot each. Who's first?"
Oswald stared at the revolver.
The silver of the frame was engraved — some old craftsman's work, scrollwork along the barrel and cylinder housing, the kind of decorative detail that belonged in a display case. The candlelight moved across it in warm patterns. It was a beautiful object.
Beautiful and loaded with three rounds out of six, which made it a fifty-fifty proposition for anyone who put it to their head and pulled the trigger.
He looked up at Falcone. He was asking for something — mercy, reconsideration, the acknowledgment that this was an excessive response to a misunderstanding — but Falcone had already returned to his steak. He cut a small piece, rare, the pink interior still carrying the color of blood, and put it in his mouth with the patience of a man who had been doing this for decades and saw no reason to rush.
Oswald watched him chew.
The pressure did something to his vision. The room softened at the edges. He looked at the steak and saw himself in it — skewered, divided by that serrated blade, arranged on a plate for someone else's appetite.
Why are you doing this to me.
He grabbed the revolver.
His eyes were doing the thing they did when he'd been pushed past a certain point — dilating slightly, the orbits going outward, the expression becoming the one that people who'd known him long enough had learned to step back from. He laughed once, short and wrong-pitched.
Then he turned the gun toward Falcone.
If I'm going down, so are you.
Will's hand closed over the barrel before Oswald could align the shot.
"Stop."
"Will, I should have listened to you—"
"You can still listen to me. Right now." He kept his voice level. "Give it to me. I'll get us out."
He met Oswald's eyes and held them. The bomb needed defusing before anything else could happen.
Oswald's grip loosened. Will took the gun.
His own heartbeat was doing something unpleasant, but that was internal information and he kept it there. He turned the revolver over in his hand once, feeling the weight distribution.
"You'd like to go first," Falcone said, without looking up. "Please do so quickly."
Will put the muzzle to his temple.
He pulled the trigger.
Click.
Oswald collapsed forward onto the table with both arms, like a man whose bones had been removed.
Falcone set down his fork.
Will didn't lower the gun.
He pulled the trigger again.
Click.
A pause. Falcone's eyebrow moved a fraction.
Will pulled the trigger four more times in succession, each one without hesitation, each one landing in the silence of the room like a period.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
He set the gun on the table between them.
The candles flickered. Nothing else moved.
Will let the silence run for a moment. Then:
"I'm not trying to undermine you, Mr. Falcone. I'm trying to demonstrate that I'm a useful kind of smart — the kind that might be worth something to you."
Falcone looked at him fully for the first time since they'd sat down.
It was the look of a man recalibrating. Not surprised — Falcone had not been surprised in a very long time — but revising an assessment in real time.
"When did you work it out?"
"I didn't work it out. I made a guess." Will kept his hands flat on the table. "The Roman doesn't hand a loaded weapon to two unknown quantities and walk away. The risk profile is wrong. Whatever this was, it wasn't a gambling game — it was a reading."
Falcone smiled. It was the first genuine expression he'd produced since they arrived, and it was the least comforting thing in the room.
He stood, pushed back from the table, and picked up the dinner knife from beside his plate as he came around. The blade was stained red from the steak.
Will felt the hand in his hair before he registered the movement — a grip that had no business being that strong on a man that age — and then the left side of his face met the tablecloth, and the cold flat of the knife came to rest along his throat.
The linen was damp under his cheek. He could hear his own pulse.
"You're correct," Falcone said, from directly above him. His voice was rough in a specific way — not damaged, not aged, just the texture of someone who had never needed to raise it. "It was a reading. And you passed it. Smart man. Brave man."
He didn't move the knife.
"I like smart men. I like brave men. But a man who is both — I have no use for him. Smart and brave men aren't built to serve. Sooner or later they stop being tools and become problems."
There it was.
The question inside the statement. Not will you betray me — that was too simple, too direct for the man currently holding cutlery against his jugular. The real question was: why should I trust a man like you, when the last man like you gave me this problem?
The last man like you.
Will's mind assembled it in the three seconds he had: the Roman Empire's second-in-command. Ambitious. Smart. Brave. The one he couldn't move against directly. The one who had been growing for years inside the organization while Falcone played at legitimacy.
He wasn't talking about Will.
He'd never been talking about Will.
"You're right," Will said, into the tablecloth. "Which is why I'll help you remove him. Maroni."
The knife didn't move.
One second. Two.
Then it lifted.
Falcone walked back to his seat. He flagged down the waiter with two fingers.
"Bring my guests the steak. Medium-rare."
He picked up his phone.
The call connected.
"Carmine." His voice shifted register entirely — warm, almost affectionate, the performance of an old friendship. "It's been a while. How are you keeping?"
A pause.
"Yes, they're with me. Your men ran into some trouble — those Owlet problems you've been dealing with. They came to me when they couldn't reach you." A short laugh. "Of course I'm not angry. Family handles family. Send them back when you're ready."
He ended the call and set the phone down.
The steaks arrived. Oswald looked at his for several seconds, working through the mathematics of whether a man who had just held a gun to his head would now poison his dinner. He reached no conclusion. He continued to stare at it.
Will had reached his own conclusion approximately ten seconds ago and was already working through the first quarter of the steak. He'd had nothing since before the sewer. His blood sugar had been sending emergency signals for hours. The meat was very good and he was going to think about that instead of everything else for thirty consecutive seconds.
"I can't move against Maroni directly." Falcone's knuckle tapped the table twice. "There are constraints. You understand what I mean."
His eyes moved briefly to Oswald, then back.
The look was not subtle. It said: the plan your friend arrived with — five million dollars to turn me against Maroni — was exactly as naïve as it sounds, and I hope you both understand why.
Will understood. The Court of Owls was involved somewhere in the architecture of this arrangement. Maroni had protection that went deeper than Falcone's reach. Falcone's phone call had identified the casino theft as a Court operation — "Owlet problems" — which meant Maroni had a plausible connection to forces that made him costly to eliminate through direct action.
"The best solution is the legal one," Falcone continued. "Evidence. Delivered through the right channels." He paused. "Harvey Dent is coming to Gotham. He made a name for himself in New York going after organized crime. He'll want a high-profile target when he arrives — something that establishes him immediately. Maroni has been operating too visibly for too long. Dent will come for him with or without your help. Your job is to make sure the evidence is there when he does."
"Gordon or Bullock can receive it," he added. "Both are reliable."
He said this without irony, which Will found interesting.
Oswald had finally started eating, cautiously, testing each piece before committing to the next.
"One more thing." Will set down his fork. "We should discuss compensation. The task carries significant risk."
Oswald's hand froze mid-reach.
Falcone looked at Will with the expression of a man deciding whether to be annoyed or amused.
"You want to negotiate. Before the job is done."
"Negotiating after is worse for both of us. You're a businessman — you know that incentive structures matter more than threats when it comes to reliable execution."
The silence lasted long enough that Oswald had visibly resigned himself to death again.
Then Falcone nodded.
"Maroni's position. His holdings, his rank within the organization. Everything that is currently his becomes yours if you deliver what I need."
He let that land.
"Is that sufficient?"
Will looked at Oswald.
Oswald looked back.
"Yes," Will said. "That's sufficient."
Falcone refilled his glass, leaned back in his chair, and returned to his meal with the settled ease of a man who had just concluded a satisfactory evening's business.