CHAPTER 35: The Old Partner
We found Rourke at a cabin deep in the mountains overlooking the city. He didn’t run when we arrived. He sat on the porch drinking coffee, like he’d been expecting us all along.
“You traded it all away,” he said without looking up. “All that power, all that control… for handouts and clinics and rules. You became exactly what you used to laugh at.”
“I became a father,” Victor answered. “I learned that power without purpose is just a cage. And I didn’t want her to live inside it.”
Rourke looked at me then, really looked at me. “You think you’re better than us? You think you can run this city with bandages and kind words?”
“I think you’re scared,” I said. “Scared that if people don’t have to be afraid of you anymore… you’ll have nothing left.”
For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick stack of files—every secret, every deal, every name he’d kept hidden all these years.
“I held onto them,” he said quietly. “Just in case you ever came back to your senses. But I see now… you never lost them. You just stopped using them the wrong way.”
He handed them over. “Take them. And do what you should have done twenty years ago.”
---
