Mookie shrugs, nods. “Deal.”

And back into the octagon – now with one pallet wall knocked flat – they go.

As Skelly helps pick up the pieces of the broken home, Mookie stands still in the middle of it and lets the weariness wash over him. His body is pulsing with the after-effects of the fight. The pain a distant throb – all the more irritating because it’s not front and center, not driving him like a knife in the ribs. Instead it’s like a heavy bass booming on the other side of the wall when you’re trying to sleep. He thinks about his daughter. About his ex-wife. About how his whole Organization is falling down around his ears with the Boss being sick and the gangs smelling the sour stink of an infected wound and how somebody – maybe Werth – sold him out. Then back to Nora, and how maybe a lot of this is her fault to begin with.

Where did I go wrong, he asks himself, but it’s a question he already knows the answer to. And he knows it’s not just one answer but a whole series of them, one after the other, the ants-go-marching one-by-one, hurrah, hurrah. Carrying his regrets and mistakes like little crumbs of poisoned bread. He reminds himself that when all this is said and done, if he’s still alive, he’s going to find Jess and tell her sorry.

Something he’s never done.

Something he starts doing now.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Lets those two words hang there for a while because he’s not sure where he’s going with them. Skelly gives him a look as she cleans up, and Burnsy – who sits on an overturned bucket – stops dabbing parts of his skin with a wet rag and stares. “I’m sorry about your family. Sorry about killing you. It wasn’t my plan. I thought I’d smash your car, drag you out, give you a beatin’, bring you back to the Boss. But then I saw the car was on fire…” He stares off at nothing, remembering the day. “I went to the trunk, popped it. Took the heroin. By then it was too late for you. I did the job. I got the drugs. I’m sorry you’re dead and that death sucks.”

Burnsy stands. Hissing in pain as he does. He looks Mookie up and down. “Fuck you, Pearl. Fuck you up, down, and sideways. Fuck you with a knife, a fist, a baseball bat, a fucking goddamn thermonuclear warhead shoved so far up your corn-hole your teeth glow. Fuck you to hell and back and deeper still. Fuck you from me, from my family, from the bottom of my fuckin’ fuck-you heart, you fucking fuck-headed fuck-hearted animal.”

Mookie nods. Says nothing.

Then: Burnsy offers a hand.

Mookie looks at it like it’s a cankerpede.