“Got it in one, Daddy-o.”

Daddy-o. So she has been hanging out with the Get-Em-Girls. “Why are you here, Nora? Ain’t safe.” He starts to feel weird. Dizzy in her presence.

“I’m always safe with you around.” She twirls her hair. “I want to put my offer on the table one last time.”

“Not workin’ for you, Nora. I got people. I got loyalties.”

“Your ‘people’ don’t know what’s coming.”

“And you do?”

“Maybe I do. And maybe I’m giving you a chance to be on the winning side of things. Because it’s all gonna fall apart and if you don’t move from where you’re standing? You’ll be underneath it when it does.”

He snorts. “You gotta lotta nerve, little girl. Last I checked your apple had lost its shine.” That isn’t just him being cocky. Her stock has dropped in the city. She made her move and for a while it worked, but the gobbos came back, the gangs got her measure, the Boss made his own play to block her at every turn. He bought back her allies. Killed a few of her customers. Her circle of influence is growing ever tighter. Nora – Persephone – doesn’t have much left. “Go home. Go back to your mother. Quit playing like you’re a gangster. You don’t have it. We both know you just did it to piss me off.”

The smile falls away like the last leaf off an autumn tree.

“Why I do what I do isn’t your concern. I’m here offering you a chance.”

“I’m good where I’m at.”

“Something you ought to know about Zoladski.”

The Boss. You didn’t say his name out loud. Not if you worked for him. Not if you didn’t want to end up in the river.

“I know all I need to know,” he says.

“Then you know he’s dying.”

That hits Mookie like an ice-ball to the face. He flinches. “What?”

“Cancer. The real bad kind. His expiration date is coming up fast.”

“How do you know this?”

Mischievous twinkle. “What can I say? I’m good.”

“You’re bad.”

“That too.” She shrugs. “But you’re not exactly a boy scout, Daddy.”

“I do what I have to do.”

She taps her temple then. A sign. A gesture from one Blazehead to another. That kills him. That little acknowledgement – a recognition of a shared sin – cuts all the way through the fat and meat and gristle.

“Damnit, Nora.”

“Hey, we are who we are, Daddy. We all have our roles to play. I just thought you’d like one last chance to get onboard. Boat’s leaving. Once it’s out of port, you’ll be shit out of luck, old man. Stuck on shore as the world burns.”

“I told you, Eleanor. Go home. I know your mother misses you.”

Nora bristles. Goes quiet for a few moments and her gaze is a pair of hot pins through his eyes. Again he feels dizzy – sick, too. Nora unmoors him but this is different. Something’s wrong.