Nina looked at her daughter’s face in her mind. Then she looked at Vico—not as a criminal, but as a mirror. She holstered her gun.
“I started this,” Vico said. “Let the rest go.” gangster the cop the devil
“And you’re a cop who let a monster manipulate her for years,” Vico shot back. “We’re both damned. But those people on the list? They’re just names on paper. They didn’t choose this.” Nina looked at her daughter’s face in her mind
Mr. Morning shrieked—not in pain, but in breach . The contracts were void. The souls freed. And for one terrible, glorious second, the devil was just a man in a burning suit, stripped of his power over this place. “I started this,” Vico said
They walked out together—the gangster and the cop—as the devil crawled into a storm drain, diminished but not destroyed. Behind them, the fire rain made the whole city look like judgment.