The Alibi's neon sign buzzed like a lazy hornet in the gray daylight. The front door stuck the way it always did; you had to lean your shoulder into it and give it a little love tap. Frank Jr. did, and the smell hit him first—stale beer, bleach, and the thin smoke that never quite left these walls. Glass clink. A jukebox hummed with something old and sad. A couple of regulars were parked on stools like they paid rent there.
And right in the middle of it, voice booming like a bad sermon, was his father.
"There he is!" Frank Sr. threw his arms wide like he was greeting a crowd. "The prodigal son—no, wait—the little dictator. The tyrant of our modest castle. Throws his own father out into the elements. Out! Exiled from the bosom of his home by his own seed!"
A few heads turned. One guy coughed into his sleeve. The woman behind the counter kept polishing a glass with the kind of focus you use when you want to be anywhere else.
Sr. staggered a step closer, breath like spilled whiskey and cigarettes. "Do you know what that does to a man? Do you know the psychological implications, son? A child turning on the father who gave him life—"
"You didn't give me life," Frank Jr. said, voice even. "You just stuck around long enough to take credit."
The bar snickered—low and quick. Sr.'s face twisted, proud and wounded at the same time. He slapped a palm on the bar like a judge's gavel.
"I am the spiritual cornerstone of that family! I am culture. I am history. You don't get to—"
"One day," Frank Jr. said, looking him dead in the eye, "you're going to face the bill for all this. The drinking. The stunts. The poison you call charm. And the price is death."
Silence walked across the room and sat down between them.
Sr. blinked hard, the showman slipping, the mask wobbling. Then he laughed. Big, fake, jagged. He spread his hands again and bowed to the stools like he'd nailed the punch line. "Hear that? The kid's a poet. A poet with no sense of tradition."
Frank Jr. shook his head and turned away. He'd already given Sr. more time than he deserved. He slid up to the counter and set his fingers on the wood. The woman behind it—eyes sharp, hair pinned up, a bar-back rag over one shoulder—watched him like a bouncer and a nurse at the same time.
"Where's Kev?" he asked.
"Upstairs," she said, chin tipping toward the back hall. "With Stan. It's one of his days."
He nodded. "Thanks."
Behind him, Sr. kept working the room like a campaign rally no one asked for. "Thrown out like a common criminal! My son, ladies and gentlemen—lawful tyrant of the Gallagher manor!" He pounded his chest, then winced at his own echo.
Frank Jr. headed toward the narrow hallway between the bathrooms. The floor back there had that sticky tug with each step, years of spills layered into lacquer. A flickering bulb buzzed overhead. He passed the door marked OFFICE with duct-tape letters, took the stairs up, hand sliding along the rail worn smooth by a thousand drunks and Kev's steady grip.
Each stair creaked like it was giving testimony.
Halfway up, the downstairs voices flattened into a muted wash—jukebox, laughter, Sr.'s ranting turned into a faraway storm. The upstairs air was different, too—warmer, more private. Old carpet, old coffee, that faint medicinal smell that clings to rooms where someone's body makes everything too quiet.
At the top, a crooked family calendar hung by a pushpin. The office door was ajar. Frank Jr. knocked once and pushed it open.
Kev was on a chair pulled close to the couch, forearms braced on his knees, attention sharpened to a point. He had a plastic pill case open on the desk, a paper cup of water beading sweat in the heat. In the couch's shadow lay a thin shape under a throw blanket, breath shallow and quick; the kind of brittle rhythm that says the body is counting carefully. Kev glanced up, saw Frank, and nodded once, grateful and busy in the same blink.
"Give me a second," Kev said, gentle in a way you only get when you've had to be steady for other people more than for yourself. He held the water to old lips, waited, coaxed the swallow, checked for a cough, waited more. When the breathing settled, Kev eased the cup back to the desk and stood.
"You good?" Frank Jr. asked, low.
"Good as we get," Kev said, voice scraped thin. "What's up?"
"Need a talk. Business."
Kev's mouth twitched like he'd been expecting those words sooner or later. He rubbed his palm down his shirt like he was wiping off the worry. "Can it be five minutes? He's dosing, then I can let him rest."
Downstairs, a shout rose and popped—Sr. reaching for another audience. The floor trembled with a stomp that could've been a laugh or a missed step.
"Yeah," Frank Jr. said. He leaned on the doorframe, hands in his jacket pockets, eyes drifting over the room's collage of life—ledgers stacked in milk crates, a toolkit half-open, a shoebox of receipts with a rubber band fighting for its life. This wasn't a business so much as a ship held together by willpower. He could see exactly where money leaked. He knew exactly how to stop it.
From below, the woman at the bar called something he couldn't make out. A second later, Sr.'s voice wheeled up the stairwell again, bright as a siren. "You can't ban a man from his ancestral home, you harpy! It's a violation of international law!"
Kev sighed with his whole body and gave Frank a tired smile. "He's in a mood."
"He's always in a mood," Frank Jr. said. "I told him to sober up or die."
Kev's eyebrows rose, like he wanted to joke but knew better right now. He glanced back to the couch. The blanket shifted with that delicate rise and fall. Kev checked a wrist, felt a pulse, counted silently. Satisfied, he stepped closer to Frank and pulled the office door in until it was almost shut.
"Okay," he said. "You said business."
"Yeah, with Stan, I am buying the Alibi."