Night settled over the city.
The Roman Casino opened its doors as the last light died — a building fronted by a carved lion's head, jaw wide, swallowing the street's noise and light whole. Guests moved through the entrance in a steady current: bare shoulders catching the chandeliers, men in suits that cost more than cars, wrists weighted with watches. Will stood near the wall and felt his lower back beginning to protest.
He thought of a line from an old song. Seventeen, standing at the school dance like a nobody.
Except back then he'd only looked like one.
Oswald appeared from somewhere in the crowd with two glasses of champagne and pressed one into Will's hand.
"Relax. We're not here to stand at attention."
He sipped his own drink and tracked a woman in a red dress as she passed, eyebrows lifting with uncomplicated appreciation.
"Don't let the clothes fool you," he said, eyes still following her. "Half these people have more blood on their hands than we do. The difference is their tailor." He paused. "Well — more blood than I do. You're basically a saint."
"I'll kill someone if I have to," Will said.
Oswald turned and looked at him with genuine amusement. "You don't even know what have to means yet."
Will didn't argue.
"There are two kinds of people in Gotham you genuinely shouldn't provoke." Oswald swirled the champagne. "And if you're stupid enough to do it anyway, you'd better be committed to finishing it."
"First kind — drunks."
Will snorted.
"You think that's funny?"
"My father was one." He said it the way you say something you stopped feeling bad about years ago. "Every time he got into the bottle he lost all sense of proportion. Couldn't fight back until I was seventeen. Put him in the ICU for a week." He shrugged. "After that he learned restraint."
Oswald stared at him for a moment, then broke into laughter — real laughter, the kind that bent him forward.
"You know what, in some ways you're more ruthless than I am." He shook his head, still grinning. "If I could do my life over, I'd have done exactly the same thing, about two years earlier than I did."
"Second kind," Will said, steering away from the subject. "You were saying."
The grin faded. Oswald drained the rest of his glass and wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of one hand.
"One person, specifically. Former leader of the Red Hood gang. A genuine lunatic — had an active bounty from Falcone on his head and still walked straight into Falcone's private residence in disguise. Alone."
"He lived?"
"He walked in wearing remote-detonated explosives and took Falcone hostage on the spot. Nobody could touch him." Oswald turned the empty glass in his fingers. "Eventually he put Falcone in a car and drove. They found the vehicle abandoned in the North Harbor — Falcone inside, completely unharmed."
Will thought about it. Unharmed. Then why take him at all.
"For fun, maybe. Don't try to logic out a madman." Oswald set the glass on a passing server's tray. "Though unharmed is relative — our friend had fitted Falcone with an explosive vest before he left. Connected to the car door by a wire. When Maroni arrived and opened the door, a five-minute clock started."
"Then the man called Maroni directly. Told him: cut off your own left hand to disarm the vest, or do nothing and wait for the explosion — and take Falcone's seat when the smoke clears." Oswald's voice had gone flat, recounting it from memory. "His choice."
Will already knew how it ended.
"Maroni didn't cut his hand. And the bomb was fake."
Oswald's eyebrows rose.
"The whole point was watching him choose," Will said. "If Maroni saves Falcone, he's loyal. If he lets him die, Falcone's people come for him. Either way there's a fracture. And if it turned out the bomb was real and Maroni did nothing—" Will shrugged. "That's funny too, I guess. Depending on your sense of humor."
Oswald studied him with something that wasn't quite suspicion and wasn't quite respect. Somewhere between the two.
"You've got a strange mind," he said finally.
The last guests filtered in. The gaming floor came fully alive.
Maroni's security operation for the night ran on two crews. Will and Oswald's people took the floor and the upper level. The second contingent belonged to Richie Penton — an older hand in Maroni's organization, more seniority than Oswald by several years, and currently crossing the floor with a cluster of associates around him like a man accustomed to taking up space.
Will had read about Richie in the comic. Broken right hand at the docks, then killed by one of Strange's bio-humans for pushing a debt collection too hard. A bad death, badly earned.
But Richie's right hand was fine. No cast. No splint. He was laughing at something as he walked over — broad-shouldered, 6'2", filling the room differently than the guests did.
No Batman meant no broken hand. The timeline had shifted.
Richie spotted Oswald and spread his arms.
"Well, look who it is—"
He reached for Oswald's head — probably to ruffle the meticulously lacquered hair. Oswald's hand came up and knocked the arm aside hard enough to mean something.
"Use that nickname and I will make tonight very difficult for you."
Oswald had drawn himself up to his full height, which still left him half a foot short of Richie. It gave the whole exchange the energy of someone's younger sibling refusing to back down from a fight they couldn't win on size alone.
Richie laughed. "Alright, alright." He spread his hands, performing innocence. "What did Maroni send you here for anyway? Security? I think we've got it covered."
Richie's associate — a heavyset man named Carlo — leaned in with the timing of someone who'd practiced his lines.
"Maybe Maroni's worried about pickpockets under the card tables. Our guys might miss them, but Mr. Oswald wouldn't even need to bend down to check."
The room's ambient noise filled the silence.
Oswald went very still. Then he let out a slow breath, turned to Richie, and smiled — wide, genuine-looking, the most deliberately pleasant expression Will had seen on his face.
"You're right. Between both our teams, this should go smoothly. Let's make sure it does."
Richie clapped him on the shoulder and moved off, still laughing.
The smile left Oswald's face before Richie had taken three steps.
"Will." His voice was quiet and very even. "Second floor. Now."
The second-floor bathroom was empty.
Oswald went straight to the far stall and kicked the toilet. Then again. He kept going until the porcelain cracked and a pipe joint gave way, throwing mist across the tile floor. Then he stopped, breathing hard, and stood in the spreading water with his fists at his sides.
Will leaned against the doorframe and let him finish.
The history between Oswald and Richie wasn't hard to read. Oswald had come up under Richie — not by choice, the way you come up under someone who has something you need and makes sure you know the cost. The nickname, the hands. Whatever had happened, it had been thorough enough to make Oswald the kind of boss who never treated his people the way he'd been treated. Men like that usually had a very specific reference point.
The mist thinned. Oswald smoothed his hair back behind his ears with careful fingers, strand by strand, as though reassembling something.
"Will." His voice had returned to its normal register, but the jaw was still tight. "I want Richie dead. Tell me how."
"You're asking me? I've never killed anything larger than a cockroach." Will watched the water run toward the drain. "Best I can offer is a sincere curse. Here's hoping he doesn't make it through tonight."
He said it with no particular weight.
But he was only half listening. The games downstairs had been running for nearly forty minutes. Strange and whatever he'd built in that laboratory could arrive at any time, and Will still hadn't come up with a way to move Oswald out of the building without explaining why.
He was still working through the angles when Oswald raised a hand.
"Quiet." He turned toward the wall. "You hear that? Something's moving in Maroni's room next door."