Smoke rolls through The Rusty Anchor, curling under the blue door and into the hall. The room is half-lit, half-choked, and Dallas Fontaine stands at the threshold with Murderbone at his heel, the ledger still hot in his hand.

Alden Pryce squares himself by the bar, coat open, one hand hovering near his waistband. Councilman Voss waits behind him in the office doorway, pale and rigid, watching the smoke like it might testify against him.

Dallas has the names, the route slips, the confession, and the bodies all lined up in one room. Pryce shifts his weight toward the side exit. Voss glances once at the blue door, calculating a run.

Dallas fires once. Pryce’s face snaps back in a burst of red, and he drops behind the bar without a sound.

Murderbone launches past Dallas in a blur of teeth and muscle, slamming into Voss and driving him hard against the office frame.

The plea turns into a choke as Murderbone grips Voss’s coat and shoulders him to the floor, pinning him beneath the smoke and panic.

A pale envelope slips from Pryce’s jacket as he falls, skidding across the floorboards and stopping at Dallas’s boot.

From the office doorway, Voss goes very still under Murderbone’s weight, staring at the gun now turned on him as the room fills with coughing silence.

Smoke drifted low over the Rusty Anchor as Pryce bled out behind the bar and Voss thrashed under Murderbone's grip.

By night’s end, the conspiracy lay exposed in smoke, blood, and confession. Dallas Fontaine left the Rusty Anchor with the truth in hand and the weight of vengeance still heavy, but no longer unanswered. The city kept breathing, and for one hard, final moment, so did he.