Kevin backed into the heavy oak bookshelf, his heels catching on the rug. He was cornered.
The library, usually the seat of absolute, quiet power, was now a cage of noise. Sam was in his face, spit flying, his face a mask of red, horrified fury. Asrit was pacing behind the table, throwing numbers and consequences like knives.
"You didn't just cross a line, Kevin!" Sam screamed, grabbing the lapels of Kevin's ruined silver suit. "You erased it! A wife? Children? Do you have any concept of the retaliation? Do you have any idea what Marco is going to do to us?"
Kevin swatted Sam's hands away. He was trembling so violently his teeth chattered. He felt small. He felt sick. The high from the chemicals had crashed into a jagged, paranoid valley, leaving him raw and exposed.
"I was sending a message!" Kevin shrieked, his voice cracking. "I was showing them we aren't weak! I was showing them we have teeth!"
"You showed them we are butchers!" Sam roared back. "There is a code! Even animals have a code! You don't touch the family! You don't touch the home! You just turned every neutral family in the city against us. You signed our death warrants because you wanted to play soldier!"
Asrit stopped pacing. He turned his cold, reptilian gaze on Kevin.
"It's not just the morality, Sam," Asrit cut in, his voice dripping with disdain. "It's the incompetence. He missed Marco. He went to the house to kill the King and ended up killing the pawns because he was too scared to check the schedule. It was sloppy. It was frantic. It was... embarrassing."
The word hit Kevin harder than a bullet. Embarrassing.
He looked at his father. John sat in the leather chair, silent, watching the scene with that same hollow, disappointed stare. He looked at Kevin not like a son, but like a failed experiment. A beaker that had shattered.
Kevin felt the tears start. Hot, humiliating tears that blurred his vision. He wiped his nose on his sleeve, smearing mucus and soot across the expensive fabric.
"I tried," Kevin sobbed. "I tried to be the fire. You said... you said James was a fire. You said he burned the forest."
"James knew what he was burning!" Asrit snapped. "James was a scalpel disguised as a hammer. You? You're just a child with a gun who got scared of the dark."
"I wasn't scared!" Kevin yelled, backing up until he hit the books. "I did it for you! I did it for the empty chair! Vargo laughed at us! Marco laughed at us! I made them stop laughing!"
"They aren't going to stop laughing, Kevin," Sam said, his voice dropping to a terrified whisper. "They're going to come for our throats. And they will be right to do it."
Something inside Kevin snapped.
The wire that held his fragile, constructed identity together, the lab coat, the silver suits, the "Alchemist" persona, frayed and broke. He looked at these men, his family, his idols, his judges, and he saw the lie.
He saw the hypocrisy etched into every line of their expensive suits.
Kevin laughed. It was a wet, broken sound.
"You're lying," Kevin whispered.
Sam frowned. "What?"
"You're all liars!" Kevin screamed, pushing himself off the bookshelf. He stumbled into the center of the room, his arms flailing.
He pointed a shaking finger at the empty chair.
"You sit there and tell stories about the Gilded Hall! You talk about James putting a pen in a man's eye like it was a painting! You talk about the blood on his white suit like it was holy water!"
Kevin spun toward John.
"You call him a ghost! You call him a legend! You smile when you talk about the screaming! Asuma touches herself when she remembers the sound of him killing twenty men!"
Kevin ripped his jacket open, buttons popping, exposing his stained shirt, exposing his frantic heart.
"I went into that house! I pulled the trigger! I made the noise! I did what had to be done!"
He looked at Asrit, then Sam, then John, his eyes wide and pleading, begging for the logic to make sense.
"I did what James would have done! Why is he a legend for it and I'm a monster?"
The question hung in the air, vibrating with truth.
"You all love it when James does it!" Kevin screamed, his voice shredding. "You build shrines to him! You leave his chair empty! You worship the violence when he does it!"
He choked on a sob, his hands dropping to his sides.
"Why is it different when I do it?!"
Silence slammed into the room.
It was a heavy, suffocating silence. Sam looked away, unable to meet Kevin's eyes. Asrit stared at the floor, his jaw working. Even John shifted slightly in his chair.
Because Kevin was right.
They didn't hate the violence. They lived on violence. They built their empire on bodies, on fear, on the red ink in Asuma's ledger. They had spent ten years mythologizing James Corvini, a psychopath who butchered a room full of people, turning his massacre into a point of pride, a symbol of their "untouchable" nature.
They didn't hate Kevin because he killed a mother and two children. They hated him because he did it while crying. They hated him because he tripped on the rug. They hated him because he missed the target.
The crime wasn't the murder. The crime was the lack of style.
Kevin stood in the center of the room, panting, snot running down his lip, waiting for an answer that wasn't coming. He waited for his father to tell him he was wrong. He waited for Sam to explain the moral difference between James's pen and Kevin's gun.
But they couldn't.
Because in the Corvini world, there was no morality. There was only competence. James was a god because he was efficient. Kevin was a monster because he was messy.
Kevin looked at his father, his eyes searching for a shred of love, of understanding.
"I just wanted to be the fire," Kevin whispered, his voice broken and small.
John finally looked at him. His expression didn't change. The disappointment remained absolute.
"Fire consumes, Kevin," John said softly. "You didn't burn them. You just got soot on your hands."
John turned his chair away, facing the fire, dismissing his son. Dismissing the question. Dismissing the truth.
Kevin stood there, shattered, realizing that he could kill a thousand people, he could burn the whole city down, and to them, he would never be a legend. He would always, always just be rust.