Carmine Falcone fell completely silent when he heard Catwoman's words.
Selina scoffed in contempt as she watched the crime lord stop speaking. With steady hands, she raised the pistol she had taken from a bodyguard, pointing the barrel straight at Falcone's chest.
Falcone inhaled deeply, lowered his head, and began speaking in a calm, tired voice.
"More than twenty years ago, I met your mother. She was beautiful like you, but her voice was far more captivating. I was obsessed with her. We were inseparable until she told me she wanted to be the mistress of the Falcone Family, demanding control of more than half of my criminal enterprises. That was when I finally broke free."
He paused, breathing slowly.
"Your mother didn't love me. She only wanted power, not money. She wanted my influence. I hardened my heart and cast her aside, and her singing career died with it. She was as cunning as you are, Selina. I struck at her, and she struck right back."
Falcone's eyes darkened with old bitterness.
"She kept you a secret. That was her first act of revenge. Then she turned to the streets as a woman desperate for survival, sleeping with many men, even right under my nose in my own clubs. Do you know how much I loved her? I loved her madly, and I endured everything for her. No man in Gotham could put up with her for thirteen years like I did. They all whispered they'd been with your mother, and I just stood there, the so‑called King of Gotham, humiliated!"
Falcone's breathing grew heavier. Selina's hand, gripping the gun, trembled slightly.
He continued, voice steady but heavy.
"Even after she kept you from me, I watched over you from the shadows. Every man who tried to hurt you ended up dead. I protected your mischiefs. I even minimized the consequences of your thefts so your name never made a wanted poster."
A flicker of emotion crossed his face.
"If I'm honest, I love you more than I ever did Sophia. She was reckless and impulsive, never thinking before she acted. But you, you are bold and meticulous. Once you make a plan, you never fail."
Falcone leaned closer, his chest nearly touching the muzzle of Selina's gun. He lifted his hand toward her face.
Selina flinched back just as his elbow shot up, knocking the pistol from her hand. Before she could react, Falcone's grip closed around her throat.
Her breath hitched. For all her fury, she momentarily forgot that before becoming Gotham's crime lord, Falcone was once the most feared fighter in the Italian mob—long before Victor Zsasz ever rose.
With strength that belied his age, Falcone held her in place, his face twisting with a mix of agony and obsession.
"I loved you so much, but you obliterated my last hope," he snarled. "Even Wraith's genetics were our final chance at healing me. I'm dying, Selina. Pancreatic cancer, untreatable. I should have died in a hospital bed. But then Wraith came, a miracle that might have saved me, and you killed Sophia. You destroyed everything."
"Your mother was no saint, but she had ambition," he continued. "You should have been sent away, put into a proper school or kept far from this life. Instead, you came here and ruined the Falcone name, the Italian legacy in America. You destroyed me and everything I built."
"You turned a daughter's last image of her father into filth."
Selina let out a raw scream. Her left hand lashed out and struck his jaw. As Falcone moved to dodge, her retractable claws extended, scoring deep lines across his cheek.
Falcone cried out in pain. His grip loosened just enough for her to drive her claws into his forearm. Selina twisted free, stumbling toward the fallen gun.
But before she could reach it, a dozen armed men burst into the cabin. Bullets shredded the air, forcing her to abandon the weapon. She twisted and turned through the hail of fire, weaving past the small bar counter toward her escape route.
She yanked open the slightly ajar emergency exit and rolled out like a shadow freed from chains, sprinting toward a waiting off‑road motorcycle.
As Selina sped away, Falcone's men rushed to help their boss to his feet.
"Boss, we should go after her now," one of them said.
"No," Falcone said, eyes burning. Though pain lanced through his face and arm, he stopped them.
After ordering the cabin cleared, his private jet climbed into the sky without hesitation.
Only when the plane left Gotham's airspace did Falcone exhale, a quiet smile curling on his lips.
From this moment, he and Selina were completely at odds forever. That clash, he believed, was her pledge of true defiance.
Sophia's death was regrettable, but Selina was most like him, the one he admired above all. He was not a man who acted on whims; his was the burden of a family legacy. He could not afford more loss. He had already lost one daughter—he would not lose another.