Chapter 10

The FBI arrived at 5:40 a.m. I met them in the casino lobby. My hands were empty. My cane was gone. The sword was still stuck in the wall of the sub-basement. I didn’t need it anymore.

Agent Reyes was a short woman with tired eyes. She looked at the burned ledgers, the bound Ellis, the thin woman holding a nine-year-old boy. She didn’t ask many questions.

“Are you Marcus Calloway?”

“I am.”

“Did you call us?”

“I did.”

“Are you confessing to federal crimes?”

“I am.”

She read me my rights. I didn’t need them. I had been read my rights before. I knew the words. They put handcuffs on me. They were cold. Toby flinched when he saw them.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Danielle stepped forward. “He saved us.”

“I know,” Reyes said. “We’ll sort it out. Right now, he’s coming with us.”

They took Ellis first. He didn’t look at me. His silver hair was ruined. His suit was torn. He walked like a man who had already died. I felt nothing.

Then they took Danielle and Toby to an ambulance. Toby was shivering. A paramedic wrapped a blanket around him. He looked back at me.

“Uncle Marcus?”

“Yeah, Toby.”

“Will you come back?”

I didn’t lie to him. “I’m going to try.”

He nodded. Then he walked over, barefoot and bruised, and took my hand. The handcuffs made it awkward. But he held on. Danielle watched from the ambulance. She smiled.

The sun was coming up over Detroit. The rain had stopped. The sky was gray and pink. I stood in the parking lot of my burning empire, handcuffed, with my nephew’s hand in mine. For the first time in ten years, I felt like I could breathe.

“Your mother’s going to be okay,” I said.

“I know,” Toby said. “She told me you’d come.”

“I should have come sooner.”

“You’re here now.”

We stood there until the paramedic gently pulled him away. Then they put me in the back of a sedan. As we drove off, I looked back. Danielle was on a stretcher, holding Toby’s hand. She was alive. She was free. That was enough.

The lullaby was still in my head. Three taps. Two taps. One long tap. I tapped it on the window as the city woke up. Somewhere behind me, I heard an answer. Or maybe I imagined it. Either way, I smiled.

I had been a king. Now I was nothing. But my sister was alive. My nephew was safe. And for the first time in my life, I had chosen them over the empire.

That was a good way to end.