[Jason Todd’s POV]

Sometimes, I just want to lie still and do absolutely nothing. Just be a couch potato for the day—no thinking, no planning, no diving headfirst into the constant chaos that shadows me. 

Just a quiet moment. A breath. No goals. No vengeance. No twisted sense of purpose anchoring my soul to the war outside.

But my mind won’t shut up.

My thoughts don’t rest, and neither does that burning hunger inside me—that hunger for justice, for payback, for accomplishment.

The kind that keeps me pacing like a wolf in a cage even when I’m sprawled on the couch, chewing through a greasy slice of pizza.

Which, ironically, is from a place owned by the Falcones.

Yeah. Their mozzarella game is dangerously good. I’ve gotta give it to them—they know crime and they know dough.

But even as I stuff my face with the last slice, there’s this gnawing urge in my stomach that isn’t about hunger. It’s that same twitchy kind of craving I get right before a storm rolls in—the kind of hunger that no food can settle.

The Maronis are bound to strike back soon. They’ve been licking their wounds, plotting, pulling bodies out of warehouses. It’s only a matter of time before they retaliate.

And when they do, the Falcones will answer with twice the violence.

Then it’ll spiral. It won’t just be some turf war with whispered threats and back-alley shootouts. It’ll be a citywide bloodbath—one even I might not be able to control. An all-out war with bullets flying and bodies hitting pavement in every corner of Gotham.

I’d have to ensure things do not turn our like that.

The idea of fanning the flames between the two families to keep Bruce a bit preoccupied until I have made my move to directly poke at Black Mask by interfering with his territory and street business, just makes me a bit twitchy to do something and not leisurly lay around like this.

Now I’m craving pasta for tonight’s dinner. I laugh to myself as I lean back on the couch.

Maybe later I’ll hit up that Italian joint on the east side—the one that still has the blacked-out windows and that overly friendly waitress with the fake smile. 

I overheard a guy talking about how their seafood linguine could bring tears to your eyes. Sounds promising.

Although, it’s owned by the Bertinellis. So… that’s a gamble.

Hopefully they’re still standing by the time I show up. If not—well, I’ll eat somewhere else. 

Sofia Falcone won’t sit still for long. She’s dangerous in a way most of the suits in this town aren’t—unpredictable, raw, and quietly psychotic. 

All it takes is one wrong headline and she’ll blow.

And Big Lou? That street thug has the subtlety of a hand grenade in a church. He’s going to declare war soon, waving his flag like a drunk with a flamethrower, and every idiot beneath him will start spilling lead into the alleys just to prove they’re loyal.

All that chaos? It’ll catch Black Mask’s attention. And that’s the initial goal. He’s paranoid, twitchy, always watching his back. I need to feed that paranoia—get it nice and fat—before I slice it wide open.

But then there’s him.

Joker.

Goddamn clown.

Even when I had no memory, buried under League training and white noise, his face still haunted me. I’d see him in dreams I couldn’t explain, feel his laugh crawling under my skin during silence, like an itch I couldn’t scratch.

He was a shadow in my sleep. A monster in the hallway of my subconscious. Like my body remembered the trauma even when my mind was gone. 

The League taught us discipline, taught us to master pain, to bury emotions. But he was a scar the training couldn’t erase.

Joker. Batman’s little pet lunatic.

The man who beat me half to death, left me to die alone in that rotting building—and still got to keep drawing breath in his lungs.

Because Bruce let him live.

That’s the part I can’t get past. Not the crowbar. Not the laughter. Not the explosion.

The choice.

He chose to let that psycho breathe.

He let the man who murdered his son keep living even if he was currently detailed at Arkham. 

And not just living—but laughing, probably scheming his next escape from that yard of lunatics. Rationally, I know I don’t hate Bruce. Not really. But goddamn it, the betrayal sits so deep in me that sometimes I can’t tell if it’s rage or grief that boils over.

It’s irrational, maybe. I know that. But the pain is louder than reason.

And if the roles were reversed—if Bruce had been the one lying broken on that floor while I lived—you better believe I wouldn’t have left a single goddamn piece of that clown intact. Joker would’ve begged me to end it. And I wouldn’t have been merciful.

But Bruce? Bruce has Damian now.

His biological son. Guess I was the warm-up act.

Maybe I don’t matter to him anymore. Maybe I never really did.

That used to hurt. Now it’s fuel.

So I’ll remind him. I’ll remind all of them. That I was never just another sidekick. That I didn’t come back to be welcomed—I came back to be reckoned with.

The city’s spiraling.

And soon enough, I’ll say hello to the Bat himself.

– – –

Sofia Falcone’s office reeked of cigars, old money, and fear—but it wasn’t her fear.

She stood by the floor-length window of her private suite atop the Gatto Nero Casino, swirling a glass of red wine without drinking it. Below, Gotham’s lights flickered like nervous pulses, uncertain of which news would rise next.

Behind her, a bruised and shaking Donnie Trillo sat on a leather couch, dabbing sweat from his brow with a napkin he’d been clutching like a rosary. Across from him, Sofia’s consigliere leaned against a liquor cabinet, silent and sharp-eyed.

Sofia didn’t look at Donnie as she spoke.

“Say it again.”

Donnie flinched. “He—he was wearin’ a mask. Balaclava. Tight. Couldn’t see his face, nothing. Took out my crew in seconds. Said, ‘The Falcones say hi’, and then the docks lit up like it was the Fourth of July.”

Sofia’s fingers tightened on the glass. A single drop of wine spilled onto the floor.

“And you’re sure,” she said coolly, “he said Falcone.”

Donnie nodded like a man trying to keep his head on his shoulders. “Crystal. He wanted us to hear it.”

She finally turned to face him, eyes as sharp and dark as obsidian.

“Then let them hear something back.”

– – –

[Later That Night – Red Hook Industrial District, Maroni-Controlled Meth Lab]

They came in through the skylights—silent and masked. Sofia’s crew wore matte-black tactical gear. No emblems. No colors. No names. Just death.

The Maroni guards didn’t stand a chance. One by one, they were taken out with suppressed rounds and blades, efficiently.

Inside, the meth lab burned.

Tubs of precursors melted. Gas lines burst into flames. A man screamed as his leg caught fire and another died coughing on cyanide smoke.

The final touch? A body nailed to the brick wall with rebar through his wrists, a leather bag over his head, and a handwritten sign;

“The Falcones don’t play hide and seek.”

By dawn, everyone in the underworld had seen the pictures.

– – –

[Bruce Wayne’s POV]

The Batcave was dimly lit, as always, its only real illumination spilling from the massive monitor wall that flickered with cascading streams of data. 

Code, surveillance footage, facial recognition scans, and encrypted communications flowed across the screens like an endless tide of digital noise. 

In front of them sat Bruce Wayne—no longer the billionaire playboy, just the Batman, in full armor except for the cowl, which rested beside him on the desk.

His jaw was clenched tight, expression unreadable but heavy. The subtle furrow of his brow, the tension in his posture—he wasn’t just scanning data, he was hunting through it.

“We need to head out soon,” 

Damian announced as he entered the cave, his footsteps light but sharp on the cold floor.

Bruce didn’t look up. “I’m almost done here,” he replied, fingers gliding across the keyboard.

Damian walked closer, his cape swaying gently as he approached the desk and leaned a hip against its edge. His sharp green eyes were locked on his father, observing—not the screens, but him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked bluntly.

Bruce didn’t answer immediately. His silence lingered just a second too long.

“What do you mean?” he finally said, not taking his eyes off the monitors.

“You’ve got that look again,” Damian said. “The one you wear when something’s bothering you but you won’t talk about it.”

Bruce exhaled quietly, almost imperceptibly. “This is how I always look,” he muttered, but even he knew that wasn’t convincing.

Damian wasn’t buying it either. His stare remained fixed, waiting.

After a moment, Bruce relented, rubbing the side of his temple with his gloved fingers as he sighed. “Something is wrong.”

Damian tilted his head slightly, prompting him to continue.

“There’s a shift happening in Gotham… and not the usual kind.” Bruce’s voice dropped lower, thoughtful. “The balance of power between the crime families is unraveling. What used to be careful politics and unspoken rules is dissolving into chaos.”

“Chaos like what?” Damian asked, narrowing his eyes.

Bruce finally looked up, catching his son’s gaze. “Gotham is starting to feel like it did before… during the old days. Back when the streets were run with blood and fear. When territory was carved out with bullets and bones.”

Damian scoffed quietly, straightening up. “I’m no stranger to bloody feuds, Father.”

Bruce held his gaze for a moment, saying nothing. He didn’t need to. He remembered all too well what Damian had been through—even as a child raised by the League, he had survived horrors that most grown men wouldn’t recover from.

He turned his attention back to the monitors, allowing a rare flicker of solemnity to pass across his face.

Damian folded his arms, waiting.

“Got anything yet?” he asked, clearly impatient.

“Not yet,” Bruce replied, his voice slightly distant as his eyes swept across new incoming intel. It wasn’t entirely a lie—but it wasn’t the full truth either.

Damian saw right through it, he has observed his dad for almost four years now and realized how annoyingly similar they both were. So he probs at actions he might make even if it were just a mere hunch, being that he still couldn’t predict or read whatever it was his dad was truely thinking. 

“But…?”

Bruce hesitated, then pulled up a new set of images on the main screen. One in particular caught Damian’s eye. A blurred but unmistakable figure in red.

“There’s a pattern forming,” Bruce explained. “The crime bosses are acting out of character. Rash. Aggressive. It’s not just fear—it’s fear of something specific.”

He tapped a key, zooming in on a frame that showed a shadowy figure in a red helmet, caught mid-stride on a grainy street cam.

“It started with the attack on the Bertinellis,” he continued. 

“Ever since this…Red Hood appeared, the dominoes have been falling in rapid succession.”

Damian leaned forward slightly. “Do you think he’s the cause?”

Bruce didn’t answer right away. Instead, he stared at the screen with narrowed eyes, jaw tightening again.

“I think he’s the match that lit the powder keg.” Damian opened his mouth to ask another question, but Bruce cut him off with a firm, commanding tone.

“Suit up. We’re heading out.”

Damian frowned slightly, annoyed at being cut off but smart enough not to argue. He turned on his heel and disappeared into the changing alcove.

Bruce remained seated a moment longer, staring at the image of Red Hood. The shadows wrapped around the crimson helmet like a curse from the past, and despite the lack of clarity in the photo, Bruce felt something twist deep in his gut. 

Something cold. 

Something familiar.

He couldn’t say it aloud. Not yet. But deep down, a part of him feared he already knew who it was behind the mask. But didn’t have the faintest idea, who.

As he stood and slid the cowl back over his head, his expression returned to that hard, controlled mask of silent determination.

The winds in Gotham were shifting. Fast. And they were carrying the scent of blood.

The war was coming.

And Red Hood still remains an unknown variable.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep