Rocco looked at them through the doorway, then back at his phone.
His grip tightened slightly.
Not out of anger.
But out of decision.
“Let them go,” he said into the phone.
There was silence on the other end, confusion.
“But make sure they never use my name again,” he added.
It wasn’t mercy.
Not entirely.
It was something else.
A refusal to continue something he no longer believed in the same way.
When he hung up, he felt it.
The shift.
Not dramatic.
Not immediate.
But real.
He walked back inside, closing the door gently behind him, as if trying not to disturb something fragile.
