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Edward is lying on his bed on his stomach, feet kicking in the air behind him, writing a new page of his diary with his headphones on, listening to a playlist of his favorite hits when a trademark knocking noise coming from the window made him jolt, turn around then smile widely: time for a visit from the Batman!
Eddie hurried to the windowsill, opened the double panels and grinned at his beloved hero.
"Batman!" He rejoiced, like a kid upon seeing his idol.
"Good evening, Edward," the low, smooth voice greeted him as Ed invited the taller boy to step in.
Ever since the Bat works with Jim Gordon on affairs, and after that evening the policeman tricked him into participating to a family dinner, his relations with the little family were... at their best. The first time he returned post-dinner, a bit shy, he knocked on the bay window at the apartment's terrace leading to the kitchen and the living room, thinking it will be more courteous than straight-up sneaking in. Protective and caring, Jim assured he can stop by whenever he wants, not just for cases or to ask something related to work: he is welcomed in their household for timeouts and to take a break too.
Jim noticed how initially the bat-boy couldn't believe people would let him in so easily, while he is... objectively speaking kind of a freak. Bruce felt profundly touched by their dedication.
One thing leading to another... without defining a precise schedule, the vigilante took habits, like coming for dinner every now and then, paying short visits over the evenings when he patrols in the area, watching over from the shadows probably more often than he should.
Among others, a sort of ritual established for when he visits Edward: helped by the exterior fire escape and his equipment (not tested yet to fly, simply to throw himself up on short distances, to climb much faster stairs or to travel up building stories thanks to his experimental grapple hook), he perches on the windowsill of Ed's bedroom and knocks instead of breaking inside. The first time he did so, Eddie almost had an heart attack when he spotted the massive black shape watching him, crouched like a scary gargoyle, not blinking under his cowl.
Now it became a custom for both of them. Not a secret: Ed may be twenty-two, he politely asked his dad first if he could welcome Batman in his bedroom. Moreover, Bruce respects and sincerely loves Jim Gordon, he would not do something that could displease his work partner.
Hence... they resembled high schoolers experimenting social interactions with a mutual teenage crush for the first time. Bruce perched on his window, stepped in his bedroom, Eddie sported an admirative expression the whole time he spent in his company and giggled constantly, he showed the Bat his notebooks filled with calculations, equations and science theorems, asked him riddles, took his pets Query and Echo out of their cage for his unconventional buddy and him to play with the adorable female rats, told Vengeance about his days, infodumped on movies and books he is a fan of plus on computer programs he creates...
One of the relevant anecdotes in their growing friendship would be that day Jim caught the both of them, sitting on the wooden flooring with their back against the side of the structure of Ed's bed, Query and Echo happily running from one to another, a soft tune playing and Eddie gushing about the singer of this band... whom the Bat apparently enjoyed as well, as he commented actively, like a devoted bat-fanboy, on the group Nirvana.
This evening, Edward showed Batman experimental drawings he made of a batsymbol, on one of his pretty notebooks. Together they started the conception of a future 'batsignal', that, according to Eddie, should be lighted in the sky to warn everyone that Vengeance is out there, watching over his city, ready to punish those who misbehave or abuse the system.
There's definitely something in the way they interact that made Jim and Barbara smile knowingly whenever the unaware kiddos have cute sorta-sleepovers together.
✨
"Is everything alright, Master Bruce?"
Bruce addressed his butler a weird side-glance, eyes opening wide and tilting his head to the side like a disheveled bird watching a fellow feral animal. He was shirtless and went bare feet, sitting on the floor at Wayne Manor, papers scattered around him in a circle like he was about to perform some satanic summoning of a demon.
"I'm... stuck in a dead-end," the young man summarized alongside a sigh, his whole posture loosening. "Cannot... see clearer in this affair."
Alfred glared severely at the dozen of documents, as if he held these pages accountable for his protégé's current sorry state and the exhaustion obviously crashing through him.
"May I make a bold suggestion?"
Bruce nodded quietly, expecting an advise on how to re-consider this recent case labelled 'Mysteries of the Owl Tracks' by the press. With his usual British phlegm, Alfred let out a stern:
"Go. To. Bed. It's barely eight pm but you've been up for far too long. You need to sleep, Master Bruce. Being a superhero at night doesn't mean you can erase resting hours from your timetable. Now stand up and walk to your bedroom. If you even remember the way up there, it's been a while since your bed last received a visit from you."
"... Not that much," he opposed, but in his tone it came out so unsure Bruce couldn't argue against his mentor. "Besides I am not... a superhero. Not... even a hero."
They didn't debate on the terms, now was not the time for this.
On one hand, it is true that Bruce hadn't opened his bedroom's door in five days. On the other hand, he napped here and there in the Batcave. Still, he felt deep in his bones the accumulated tension of the past days, typical of when he has a dangerous criminal on the run, different from the low standing thugs he beats up when stumbling upon a street fight. He may only be around since summer, now in November everyone knows a beast called Vengeance with a bat on its chest haunts the Underworld, has eyes and ears everywhere and, like the shadows, reaches every nook and cranny of Gotham City.
Less than fourty minutes later, 'Vengeance' was snoring slightly, his head buried in a fluffy pastel blue pillow and his mouth agape, completely absorbed into a dreamless slumber.
At least dreamless for the next couple of hours... until he woke up, crying and shaking violently, his brain assaulted by a confusing mess of horrible images mixed together in an explosive cocktail: dismembered bodies he saw on a previous police investigation, a crying child he heard at the GCPD, who lost her parents and brother to a gruesome murderer, the depressing sight of a junkie he had mistaken for a dead body in an obscure alley at night, the fear printed on a teenager's face when he punched mercilessly her aggressor and she... ran away, associating him who saved her with something more frightening than the man who tried to kidnap her as she was outside too late at night... One memory, associated to a terrifying, shrieking scream stood out in the bleak list: the red-hooded stranger he failed to apprehend, falling into a pit of acid at the chemical factory last month.
Bruce's eyes opened wide in terror, his chest rising and falling swiftly, his heartbeat erratic, his skin covered of sweat. He stayed there, sitting on his mattress, panting as if he had run a marathon. The grim echoes of this shapeless, murky nightmare gradually vanished until they retracted to the confines of his mind.
As the adage says: don't get too close. It's dark inside.
He checked the alarmclock on his nightstand. 1: 12 AM.
Via automatic gestures, without giving himself the time to think it through, Bruce stood up, reached the bathroom at the bottom of his suite, took a rapid but efficacious shower then... went down to the cave. He needed... comfort. Closeness. Love.
Not as Bruce Wayne, but as Batman.
Edward woke up at the third knocking noise on his window panels.
He hastily grabbed his glasses then his smartphone, whose power cord was plugged into the outlet under his small bedside table to light up the surroundings. He smiled, tired though forever joyous to see the familiar silhouette watching him from the outside.
"You could have stepped in directly," he whispered after letting the Bat and some of the cold winter air invade his bedroom before quickly closing the locking latch. "At this hour, it'd be better if you just... came inside, not to wake up everyone."
They didn't hear noises, meaning neither Barbara nor Jim perceived the recent disturbance in the Force.
Eddie flashed his Batman a content smile... then frowned mildly, doubts invading his senses.
"... Vengeance?" He called, as ever alternating between the Bat's two most common names. "Is... everything alright?"
Bruce shook his head no. God, he felt so pathetic. He hadn't... rehearsed a coaxing speech to explain his presence at this hour of the night, he... wanted company.
"I... hu..." he apologized weakly. "I shouldn't have come here..."
"Wait! Do not worry!"
Keeping his tone low not to perturb the other inhabitants of the modern flat, Edward moved to the now closed window and spread his arms on either sides of himself, in order to block the way to the Bat who made an attempt at walking out.
"It's alright. We can... play a game, if you want?" He suggested, his habitual admiration returning. "Or... take a break? No offense but you look tired, and dad told us you work on your own for nearly a week now, on a new horrid affair. Maybe you... have troubles resting, lately? At least... more than usual?"
"... I can't sleep," he attested aloud, his voice hoarse. "Not... enough to recover my strength. Just... the bare minimum not to crumble, yet sometimes I wake up... more fatigued than I was when I... finally closed my eyes. Mind is plagued by... too many bad dreams. Too many screams. Too much... violence... it never allows me a timeout period."
That was the longest personal confession he made to anyone in his life, aside from Alfred.
Eddie blinked under his glasses, not expecting either to see his hero so... vulnerable.
"... I had nightmares practically every night when I was a child, they were... kinda recurring as a teen too," he compared their experiences, what piqued Bruce's curiosity. "I still wake up in tears after painful scenes interwine in my subconscious every now and then. Dad says it's... nothing to be ashamed about. I have an efficient remedy for difficult nights, if you want."
Stunned by the turn of events, Bruce followed Edward (whom asked himself how the crusader managed to be silent in these heavy metallic boots while as for him Ed had to be cautious even with his pair of slippers...) to the kitchen. The three bedrooms being separated from the living room, kitchen and terrace by a corridor in L, they don't risk to be heard from this side of the house.
Ed's eyelids fluttered when he turned on even the most feeble light, revealing his partly tousled shoulder-level hazlenut hair and his cute, light green assorted pajamas.
Edward made hot chocolate for the two of them. He prepared the warm beverage meticulously, dosing the cacao powder, milk and tiny marshmallows in each cup with as much concentration as if he made a highly corrosive chemical liquid or a powerful magic potion.
Batman and him settled in the living room afterwards, and... engaged in a game of chess on the low table, drinking hot cocoa and eating tasty homebaked pumpkin cookies from a batch Eddie took out of the oven yesterday.
When Jim woke up on the morning and walked to the living room, he... caught his boys huddled together like two kittens on the couch. In his pajamas, glasses removed and curled up in a tight ball, Eddie's cheek rested against the hard plates of Vengeance's chest, whom as for him kept his full costume on, his arms spread and his head against the backrest. The chess board game, two empty mugs and a plate on which were scattered orange cake crumbs on the low table in front of them exposed the nature of the kiddos' nightly activity.
Jim smiled with genuine fondness, then silently returned to the corridor and into his room, not to disrupt them. He'll warn Barbara if she exits her bedroom before the boys wake up; only later will the four of them have a good Sunday breakfast together.
✨
"Ugh. Change the channel, please."
"Oh come on, Ed! Not yet, he's so hot."
Batman blinked, confused, when Barbara Gordon augmented the volume of the TV reporting talking about... Bruce Wayne, with pictures taken from afar the rare times he couldn't avoid being seen: once when he was forced to a meeting with the Council of Wayne Enterprises, at another moment over the unique dinner he attended in years, or at the airport post-one of his numerous travels across the planet. Observing a truly unoriginal, repeated pattern, ludicrous theories blossomed as for why the twenty-four years old billionaire never participates to mundane events, why he stays confined in his manor house or why he used to leave the town so frequently when he was a teenager.
Jim was at work, Vengeance stopped by at the Gordons' place... and ended up playing chess with Ed around the low table. Babs half-scrolled on her phone half-watched a reality show on the couch, before she accidentally arrived to this program. Echo nested on the armrest next to Babs whilst Query... climbed to his cowl, until she sat proudly between his mask's rigid, pointy ears. Edward joked about his rat giving the Bat advises to win by controlling his movements from her perch; Bruce banned brusque gestures not to dislodge the cutie.
Eddie muttered, sending his sister a parodied bat-glare. Playful, Barbara stuck out her tongue at him.
"Wayne is not 'hot'," he refuted categorically. "At best you can say he is pitiful due to that pathetic look of the sad kicked puppy he sports while he has no idea what real life issues feel like."
"Call that however you want," the girl tutted. "A mysterious, athletic given the pics, melancholic tall man in his mid-twenties who could be a rockstar if he made more public appearances is a sexy figure. What d'you think, Vengeance?"
Sitting on the mellow carpet located under the low table, Bruce felt... kinda uncomfortable.
"I... hu... don't have an opinion on Bruce Wayne. Especially not on... whether he looks 'hot' or 'pitiful'," he articulated, awkward as Hell. "Do you guys... know him?"
"He is Eddie's mortal enemy," Babs chuckled.
Ed grumbled some more.
Batman arched an eyebrow under his cowl.
"... Bruce Wayne is your mortal enemy?"
"I hate that guy," Edward shrugged, advancing another pawn on the checkered board. "I've... always despised him, even if we never properly 'met'."
"How can you... hate someone you never met?"
"You never checked even the cheesiest conversations on social medias?" Barbara jested. "It's so easy to dislike anyone nowadays. In Ed's case though, it's an... odd 'imaginary childhood friend turned rogue' kind of deal."
"... I hold his parents accountable for things they've done in the past and promises they never kept," Edward declared, in a colder voice than what Bruce ever heard him have recourse to since he befriended him. "I used to... obsess about him a little, but we were not friends. We... could never have been, given who he is and what I was."
Eddie pushed up his thick clear-framed glasses on his nose, his expression unreadable.
"In himself Wayne has... done nothing wrong I guess, I just find him irremediably pretentious and selfish," he concluded curtly. "Poor little orphan Bruce Wayne, living half-time in a tower in the richest quarter of the city, half-time in a near-castle surrounded by a private park, with so much money at his disposal he can buy half the world! Now that he is an adult, as it appears he inherited of a dream physique on top of everything. He repels me."
A shiver ran down the Bat's spine, of an... unprecedented kind. Not fear, not adrenaline, not disgust, not quite disappointement, rather an intense, dreadful feeling of betrayal he couldn't justify.
Barbara changed the channel.
Edward smiled to the Batman.
"Not that any of that matters," he cooed, looking abruptly adorable and in a good mood again. "I wished people... stopped talking about him. Wayne himself refuses to respond to interviews, journalists should... respect his own choices by letting his memory go to waste. Like he deserves. No one cares about Bruce Wayne."
His white bishop took Bruce's dark knight. Whereas the party just begun, Bruce felt like he already suffered a peculiar version of a checkmate.
"You play... very well," Batman congratulated after a bishop, Edward's favorite piece in the game, ate his black queen.
He moved one of his knights to the side. He needs to rectify his strategy if he wants to win today's game of chess.
Vengeance had brushed off the 'Bruce Wayne' incident, not dwelling on this rooted-in-his-childhood insecurity of Edward's. He could cope with his... friend? acquaintance? son of his esteemed colleague and sometimes other father figure? disliking his civil identity. After all, himself thinks of 'Bruce Wayne' as an empty shell, an... absolute wreck. Far from the persona he displays in his mask and armor, far from the... fearsome feelings he wants to inspire to the scum of his bad-to-the-bones town as he fights outside at night.
Bruce Wayne doesn't matter to Batman. Therefore it's no big troubles Ed doesn't like this antisocial nobody.
At present Eddie blushed, the butterflies going crazy in his stomach like every time Vengeance compliments him.
"You are quite talented yourself," he mirrored the praise.
The green-eyed one made a pawn progress further, his plan to corner the king on the checkered board refined.
"Are you practicing since long?"
"... Since I am a child," Bruce answered, evasive. "I... love this game, even if it's been a while since I last took out my own board and... played with someone."
Truth be told, it had been over ten years since he had last played when Edward re-introduced him to the noble game, with the wooden plate stored in his apartment. His father and sister apparently enjoy chess as well: when spying from afar, the days he doesn't show up but stakes them out from the shadows, he regularly catches the three of them engaged in friendly competitions with a prize to win, like being allowed to choose the movie of the night or the activity of the weekend.
The Gordons are so wholesome, sometimes just watching them over ordinary slices of life is enough for Bruce to experience... a strange form of overflowing warmth he is sure he had never felt before.
"What about you?" He half-growled when his adversary condemned his sole remaining rook. "Is playing chess a... family tradition?"
"Sort of," Eddie smiled, victorious: he conserves most of his central pieces while Vengeance lost two rooks, a bishop and his queen.
He has the advantage, he intends to keep it.
"My former psychiatrist introduced me to the rules, according to him a logical game like chess could help me focus, as I tend to get... too easily distracted by parasite noises or by what happens in my surrdoundings. Especially when I was younger," he confessed, a hint absent all of a sudden, yet... willing to talk about himself.
That's what you do with your bestie who dresses for Halloween every day of the year, right?
"The actually helpful appointments with doctor Crane occurred the times we... played. Turned out dad knows the rules of chess as well, mom and him owned a plate at home already. It's been one of the first bonding activity we practiced. I have... many happy memories linked to those brave little soldiers fighting on their checkered battlefield."
Bruce stayed quiet nearly a whole minute, proceeding the fragments of informations to complete the 'Edward Gordon' puzzle.
At first when seeing Jim's children, he assumed Barbara and Edward are step-siblings. What seemed logical in itself: as he saw on photographs, Jim's late wife was white, so a standard explanation could have been that Eileen had a child from a first boyfriend who would no longer feature in the picture before meeting Gordon, whom would have taken her boy in and raised him as his own the same moment he married her. Since Ed is four years older than Barbara, this matches too, although Eileen was a blue-eyed redhead while Eddie has castleton green eyes and golden-brown hair. Still, it appeared eminently plausible.
However, when investigating on the Gordons' family, for... elementary curiosity, Bruce found out Edward had been adopted at eleven. Like in most open-minded families who adopted a grown child, his origins are not a taboo, when asked they refer freely to the fact Ed doesn't share biological links with his father and his sister. Since they became sort of friends, this characteristic of their family was mentioned already around Batman, so he didn't feel surprised to have Ed's past referenced this evening.
Too skittish until then to fully broach the topic, this new element could allow Bruce an occasion to... get a deeper glimpse into the subject.
"You were followed by a psychiatrist?" He quoted consequently, advancing a pawn.
"For a while when I was a kid... and during roughly a year after mom and dad took me in," Eddie validated, not interpreting the data as something he must keep for himself.
He made his second bishop recoil, that black pawn threatened it.
"It featured in the... procedure, my parents had to maintain my follow-up with the doctor who treated me back then, until he declared himself therapy is no longer necessary. He said finding a family is... the best support I could receive, and that I finally progressed, more than I ever did over our previous appointments, since I live in a loving home."
"Surely he's right," Bruce murmured, his tone husky. "Family embodies the... greatest remedy."
Eddie granted him a comprehensive smile.
"What about you? No... bat-daddy or bat-mommy?"
"... If I had, I'm convinced they wouldn't let me dress like this."
They shared a sweet complicit smirk.
"Check to the king," Edward warned a few rounds later.
Bruce moved his royalty one box to the left. Ed rectified the angle of his remaining bishop.
"Checkmate."
Vengeance huffed like a disgruntled scruffy cat while Eddie purred of contentment.
"You really are a professional," the Bat acknowledged when they stored the pieces and pawns back in their case. "Do you practice in clubs too, or just at home?"
"I tried the club option! Or... dad tried to encourage me, he enrolled Babs and I in a chess club over a summer. I quit after three weeks."
"Why?"
"Do I really... have to say it?"
He developed timidly, with a quasi despondent voice:
"I don't... get along with people. Never had any friends at school or in Wayne Orphanage, never... pleased my teachers or adults I encountered albeit I am smart, I simply... can't compel my brain to fit into what's asked from society. Doctor Crane analyzed it's a downside of my position on the autism spectrum, it will... ease with time, as I learn to regulate it. I'm still waiting. Same goes for extracurricular activities: I can never... keep up for long, even in stuff I like. Got fired from the astronomy club, the literature club, the debate club and the computer engineering club in high school because I was deemed 'too insufferable', anyway I wouldn't have stayed longer, I am too... uncomfortable with many persons around. I don't... even know what job I'll be able to do, if I can do something to begin with. I can't... conform to what people ask me to be. At best they say I'm creepy. Or cringe. Or both."
Bruce couldn't deny how close to home this targeted speech hits.
"Look at me, I am the incarnation of creepy," he dropped in a jaded tone. "That's not... necessarily a bad thing. And I... don't think you are cringe. You're an intelligent, fascinating person. Lovely to talk to and to spend time with. Very... interesting to listen to."
Eddie's green eyes shone with plain adoration and gratefulness.
"Saying that probably makes you sound cringe," he pointed out nevertheless, mischievous. "Though I wouldn't know, because on my side I am elated thanks to your compliment."
Eddie giggled when an held back chuckle escaped the Bat's throat.
He loves it when he hears Vengeance laugh.
✨
Bruce felt out of place when he entered the individual hospital room. His heart pounded in his chest, his breathing rate accelerated.
You have nothing to do here, a mean inside voice blamed him harshly. You are not a family member.
Family or not, his poor cardiac muscle skipped a beat when he saw Jim Gordon lying on the hospital bed, a sheet covering his lower half, bandages around his torso and a tube up his nose, his inert body connected to huge beeping machines on the left side of the thin berth, that kept under control his pulse and his respiration.
"... Batman?"
He shifted from one foot to another, looking down to his boots, ashamed he hadn't been there to protect his friend and thereby unable to hold Edward's gaze at this instant. Nurses and doctors had left the room, it's late nevertheless of course, both Eddie and Barbara stay by their father's side. Sitting on a chair close to the head of the bed, Babs had fallen asleep. Bruce recognized the green coat placed over her, it's Edward's; as for him the young man put on a cupboard nearby a fourth paper cup of black coffee taken from a distributor. Ed doesn't even like coffee, Bruce recalled, he'd even less appreciate whatever sour liquid is dispensed at Gotham General.
"I... wanted to check on him... Sorry I couldn't come sooner."
Eddie addressed him a tired though gentle smile.
"He is alright," he whispered, his throat tightened as if he feared the worse for a while and was finally allowed to relax. "No skull lesions, no worrisome internal damages. Nothing that can't be fixed."
Ed's gaze drifted to the lying silhouette.
"The operation was a success," he complemented in a blank tone. "They put him under sedatives for... precautionary measures."
Even if he doesn't seem especially lucky right now, Jim could have had it far worse after taking a bullet during a police intervention and falling under the shock of the collision, rolling down the stairs from the apartment hosting those smugglers' hideout. Edward recapped the list of his injuries: right arm broken at two spots that shall be healed after weeks wearing a plaster, many hematomas, a stitched cut on the back of the head that, by miracle, didn't cause further complications and the bullet wound below his thoracic cage, inducing damages that stayed localized to this small area. Hence, treatable. The bullet had been extracted, x-rays confirmed no organs were ripped by the gunshot.
Bruce tentatively put a hand on Ed's shoulder when tears rolled down the young adult's cheeks.
Eddie leaned to his side.
"I... I am so relieved," he hiccuped, incapable to restrain the overwhelming emotions. "When we... we r-r-received tha-that call from Renee, o-o-one of his co-colleagues, Babs and I were... we... I am so relieved..."
Ed stood up and hugged the vigilante, burying his face onto the armored chest to muffle his cries. Awkward, Bruce... progressively wrapped two strong arms around the small, frail frame trembling against him.
He too, felt intensely reassured to learn Jim copes with nothing permanent and nothing fatal.
"I want to help you," Edward declared thereafter, once he calmed down, pulled up from the embrace and looked at him with a determined expression. "I know you weren't working with him on that specific case, but if you haven't already I am asking you to drop whatever other affair you're on to arrest the scumbags who dared to shoot my father."
"... They were arrested," Bruce countered, his jaw clutched. "Not by me, otherwise they would... no longer have teeth, still... they were arrested."
"No."
Ed's eyes burnt with a fire the Bat never imagined he'd see on him. It made him appear... different. Like a whole new facet of the boy brought to the surface by his thirst for revenge.
"The men in that foxhole were arrested, but they are members of an entire smuggling ring what is a branch of the main mafia ruling this town. With a boss on top of it. I want the whole thing to be put down."
"So do I. Believe me."
"Then... do it with me. I will be your partner."
Bruce placed both gloved hands on the thin shoulders, watching the smaller one with acute attention.
"I can't... let you work with me that way. Edward, your father is an experienced policeman who has a military formation, yet he's been shot on the job. I care for you, I cannot... put you in danger..."
"Dad has been shot because of one bad move, not because the job is too dangerous. And I was... not asking for your permission. I can be your eyes and ears, I can crack any code you'd need, I can... get inside the system. Be a sort of oracle who has your back. Let me... let me try to do something."
Batman didn't argue. After all, he is not well-placed to serve a refusal speech to someone who wants vengeance.
"Hi Vengeance," Barbara greeted him faintly after she opened an eye, then walked toward the boys. "Nice of you to visit our dad."
The three of them's eyes landed on Jim's sleeping form.
Their dad.
Barbara's biological father, who loves her, who is her biggest fan from the instant of her birth, from her intrauterine life even. Forever there for her, forever ready to help, forever devoted.
Edward's adopted father, the man who saved him from a depressing future in which he would have remained alone, scared and forgotten. Jim pulled the broken little boy he used to be together with his love and his patience, he saved his life... he gave him a life by welcoming him with open arms in his family.
Bruce's work father, who is his support on the job and in a more private sphere as well, who took him under his wing by including him in a family ambiance made of love and warm feelings he thought he'd never have the chance to experience in his whole life.
For sure it was a terrible move from whoever is in charge of this mafia system to hurt those three's father figure.