When Anthony received Marcus's encrypted call, he was sitting in a private dining room at an exclusive Cantonese restaurant in Chinatown with Winnie and Leon.
The three of them had left the Plaza Hotel shortly after the confrontation. After putting on such a grand, theatrical display of absolute disrespect, Anthony had thoroughly enjoyed hurling highly accurate insults at the Pritzker patriarch, but he hadn't even gotten a chance to eat any of the hors d'oeuvres before the furious Tristan had officially kicked them out of the gala.
"Calling me this late... did he actually show up at the house?" Anthony walked out into the designated smoking courtyard, away from Winnie and Leon, pressing the phone to his ear. His tone was entirely indifferent.
"The house is gone," Marcus's voice was calm, utterly unsurprised by the destruction. "Exactly as you predicted."
"How is John handling it?"
There was a long, heavy moment of silence on the other end of the line. "He just stood there in the dark, watching the firelight burn his life down without saying a single word. But I knew... I could feel it. A part of him fundamentally died tonight. Or rather... a part of him came back to life."
"I just don't understand the tactical logic," Marcus sighed. "John is officially retired. He poses absolutely no active geopolitical threat to anyone at the High Table right now."
Anthony took a deep, dragging hit of his cigarette, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke into the damp Chinatown air.
"No, Marcus. He threatens the very foundational existence of the High Table," Anthony corrected. "A living legend who successfully manages to escape the bloody edge of the rules unscathed... that is the greatest, most terrifying irony to their entire authoritarian system. It sets a dangerous precedent."
Marcus found that level of systemic paranoia somewhat unbelievable.
"You're telling me the High Table needs to violently prove that absolutely no one can ever escape their control? Not even John Wick? They're willing to poke the Baba Yaga just to make a bureaucratic point?"
Anthony flicked his cigarette ash over the railing.
"Santino D'Antonio didn't blow up John's house just to physically force him out of hiding. He blew it up to permanently destroy John's past. He wanted to shatter the illusion of a normal life. Now, what other choice does John have but to pick up a gun again and re-enter the underworld?"
Anthony glanced back through the glass doors. He saw Leon watching him from the table, looking incredibly curious. "Are you two staying at a secure hotel tonight?"
"We're heading to your safehouse," Marcus paused, calculating the risk. "Santino's men might have enough intelligence to find my apartment in the city."
"You guys go ahead and secure the perimeter. I might be a while," Anthony said softly. "There's a spare key hidden under the loose brick on the windowsill."
"Be incredibly careful out there, kid. Santino certainly won't give up this hunt easily," Marcus cautioned.
"Just wait for me to get back," Anthony said.
After hanging up the encrypted phone, Anthony walked back into the dining room. He looked directly at Leon, dropping the charming facade. "Don't be so curious about my phone calls, Leon. The world I operate in is incredibly dangerous."
"You are a very mysterious, violent guy, Anthony," Leon stated, his manic eyes locked onto Anthony's face. "Can I play in your world?"
Anthony smiled genuinely. "If you truly consider me a friend, Leon... please, just promise me you'll take exceptionally good care of Winnie if things ever go south for me."
"You're leaving the city?" Leon asked, genuinely surprised. He misread the situation entirely. "Are you seriously afraid that old Tristan is going to blacklist you from the legitimate financial industry?"
Leon aggressively patted his own chest, a cigarette dangling loosely from his lips. "Don't you worry about Tristan Pritzker, kid. I can easily cover for you regarding something as trivial as corporate politics."
Anthony just smiled and nodded, not bothering to correct him.
The timeline had completely derailed from the original films, and Anthony honestly had no idea how the geopolitical landscape would develop from here.
John Wick had always possessed a naive, fundamental belief in the strict rules and ultimate fairness of the High Table. But he had forgotten the most important law of power: the rules only ever apply to the weak.
When Anthony finally returned to his heavily secured apartment after dropping Winnie off at her private penthouse, it was nearly 11:00 PM.
His Compensatory Perception passively activated the second he stepped out of his vehicle. He immediately detected a distinctly lethal, yet familiar presence lurking in the shadows near the alleyway.
Anthony slowly turned his head. Marcus materialized from the absolute darkness of the night, holding a suppressed pistol at his side.
"You spotted my position a long time ago, didn't you?" The legendary 'Silent Grim Reaper' of the High Table looked at Anthony with a genuinely strange, unsettled expression. "Was my camouflage really that sloppy?"
Anthony laughed softly. "This is my territory, Marcus. I know every shadow."
Marcus holstered his weapon and patted his waist. "Weren't you the least bit worried that I might be a Camorra hitman waiting in ambush?"
"Marcus, if two legendary High Table assassins are currently sitting inside my house, and a third-rate Italian hitman somehow managed to sneak up this close to the perimeter..." Anthony pushed open the heavy front door. "...then we are all going to be dead very soon anyway."
Anthony knew from his meta-knowledge that Marcus was, in many ways, an even more formidable and tactically versatile killer than John Wick.
While heavy sniper rifles were his signature weapon, his close-quarters combat skills and situational awareness were absolutely top-tier. This dual ability of "long-range tactical suppression combined with devastating close-range lethality" made Marcus the only active assassin whose caliber John Wick genuinely respected.
As for why Viggo managed to capture and torture Marcus so easily in the original film? That was purely plot armor. He was a supporting character. The director needed to sacrifice Marcus to establish the ultimate tragedy of the assassin world:
In the violent, unforgiving order constructed by the High Table, any human behavior that attempts to balance bureaucratic rules with genuine emotional loyalty will immediately be judged by the system as a critical 'error code' that must be brutally formatted.
Inside the apartment, the television was muted, broadcasting the late-night local news. Aerial helicopter footage showed the smoking, devastated crater of a house explosion in the New Jersey suburbs, which the frantic reporter was currently describing as a "tragic, catastrophic natural gas leak."
John was sitting rigidly by the window, staring out into the New York skyline. The heavy tumbler of whiskey in his hand was already empty.
His hollow gaze was locked onto the single framed photograph resting on Anthony's coffee table.
It was the wedding photo of him and Helen that he had managed to save from the fire.
"Anthony was absolutely right," John suddenly spoke, his voice sounding like grinding stones. "I've been actively deceiving myself for years. I genuinely thought that a peaceful retirement would eventually allow me to live a normal human life."
Marcus walked over and poured him another two fingers of whiskey. "Every man has the fundamental right to choose his own path, John."
"No. The rules of our world will never allow it," John shook his head slowly, a profound, terrifying darkness settling over his features. "The High Table does not need a living legend walking around as a civilian. They only require a legend that is forever under their absolute, terrifying control."
"To them, retirement isn't peace. It's treason."
John raised his heavy glass toward the window. "To treason."
Marcus clinked his glass against John's. "To Anthony."
"Why the hell are you toasting to him?" John frowned, shooting Anthony a dark, suspicious glare from across the room.
"Because that kid sees through absolutely everything," Marcus laughed dryly, taking a sip of the burning liquor. "Think about it, John. What would have happened tonight if Santino had actually found you sitting in that house?"
John remained silent. His jaw clenched.
He knew Marcus was right. If Anthony hadn't warned him, Santino would have kicked the door down, handed him the Blood Oath Marker, and trapped him in an inescapable, legal paradox. If he refused, he died. If he accepted, his soul died.
Anthony had not only accurately foreseen the trap, but he had actively given them the tactical time to react and evade.
"You need to trust him, John," Marcus said, clinking his glass against Anthony's as the younger man walked into the living room. "This kid might be clinically insane, but he sees the geopolitical board vastly more clearly than we do."
Anthony smoothly drew the heavy blackout curtains across the living room windows, plunging the room into secure darkness. He picked up a cigarette from the coffee table and lit it, the flame illuminating his scarred face.
"Now that we've successfully evaded the initial strike," Anthony said, exhaling a plume of smoke, "we can logically deduce what Santino's next move will be."
Marcus nodded, immediately falling into tactical analysis. "Santino will undoubtedly continue to aggressively hunt for John across the globe. If he genuinely wants to assassinate a seated High Table Oligarch like Gianna... then besides someone like Zero or Caine, John is literally the only operative in the world capable of breaching her defenses."
Everyone in the room understood that Santino's core objective was absolute and unchangeable.
He wanted to violently seize his sister's inherited seat at the High Table.
For Santino, utilizing the Blood Oath was the ultimate, legally flawless solution to committing high treason. John Wick was the undisputed "Angel of Death" of the underworld; forcing him to carry out the assassination guaranteed a near-100% success rate.
More importantly, in the High Table's rigid legal setting—where seated members are strictly prohibited from directly ordering hits on their own blood relatives—using a bound assassin allowed Santino to completely absolve himself of administrative responsibility.
If Santino was physically unable to locate John and deliver the Marker, he would eventually be forced to abandon his safe, rule-based operation and switch to a vastly riskier, highly exposed alternative.
The core conflict of the timeline fundamentally revolved around the ultimate rule of the assassin world: the Blood Oath.
It was both the inescapable lever Santino used to manipulate John, and the absolute symbol of the High Table's oppressive underground order.
If Santino could not contact John, the bloody storm triggered by the rules would violently veer off onto an entirely unpredictable trajectory.
"Gianna's chief bodyguard is Cassian. He is a top-tier, elite-level assassin," John finally spoke, staring blankly at the coffee table. "Furthermore, she travels with a private army of highly trained personal guards. Even a coordinated assault by a large strike team of standard assassins cannot break through Cassian's defensive perimeter."
Marcus continued the grim analysis. "Since he obviously couldn't find John in New York tonight, Santino might be forced to turn to independent contractors outside of the High Table's immediate jurisdiction. Men like Zero or Caine. But elite killers of that caliber are either obscenely expensive, or their ultimate loyalty to a rogue Camorra boss is highly questionable."
"Even more fatal to his plan," Anthony interjected, pacing the room. "If a replacement assassin fails to kill Gianna, it will immediately, publicly expose Santino's treasonous ambition to the entire Table. As the rightful heir, Gianna can easily leverage the High Table's Purity Protocols to violently purge her brother's entire faction on charges of high treason."
"If that happens," Marcus added, "even the Continental Hotel in Rome might actively refuse to provide Santino with asylum."
Anthony stopped pacing. He thought for a long moment, playing out the geopolitical chess moves.
"If Santino is ultimately executed by the High Table's Adjudicators for failing to assassinate Gianna... the Table, or surviving members of the Camorra, will likely still view John as a massive, destabilizing loose end and continue to hunt him down regardless," Anthony concluded grimly.
"At that point, our primary opponent won't just be Santino's mafia. It will escalate directly to the Adjudicator and the full might of the High Table's standing army."
John nodded slowly, confirming the terrible reality. "Winston told me once that retirement is nothing more than a temporary reprieve for a hitman. It proves that the High Table's institutional attitude toward retired assets has always been deeply paranoid and ambiguous."
Anthony turned and looked John dead in the eye.
"What if we just cut the knot?" Anthony asked softly. "What if we just hunt down and kill Santino tonight?"
John suddenly snapped his head up, his eyes flashing with raw danger. "Are you absolutely insane? Do you want to get yourself and Marcus executed by the Table?"
"If that's the only tactical option left..." John growled, leaning forward, "I will simply go to the Continental, accept his Blood Oath directly, and kill Gianna. That way, the debts of my past are completely, legally wiped away, and you two stay out of the crossfire."
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