"Stay away from Jayce!"
Mel already knew about Jayce's actions the night before.
"So you really do care about him." Ambessa slowly sat up straighter.
"You'd better get back on your damn ship and disappear from my city for good!"
Ambessa said nothing. She simply tore the head off the lobster sitting on the nearby table.
"Control yourself. That's not how I taught you."
She bit into the raw lobster meat with relish.
"We've got a problem, Mel." Ambessa's expression grew heavy. "The man who killed your brother isn't willing to let this go, and his resources far exceed ours."
"If Hextech can be turned into weapons, then we have to get our hands on it."
She picked up a napkin and wiped the liquid from her fingers.
"Piltover is not your testing ground!" Mel ground the words out through clenched teeth.
"You already set this in motion. I'm only giving it a push."
Ambessa turned her face away, unwilling to look at Mel's expression.
"I only started any of this to protect Piltover from people like you."
"I can't believe you'd start a war just to clean up your own mistake."
Mel had already moved to her mother's side, her words sharp and heated.
"As long as our family survives, I don't care if the world burns in war!"
Scarred from head to toe, Ambessa turned and glared at Mel. For once, there was not a trace of hesitation in her voice.
Mel gave a dry, bitter laugh.
"Since the day you threw me out, I stopped being part of this family!"
By the time she said it, her expression had already darkened with hurt.
Her mother had doted on her when she was young. As long as Mel could hold onto it, Ambessa would give her anything.
"Why? Why did you send me away?"
"Because you were making me weak!" Ambessa shot to her feet. "I couldn't stand the way you looked at me every time I made a decision."
"Those decisions were necessary. I was trying to protect us!"
Ambessa had raised her voice too, far more than usual.
She realized it almost immediately and stepped aside, trying to steady herself.
"We need weapons, Mel," she said quietly.
The anger had already drained out of Mel's face, replaced by a complicated, conflicted look.
"If war comes, then let it come."
Ambessa rested a hand on Mel's shoulder.
"You should come home too."
"Come back and stand at my side."
"That is where you belong."
The two of them stood in front of Mel's painting—a Noxian warship—with their backs to it, neither saying a word for a long time.
In the end, Ambessa was the one who left, leaving Mel behind in thought.
…
Finn was running for his life through the pipelines of Zaun.
God knew how long that lunatic had been lurking there. The moment he tried to win Renni over, that blue-haired maniac with the long braid showed up.
His men hadn't been able to stop her at all. All they'd managed to do was buy him a little room to run.
In Zaun, you could mouth off to Silco all you wanted. As long as you still had value, he might not kill you.
But if you crossed Jinx, nobody would lift a finger to help you.
Silco was famous for being calm, but fiercely protective of his own.
And the only soft spot he had was Jinx.
Any important mission, she got it first.
Only when Jinx got bored and refused to do it did Sevika take over.
The simplest proof of that was Silco's office.
The solid wood desk, the expensive ashtray, the tea set—nearly everything on that costly tabletop—
Jinx had doodled all over it however she pleased.
And even so, Silco had never shown the slightest annoyance. He kept using those things like nothing had happened.
Jinx herself was notorious for doing whatever she wanted. She had even dared strike topside, killing six enforcers in one go and stealing the Hextech gemstone.
It was the same as driving a blade straight into Piltover's heart.
Finn deeply regretted it now. From what he had heard, Jinx hadn't actually developed any Hextech at all.
And hadn't the gemstone gone back to topside?
That was exactly why he'd convinced himself Silco couldn't control Jinx anymore, and let his mind wander down the wrong path.
Who would've thought that strange man and Jinx would suddenly come after him together?
Silco's warning had already been obvious enough, but Finn still refused to give up. He had tried to join forces with Chem-Baron Renni, using the grief of her son's death.
If he could add a wavering Sevika to the mix, then maybe, just maybe, a desperate gamble could still pay off.
He was still thinking that when a burst of gunfire shattered his train of thought. A second later, he saw that lunatic charging at him with a wild grin.
Finn bolted in terror.
The Renni he had abandoned behind was immediately pinned with Sevika's blade at her throat.
A few minutes later, in Silco's office, Caleb turned around and looked at the dragged-in Finn and Renni with a bright smile.
"You two really do love teaming up, don't you?" Caleb looked at them the way one might look at corpses. "One of you's missing a mouth, the other's missing a nose. No wonder you get along so well."
As he said it, Caleb gave Sevika an apologetic smile and added, "No offense to anyone missing body parts."
Finn's prized lighter had been tossed to Caleb, and Renni—who had been furious not long ago—was now kneeling on the ground, too terrified to make a sound.
"Hehehe! Look what we found! A bunch of traitors!"
Jinx made a face, then bounded up in three quick steps to her personal perch on the ceiling above Silco.
"Finn," Silco said, his voice as calm and flat as ever, "what was it I told you last time?"
"I—I…" Finn's mind was blank. Whatever nerve he had once possessed was gone.
Nearby, Caleb absently played with the lighter. It really did have style. The snap when it opened was wonderfully crisp.
"Back in the mines, the foul air burned so bad you could barely keep your eyes open."
Silco's voice rang like a funeral bell. When it stopped, Finn knew he would stop with it.
"I pulled you up out of there, unlike the other chem-barons."
Silco cut open a cigar. Caleb casually flicked the lighter and lit the end for him.
"I gave you a new life. A new purpose."
"I let you enjoy the benefits of standing with me against topside."
"You didn't invent Shimmer. I just needed people with a little common sense to mass-produce it for me."
Silco slowly exhaled a stream of smoke. Finn couldn't read a thing from those demon-like eyes.
"And parasites like you think you're qualified to talk about 'business,' do you?"
"No! Please, no! I was wrong!" Finn trembled violently, sprawled on the floor and prostrating himself before Caleb and Silco.
"In the old Zaun, no matter what happened, there would always be brothers and sisters standing together against topside."
"And now I have to breathe the same air as people like you—leeches who do nothing but sit on the legacy built by those who came before you."
"No!" Finn screamed until his voice tore raw. He could already see how this would end.
Stripped of power, thrown out of the underworld—those had been the harshest things Silco had ever done to chem-barons before.
But Finn knew this was different.
Completely different.
He would rather have gone back to being a petty drug seller, scraping by every day on a trickle of Shimmer.
A red flash of steel lit up the whole room in an instant.
With a single slash from Sevika, Finn's beloved brass jaw—and the throat above it—were cut clean through.
He desperately clutched at the wound, trying to hold on to life just a little longer, to stay alive for even a few moments more.
Maybe they could replace the throat with plastic tubing. He knew Zaun was good at that sort of organ replacement.
In the end, he still collapsed to the floor and died, bitter and unwilling.
"I ought to have killed your son as punishment," Silco said, looking down at the terrified, stunned Renni. "But you've already been punished enough."
"Get out."
The instant the words left his mouth, Renni scrambled to her feet and fled the room in a panic.
Caleb watched the whole thing coldly and finally gave his judgment.
"You can't fix stupid."