Maybe war was never a good thing. But both Carmine Falcone and Luigi Maroni made the same subconscious decision after receiving the recording of Sofia and Sal's conversation.
I would rather fight the other side to the bitter end than let my daughter/son hand over my family to my enemy after I die.
As for the two families tying the knot through marriage?
That topic was unanimously excluded from discussion by both sides. The reason was simple, visceral, carved into Gotham's bedrock over decades of violence: the two families were enemies. Turning hostility into friendship through a Romeo-and-Juliet marriage was certainly a way to preserve the power of both families to the greatest extent.
But neither side wanted to cease fire.
Not now. Not when blood had been spilled. Not when pride was involved.
Falcone was convinced that even through this brutal method of exchanging pieces—trading his own people for Maroni's in an endless cycle of legal warfare—he could completely wipe out the Maroni family. After everything was over, he would take the entire game as the winner. The spoils. The territory. Everything.
The Maroni family didn't expect or want Falcone to show mercy in the end. After all, the youngest Falcone son—Alberto, the one the Roman had loved most—was the culprit who'd shot Luigi and Sal. And the anger from having core family members slaughtered in the St. Patrick's Day massacre had aroused Luigi's bloodlust. The old man's violence, dormant for years, had awakened.
One side thought it could win outright.
The other side refused to lose at all.
Which led to both sides falling into a state of perpetual war.
Harvey Dent, Commissioner Gordon, and Bruce Wayne's careful layout advanced slowly, methodically, like a chess game played over months. Groups of officials and wealthy people who had frequent dealings with the two families began to rise in various city departments with the financial support of both criminal organizations. Each side was trying to make up for their respective power vacuums, filling positions with loyalists who could protect their interests.
But they were soon attacked by the opposing family and sent to prison.
And the cycle repeated.
And repeated.
And repeated.
It was precisely for this reason that Commissioner Gordon had been catastrophically busy recently.
He'd slept in the police station for a week straight. Not because he'd chosen to—because he literally hadn't had time to go home. When he woke up at his desk with his face stuck to a report about illegal gambling operations, he had to immediately start processing the next mountain of documents. Arrest warrants. Court orders. Transfer paperwork. The endless bureaucratic machinery of Gotham's judicial system grinding away at human lives.
He never had a chance to see his wife. His son. His actual bed.
"Commissioner Gordon." Officer Duke appeared in the doorway looking harried and slightly desperate. "Gotham City's jails are full."
"I know, I know, Duke." Gordon pushed aside the mountain of documents on his desk with one hand, revealing his face. Dark circles under bloodshot eyes. Hair that hadn't been combed in days. The appearance of a man running on coffee, duty, and the fading memory of what sleep felt like.
He muttered to himself, barely coherent: "I have to find a chance to visit the manor. I've already finished the flower tea he gave me before he left."
Alfred's tea. The good stuff. Wayne Manor kept civilization alive in small ways.
Officer Duke listened to Gordon's mumbling with confusion. "What kind of flower tea?"
"Nothing, nothing." Gordon waved one hand dismissively. "How many vacancies do we have in the prisons?"
"Commissioner Gordon." Duke's voice took on the patient tone of someone explaining reality to the delusional. "Are you sane? I just told you—all the jails are full."
"Right. Right." Gordon rubbed his face with both hands. "I really should go home and rest. I mean—there must be some spare space somewhere, right? We could put a few extra beds in some of the rooms?"
"Commissioner Gordon." Duke spoke very slowly, very clearly, the way you might speak to a small child or a concussion patient. "When I say 'packed,' I'm not using descriptive language. I mean it literally. The cells are at maximum capacity. The hallways have prisoners in them. We're running out of floor space."
"Ah." Gordon stared at his desk. "That's... that's a problem."
That day, the front page of the Gotham Daily featured a photograph that would become iconic: prison cells packed with prisoners like subway cars during rush hour. Bodies pressed together. No personal space. Barely room to breathe. Prison guards with nervous faces and loaded weapons supervising the human sardine cans that used to be detention facilities.
The headline read: GOTHAM'S JAILS OVERFLOW AS GANG WAR MOVES TO COURTROOM.
The subtitle: Wayne Group Announces Emergency Prison Construction.
In Wayne Manor, Bruce Wayne looked at the photograph in the newspaper and fell silent.
The study was quiet except for the crackle of the fireplace. Morning light filtered through tall windows, illuminating dust motes and the desperate state of Gotham's criminal justice system printed on newsprint.
"As you can see, Mr. Wayne." Commissioner Gordon sat across from Bruce, holding a delicate teacup that looked absurdly civilized given the circumstances. He sighed and took another sip of Alfred's excellent flower tea. "To be honest, I'm already considering finding some prisoners with less serious crimes to serve as additional prison guards. I've never seen Gotham's prisons this overcrowded in my life."
And Gordon had been in Gotham for two decades.
Bruce thought for a moment, processing what Gordon was really asking. "You want the Wayne Group to convert some vacant buildings into emergency private prisons?"
"I know the Wayne Group didn't have any related business before this." Gordon set down his teacup with careful precision. "But these prisoners really need somewhere to go. We can let them work under proper supervision in exchange for reduced sentences. Or let them pay for their accommodations. Either way, the money can eventually feed back into Gotham's reconstruction—it becomes funding for the Wayne Group's construction plans."
The Commissioner paused, then continued with the weight of a man who knew exactly how his request would sound: "I have only one requirement. The planning of these prisons needs to be a joint effort between you, Harvey, and me. We want to ensure that the prisoners have a normal living environment: food to eat, beds to sleep in, clothes to wear."
Bruce studied Gordon's face. "What if the money I make from these prisons isn't used to build Gotham?"
"You are the person most likely to spend that money on Gotham." Gordon's voice carried absolute certainty. "It's at least better to hand the prisoners over to you than to those listed prison companies whose only goal is maximizing profits by minimizing costs. They'd pack people in shipping containers if they could get away with it."
Bruce thought about it. Thought about his father performing surgery on a young Carmine Falcone at the dining room table. Thought about the kind of city Gotham could be if someone actually tried.
"Your request is reasonable, Commissioner Gordon," he said finally. "I promise you."
Things seemed to be getting better in Gotham City lately.
The reason for using the word "seemed" was because the number of jobs in Gotham had begun to increase dramatically, wildly, vigorously—but these jobs existed only because of one specific demand.
Private prisons.
Although Wayne's buildings could meet the housing needs of a large number of prisoners, sufficient manpower was needed to supervise them. The sheer volume of incarcerated criminals created massive demand for one particular job:
Prison guard.
It sounded outrageous. In most cities, rising prison populations were a sign of social decay. But this was Gotham, so it didn't seem too strange that mass incarceration had become an economic opportunity.
Most of the funds Bruce had originally planned to invest in Gotham's infrastructure had to be temporarily redirected to building prisons. The only consolation was that with money in place, things got done quickly. The Wayne Group's engineering teams were remarkably efficient. The temporary prison facilities would last long enough to buy time for subsequent construction of large-scale permanent detention centers.
At the same time, large numbers of ordinary Gotham citizens began applying enthusiastically for prison guard positions. After completing training, they officially took up their posts. The Wayne Group offered an hourly wage of $40 for this job—a stark contrast to most private prisons that desperately saved costs by paying guards minimum wage or less.
Forty dollars an hour was real money. The kind of money that let you feed a family, pay rent, maybe save a little. In Gotham, where legitimate employment was scarce and criminal employment was abundant, this was a golden opportunity.
As for the prisoners themselves, Prosecutor Harvey Dent helped Bruce with some operational planning to maximize their contribution to Gotham's economy.
"From today on, you are all members of Gotham's, uh, Hey Factory." The prison administrator caught himself mid-sentence, consulting his notes. "Ahem. Gotham's Temporary Detention and Labor Facility. Everyone pay attention. Collect your number tags and don't mistakenly enter someone else's cell."
In the temporary prison—a converted warehouse in the industrial district—a man in a new prison guard uniform stood on a raised platform, shouting instructions at the assembled prisoners.
He had thin cheeks. Fierce eyes. A bit of special cunning and coldness in his expression that was hard to quantify but impossible to miss. Almost all the prisoners who saw him restrained themselves instinctively, unconsciously taking a half-step back.
Of course, relying on appearance could only intimidate small-time criminals. Real big shots—made men, family soldiers, people who'd killed and gotten away with it—wouldn't be scared by a face.
But then someone recognized him.
"Disaster." The word hissed through the crowd like gas from a punctured tire. "Disaster star."
"Fuck, it's Jude!" Another voice, rising in panic. "I don't want to stay here anymore! I want to change prisons! I want to transfer! Now!"
"He's the one who sent Boss Maroni to the hospital!" A Maroni family soldier, pale as milk. "During that trial—he just looked at Boss Maroni, and then Maroni got shot three times!"
"Carmine bought photos from him!" A Falcone associate, voice cracking with hysteria. "Photos of Maroni bleeding out! And now even Sofia's in jail because of the legal war! Oh God, why didn't I stop him? Why didn't I warn the boss?"
That's right. All the big shots had heard of Jude Sharp's reputation.
The Disaster Star. The Walking Curse. The man whose mere presence predicted catastrophe with mathematical certainty. It didn't matter that he looked relatively harmless up on that platform—these hardened criminals knew better. They'd heard the stories. Restaurant bombings. Hideout massacres. Family members imprisoned. Every disaster in the past year traced back to this one unremarkable-looking Japanese man.
A ripple of movement went through the crowd. Prisoners backing away. Creating distance. As if proximity to Jude might be contagious.
Someone near the back—a hulking enforcer who'd killed at least six people and probably more—pressed himself against the far wall and shouted the words that echoed through every criminal's mind:
"DON'T COME OVER HERE!"