Arrived at the study, Jack began searching every drawer of the desk, looking for the fingerprint reader.

Tony eventually appeared close to the study door, and seeing Jack messing up the desk, he stepped in there.

"What are you doing, Jack?"

"Wilson broke and gave me a way to expose his former partners. I just need to find a fingerprint reader to connect to his laptop to grant him access to launch the procedure."

"You mean like this?", Tony handled Jack a little square tool with a USB cable attached that he had just found near a pen holder.

Jack took the reader, feeling stupid for not having looked on the surface of the desk first.

"Yeah. Thanks."

"No problem."

"How are you holding up?", Jack asked before leaving the room.

Tony sighed.

"It's getting worse", saying so, he uncovered his arm, showing that it was now covered in blisters.

Jack sighed too.

In that moment, a beat coming from the kitchen was heard.

"Son of a bitch!", Jack exclaimed with anger, before running to the other room, followed by Tony.

In the kitchen, Wilson laid on the floor by his side, still tied up to the chair. Behind him, an open drawer. While on the floor, he managed to reach a pill with his mouth and swallowed it.

Immediately, Jack ran to him and tried to force him to spit it, but it was too late. Wilson was already gasping for air.

"He's going into cardiac arrest, help me untie him!", Jack screamed to Tony, who hesitated a moment before coming closer to Wilson and freeing his hands.

Once Wilson's back was on the floor, Jack began the cardiac massage while Tony stepped back.

"Come on!", Jack repeatedly compressed Wilson's chest, trying to make his heart start again.

After a few useless attempts, he checked the heartbeat in the neck.

"Damn it! – he shouted, pounding his fist on the floor in frustration – He's dead."

Hearing those words, Tony stared blankly at Wilson's dead body, whose mouth was now drooling a white substance.

Jack stood up and took the laptop again, connecting the fingerprint reader. Then, he came back to Wilson and cut his right index with the knife he had previously used to torture him. Putting the finger on the reader, the software unlocked and showed the next screen with a list of encoded names. Jack selected one and clicked to start the connection. Unfortunately, his joy lasted only a few moments, when he realized that another code was needed to proceed.

"Damn it! There's another protection to pass."

Jack paused for a moment thinking about what to do next. He then picked up his phone and dialed a number.

In a dark bedroom, a phone started to ring. A hand, blindly, reached for it and, after a few attempts, managed to find it and pick it up.

"Hello", a female voice answered.

"Chloe, it's Jack. Did I wake you?"

Chloe O'Brian sat on the bed and turned on the light, before glancing at the alarm clock on her night table. It showed 5:32.

"Well, it's 5 in the morning, Jack...what is going on?", Chloe replied with a worried tone while still adapting her eyes to the light.

"I'm sorry if I waked you, but I need your help. I need to break into a computer that could help us expose the people behind last year's attacks. There was a first authentication through fingerprints that I've passed but now I have to insert also a code and I don't know who else I could ask since I can't go to the FBI with this right now. Do you think you can do it?"

"I guess, but I need to see what kind of protection you're asking me to breach – Chloe got up from bed and headed to her computer – Could you grant me remote access?"

Jack glanced at Wilson's dead body on the floor.

"I can't stay here any longer. I was thinking of maybe coming over and let you access the computer directly."

"Oh…do you think it's safe? You know, Prescott's here", Chloe got worried again: letting Jack come to her house with an important proof while her son was there was not an ideal situation.

Despite being pretty sure that nobody else knew about that at the moment, Jack was also aware that nothing was 100% safe in these cases, so he couldn't risk putting Chloe's family in danger.

"All right, let's meet at the Starbucks between 19th and Ives in half an hour."

"Ok, see you there."

"Thank you, Chloe."

Jack hanged up and then put both the computer and Wilson's finger in his bag.

"Tony, we need to go", he said while wearing his mask again.

Tony was still frozen in front of Wilson's corpse, hardly realizing that it was finally over.

"Tony", Jack insisted, noting that he wasn't moving.

Tony snapped back to reality and turned to Jack.

"Yeah."

Then, he put his mask back on too and followed Jack.

Once outside, they quickly reached their car and got in. After removing his mask, Jack started driving, while Tony took off his mask too.

"I'll drop you off at the hospital and then I'm gonna go and meet up with Chloe, ok?"

Tony wasn't paying attention to Jack's words, still overthinking about what had just happened.

"You know, I think you were right, Jack."

Jack looked at him with confusion.

"About what?"

"Wilson's death."

Jack sighed.

Tony resumed talking: "Early today, you told me about how you felt after killing Nina, how this sense of emptiness came over you and prevent you to be finally satisfied that justice had been made. Well, I didn't think that it would have been the same for me, since revenging Michelle's death has been the only thing that has kept me alive in these last years, but the truth is…when I saw his body on the floor, all the anger and hate for the man who took a part of me away and all the blood and sweat that costed me to finally get to him, vanished in a second and I couldn't feel nothing at all. I've waited so much for that moment, and now it's just passed and left me with nothing."

"I know, Tony. And that's because, no matter how much we can convince ourselves that revenge will somehow reestablish a balance and repair the wrong that has been done, nothing will ever fill the void of the losses we had. The truth is, there is no possible justice for something so unfair, neither the deaths of the ones who caused it – Jack paused, thinking back at painful memories from his past – Anyway, at least that son of a bitch didn't walk free and, with Chloe's help, I'm confident that we'll be able to dismantle his group once for all and stop them from making others go through the same pain that we did."

"Yeah – Tony stopped for a moment, with another thing in mind – Can I ask you one last favor, Jack?"

"Sure, anything."

"Before we go to the hospital, I'd like to go to a place."

Jack exhaled deeply. "Tony, you've seen how fast you're getting worse–

"Just 5 minutes. It won't change much."

Jack sighed again. "All right. Where do you wanna go?"

A while later, the black SUV stopped on a dusty soil. The sky was getting brighter and soon the light of dawn would have struck the monumental entrance and the hundreds of gravestones behind it. Jack parked the car and turn off the engine.

Tony glanced at the gate and wondered if he would have been up to this moment. Since Michelle had died, more than seven years ago, he'd never had the chance to go visit her. At first, when she was still buried back in LA next to his own grave, he had been forced to stay away from any possible connection to his previous life, in order to preserve his believed-dead state. Then, when the truth about him had come out, Michelle's body had been moved to DC, closer to her family. It had been a matter of hours then, before Tony would have been sent to prison.

"Have you ever come to visit her, Jack?", Tony asked in a soft voice.

"No, unfortunately, I've never had the chance. The Chinese first, then I've been on the run for many years and now…I didn't even know she had been moved here."

"Yeah – Tony chuckled – she would have hated to be buried here, close to her dad."

Jack nodded, remembering the conflictual relationship she had with her father.

"You know, Kim came to visit both of you several times, back in LA", Jack added, thinking back at what her daughter told him. "She really cared about you and Michelle, you've been mentors for her, and your deaths hit her a lot."

Tony lowered his eyes and sighed.

"I'm sorry for putting her in danger last year. I'm glad she's ok."

Jack turned to him to see by his expression that he really meant it now. "Yeah, me too."

"She's a tough girl, you must be proud of her."

"I am. Despite everything she's been through, she's always been so strong. I don't know how she could do it."

"Well, she has your genes after all", Tony said smiling.

"Yeah", Jack chuckled. Then, he looked back outside the window and became serious again. "You're ready?"

Tony nodded. It was time to face his demons. "Yeah."

As they were both walking through the lines of gravestones, suddenly the familiar name appeared on one of them. Jack stopped a few steps away from it.

"I give you some privacy", he said to Tony.

"Thanks."

Tony approached the headstone and got down close to it. Then, with his fingers, he reached the cold stone and slowly skimmed through the inscription on it, caressing that name so important to him. Michelle Dessler.

"Hey, sweetheart – he whispered delicately as his eyes started to fill with tears – Sorry I couldn't be here before. Believe me, I've wanted it so bad, but I just couldn't. It's been seven years but there hasn't been a single day that I haven't thought about you and that I haven't missed you."

Tony paused for a moment, remembering the happy memories of her and of their life together. Despite how much he tried to hold on to them, he felt that they were slowly fading away, every day more. What was still vivid in his mind, like the first day, was instead the blast of the car bomb and those last excruciating moments with her, when he realized that everything was gone.

"I just wanted to let you know that it's done – he eventually continued, regaining strength in his voice – I've promised you that I would make that bastard paid for what he did to you…to us…and he's dead now. It's over. I wish there was another way and I didn't have to do all the terrible things I've done…I know you would have hated me for that…I hope you'll be able to forgive me one day."

Saying so, he felt the weight of his guilty conscience he had been carrying since her death crashing him and couldn't help but crying. Somehow, letting all out, felt kind of a relief.

"I love you so much. And I always will", he said at last in a soft voice, after drying up his tears. Then, he got up again, gave a final caress to the headstone and walked back to Jack.

"You Ok?", Jack asked, squeezing his shoulder as an affection sign.

"Yeah."

"You know, I think that, after everything you've done today, she would be proud of you again."

"I don't know", Tony replied in an emotionless tone.

"Well, I am", Jack stated smiling.

Tony looked back at him and gave a hint of a smile too.

"C'mon, let's go", Jack added eventually, giving him a pat on the back.

Then, they both started walking towards the exit, while the sky was slowly turning orange.