Another year passed on the South Side.

Life kept moving the same way it always had there—fast, messy, and loud enough that nobody got to stay still for very long. The Gallagher house kept changing without ever really becoming calm. People came and went. Problems got replaced by other problems. The rooms stayed full of noise, arguments, half-finished plans, and the constant feeling that something was always about to happen.

By the time the next year rolled in, most of them were standing in slightly different places than they had before.

Ian had somehow turned helping a few homeless LGBTQ kids into something much bigger than anyone expected. At first it had just been Ian doing what Ian always did when he cared about something—throwing himself at it hard enough that everyone around him either followed or got left behind. Then more people started showing up. Then even more. Before long he had actual crowds listening to him in parks, on sidewalks, outside shelters, wherever he decided to stand and talk. Somewhere along the way the neighborhood started calling him Gay Jesus, and once a nickname like that got traction on the South Side, there was no getting rid of it.

Debbie spent most of her time trying to work while raising Franny at the same time, which meant every time Lip saw her she looked like she hadn’t slept properly in weeks and would still fight anybody who said so. Carl came back from military school noticeably different from the kid they all remembered. He still had Carl in him—too much of him, really—but it sat differently now. More discipline. More focus. Less random destruction. Every once in a while he brought some new girlfriend around the house, and every single time everybody silently understood she probably wouldn’t last.

Frank stayed exactly what he had always been. Schemes, lies, fake opportunities, borrowed money, and the kind of confidence only Frank Gallagher could have while pretending every bad idea was genius. That part of life never changed.

One thing that had changed was Fiona.

After the laundromat started working, she had pushed further. First small things. Then bigger ones. By now she had moved into real estate the same way she moved into everything else in life—without waiting for permission, with just enough fear to keep herself sharp, and with too much pride to admit how much she was learning as she went.

Lip stopped by the house one afternoon and found her at the kitchen table under a pile of paperwork.

Not scattered Gallagher mess either. Real paperwork. Numbers highlighted. Notes in the margins. Printouts clipped together. A legal pad with half a page of calculations. Fiona was leaning over all of it with one elbow on the table and a pen in her hand, staring like she was trying to force the math into agreement through sheer hostility.

“You look stressed,” Lip said as he walked in.

Fiona didn’t bother looking up right away.

“I’m trying to figure out how to make this place worth buying without screwing myself.”

Lip pulled out the chair across from her and sat down, dragging one of the printouts closer.

“You renting it?”

“That was the plan.”

“Long-term?”

“Yeah.”

He looked through the numbers for a minute before setting the paper down again.

“You’re leaving money there.”

That got her attention.

Fiona leaned back a little and looked at him properly. “What does that mean.”

“Short-term.”

She frowned. “Short-term what.”

“Rentals.”

The frown stayed. “Like Airbnb.”

“Yeah.”

Fiona made a face like she had already dismissed the idea once before he got there. “That’s vacation houses.”

“Not really.”

He tapped the papers in front of her.

“Chicago gets tourists year-round. Sports, conventions, random people in town for two nights who don’t want a hotel. If the place is decent and you fix it right, you’ll make more than standard rent.”

Fiona watched him for a second.

He could see the moment she stopped resisting it and started actually doing the math.

Then she narrowed her eyes. “You want in.”

A small smile pulled at his mouth. “I’ll invest.”

She let out a tired laugh. “Of course you will.”

Lip shrugged.

She glanced back down at the numbers. “How much.”

“Enough to renovate it properly.”

That made her go quiet for a second.

Then she leaned back in the chair and looked at him in that way she only did when she remembered all at once who he had been and who he was now.

Across the city, the GALLAGHER brand kept growing.

The second warehouse was already running hard most days. Inventory moved quickly enough now that both buildings constantly felt close to full. New staff kept getting added whenever the workload crossed the line from busy into stupid. New product samples were always showing up. Different washes, different fabrics, better stitching, better weight, better cuts. What had started with simple branded hoodies and shirts had turned into something bigger than either of them admitted out loud most days.

Orders climbed steadily.

Some days the numbers pushed higher than Lip expected, even now.

Some days held steady, which was almost more useful.

The stitched symbol had started showing up all over Chicago long before people outside the city noticed the name. That was part of why it worked. It didn’t scream for attention. It sat there cleanly enough that people recognized it if they knew it and wanted it if they didn’t.

One afternoon Mandy came into his office holding a hoodie by the shoulders.

“This one’s gone.”

Lip looked up from the laptop. “Sold out?”

“again in a few hours.”

She tossed it onto the desk in front of him.

“Restocked it already,” she added before he could say anything.

He pulled it closer anyway, more out of habit than doubt. “Good.”

Mandy leaned against the doorframe.

“People keep tagging the brand too.”

Lip clicked through the feed she had left open earlier.

Photos. Stories. Random reposts. People in Chicago wearing the logo on trains, sidewalks, in mirrors, in low-quality club lighting, in crisp daylight outside coffee shops.

“City really likes it,” he said.

Mandy snorted. “That’s an understatement.”

A few days later, while they were getting coffee downtown, she nudged him with her elbow hard enough to pull his attention off the street.

“Look.”

Two guys crossed in front of them wearing black GALLAGHER hoodies. One had the stitched symbol on the chest. The other had one of the newer jackets thrown open over a plain tee, the logo patch visible near the collar.

Across the street, another girl walked by in a cropped sweatshirt from one of their spring drops.

Lip saw all of it and kept moving.

Mandy slowed down a little.

“That’s still weird.”

He took the coffee she handed him. “Means it’s moving.”

She laughed softly and shook her head.

“It’s one thing seeing numbers all day. It’s another seeing people wear it when they have no clue who we are.”

That part never fully stopped landing.

It was the same with the name. Gallagher had become so normal inside their work that sometimes Lip forgot what it really was until somebody outside of it said it out loud again. Their name. On clothes. On tags. On boxes. On people all over the city who had no idea it originally belonged to one of the loudest families on the South Side.

Wedding talk started slipping in more often after that.

Not in some big organized way. Just in pieces. Mandy saying she wanted something small. Fiona telling them not to drag it out for two years. Carl making a joke about open bar before anybody had even picked a date. Debbie asking whether Franny could wear something cute enough to outshine everybody else.

One night Mandy brought it up again while they were on the couch and Lip had the laptop open on the coffee table.

“Small wedding.”

Lip looked at her. “You keep saying that like I’m gonna argue.”

Not long after that, she convinced him to stop by the Alibi one evening.

It wasn’t some first-time-in-forever return, and that was exactly why it felt right. They still saw Kev and V. Not every week, not the way Lip used to when he worked there, but often enough that nothing about walking in felt strange. They stopped by sometimes for a drink, sometimes just because Mandy wanted food she wasn’t cooking, sometimes because Kev texted one of them and claimed it had been too long.

The place looked exactly the same that night.

Same old wood. Same low lighting. Same smell of beer, fryer oil, and years of bad decisions soaked into the walls. Kev was behind the bar wiping down glasses in a way that suggested he was mostly just moving them from one place to another. Veronica was on the other side of the counter, leaning on one elbow while talking to a couple at the end of the bar.

Kev looked up when they came in and grinned immediately.

“Look who finally made time for us.”

Lip walked over with Mandy beside him. “You act like we disappeared.”

“You kind of did.”

“Busy.”

Kev snorted. “Yeah, yeah.”

V looked them over, then nodded toward Lip’s hoodie. “I keep seeing that damn logo.”

Mandy smiled. “That’d be ours.”

“I know whose it is,” V said. “I’m saying it’s everywhere.”

Kev set a glass down and pointed at Lip with the rag in his hand. “This idiot used to work here.”

“Part-time,” Lip said.

“Still counts.”

Mandy laughed and slid onto one of the stools.

They stayed for a couple drinks.

Nothing dramatic. Just easy conversation. Kev asking about the warehouses. V asking whether customer service was still hell. Mandy answering most of the wedding questions before they fully got asked, mostly because she could already tell where Kev was heading.

“So,” Kev said at one point, leaning both hands on the bar. “Wedding.”

Lip looked at him. “What about it.”

“You inviting us or what.”

“Obviously.”

Kev nodded once. “Good.”

V looked at Mandy. “Keep it small.”

Mandy lifted her glass. “That’s the plan.”

“Good,” V said. “Huge weddings are a pain in the ass.”

Kev laughed. “And expensive.”

“Also that.”

The conversation drifted after that.

Business, mostly. Some family talk. Carl. Ian. Fiona’s newest plan. Frank being Frank. The usual.

When they finally left, the night air felt cooler than it had when they went in. The city had gone darker around them, streetlights washing the sidewalk in that dull orange glow it always had after midnight.

Mandy slid her hand into his as they walked toward the car.

He looked over at her.

She smiled a little.

They kept walking after that, slow and unhurried, the city still moving around them the way it always did.