Jacob Rothschild sits across from Joe Jukic at a small café that doesn’t exist on any map. The coffee is cold. The conversation is older than both of them.
Jacob Rothschild:
“You know, Joe… people think power is a throne. It isn’t. It’s a treadmill. You run and run and never arrive.”
Joe Jukic:
“They say your family wanted to run the whole world.”
Jacob (smiles, tired):
“People love simple stories. Villains with monocles. Shadows with names. If we had wanted to confess, we already did.”
Joe:
“Pinky and the Brain.”
Jacob (laughs quietly):
“Exactly. A children’s cartoon. Two lab rats. One obsessed with domination, the other asking the only sane question: ‘What are we doing tonight?’
That was the joke. That was the confession. We hid it in plain sight so people wouldn’t believe it.”
Joe:
“So you gave up?”
Jacob:
“No. I woke up. You can’t ‘take over the world.’ The world isn’t a thing you hold. It’s a thing that breaks you back.”
(He stirs his coffee, though it doesn’t need it.)
Jacob:
“My son doesn’t want it. The so-called throne. The darkness. He looked at the inheritance and saw what it really was: responsibility without meaning.”
Joe:
“That must be new for your family.”
Jacob:
“It’s the end of something, not the beginning. Every dynasty dies the same way—not with revolution, but with a child who says, ‘No, thank you.’”
Joe:
“And the throne?”
Jacob:
“There never was one. Just fear, money, and people projecting their nightmares onto a name. Once you stop believing you’re a god, the spell breaks.”
(He looks directly at Joe.)
Jacob:
“The real danger was never families like mine. It was the idea that history needs a hidden master. That lets everyone else off the hook.”
Joe:
“So what now?”
Jacob (stands, lighter somehow):
“Now? I rest. I watch cartoons. And I let the world belong to people who still think it’s worth saving.”
He pauses.
Jacob:
“Just don’t tell them the rats already figured it out.”