Finbar "Silvermane" Byrne

Finbar Byrne, the crime lord the city knows as Silvermane, holds 1930s New York in a closed fist, the mayor and the better part of the police bought and answering to him. An Irish mob boss with the patience of a philosopher and the cruelty of a butcher, he has ruled unchallenged in the years since the Spider vanished, lecturing his victims even as he destroys them. That long calm has just been broken: a rival has put a man with burning hands to the torch of his mansion. Byrne has walked out of the ashes determined to learn who dared.

His hunt leads him to a basement where his men have been working over a captured investigator, Patrick Donegal, for answers. Byrne presses him for the name behind the arsonist, and when the broken man swears he does not have it, the crime lord opens his throat without ceremony. Yet the fire that nearly killed him has planted an idea: if such gifted men walk his city, they can be bought and bent to his purposes, and he turns his attention to the damaged veterans whose strange abilities might make his grip on New York absolute.

Silvermane presses forward with business as usual in Depression Era New York, arranging to meet a new Canadian supplier at the docks despite the recent attempt on his life. When his man Winston urges caution, Silvermane reflects on how easy things have become in the years since the Spider vanished, suspecting that someone has mistaken his comfort for complacency and decided to move against him.

He sets his men hunting, ordering Winston to track down the missing Flint Marko and to bring the private investigator sniffing around his affairs straight to him. His grip on the night seems total until the docks, where Winston's all-clear gives way to chaos: the Spider drops onto his convoy out of nowhere, tearing through his gunmen as Silvermane barks for them to open fire on the masked figure who has chosen this moment to return to his city.

Silvermane turns to an unlikely hire to plug the leak in his operation, bringing in the private investigator Ben Reilly to find the rat who tipped the police to his dock shipment. He had suspected the missing Flint Marko, but reasons Flint never knew about the shipment, and so sets Ben loose on the question while keeping his own counsel. Seemingly shaken by his recent run-in with the Spider, he muses on the value of having powered men in his corner and puts Winston to work digging into where the dead arsonist Addison came from, wondering whether others like him exist.

His patience for traitors is thin. In the woods, thanks to Ben's clever involvement, Silvermane has settled on Winston as the rat. Vera Addison unwittingly confirms and Silvermane shoots his own lieutenant dead. It is, however, not the end of the night's killing. He turns to Ben, remarks that they will be needing two graves, and fires again.

Silvermane savors his perceived victory over the "rats" in his operation, sharing a table at The Alcove with Ben Reilly as Cat Hardy sings. He speaks of the dead Winston and Gio as stone-cold killers but entirely replaceable. He pays Ben for his work, offers him a place on the payroll, and presses the reluctant detective into a long night of drinking.

His grip tightens through force and intimidation. He calls on Cat to explain herself over the train station, and when McNamara fails to appear for their meeting, he tracks the chief to a gala dinner with Mayor Morris. There he trades barbs with the mayor over who truly decides the city's leadership, threatening to put Morris's political opponent, a man named Hudson, in the chair. When Morris shows a backbone, Silvermane summons Flint Marko to smash the table as a show of raw power before bidding Morris "May the best man live."

Silvermane builds his army of powered men as his war with Mayor Morris deepens. At The Alcove, he questions The Spider's angle with Cat Hardy before Flint Marko and Lonnie arrive to join his ranks, and he dismisses Cat from the conversation to talk business with his new muscle, coldly telling her to start looking for a new band and a younger singer, presumably to replace her. His operation is growing, and the singer who once served his purposes seems to be becoming expendable to him.

He moves to add a third powered man to his coalition. Following Flint and Lonnie as they break into the police precinct and easily toss the officers aside, Silvermane offers the imprisoned Dirk Leyden a place at his side. After his new soldier to-be is freed, he makes a theatric show of his capabilities to his imprisoning officer and officially joins the ranks. He then summons Ben Reilly, flanked by Flint, Lonnie, and Leyden, and instructs the detective to tell The Spider to stay out of the war between himself and the mayor.

Silvermane descends on Dr. Faber's hidden laboratory at the climax of the night, tipped off to its location by Robbie's published article. He comes with his powered men in tow, looking to plunder the doctor's work and add whatever he can to his growing arsenal.

The raid turns bloody in his usual fashion. Though he and his crew come up short of the prize they sought, they leave bodies in their wake, killing both Faber and Ogden before inadvertently putting the laboratory to the torch. Silvermane and his men pull away as the building goes up in flames, unaware that Ben Reilly has slipped past his guards and escaped the inferno with the antidote in hand.

Silvermane returns to The Alcove frustrated that the raid on Faber's lab yielded nothing. He turns his attention back to his war with Mayor Morris, ordering his three powered men out into the city to wreak havoc and remind the mayor exactly who holds the power, sending them to gut Morris's campaign and seize his money.

The ground shifts beneath him by the end of the night. Word reaches him that Lonnie has been stripped of his powers and that an antidote is in play, his coalition of powered men suddenly looking far less invincible. Learning that the Spider is behind the cure, Silvermane orders his men to track down Ben Reilly, meaning to use the detective to lead him to the masked man unraveling his plans.

Silvermane stands at the height of his certainty, lecturing Cat on how courage and appetite carried him out of poverty and counseling her to take whatever the world will not hand over. He is a man who believes he has already won, hunting the Spider to claim the cure and bend the last loose threads of the city to his will. Convinced he has Ben dead to rights, he puts Cat under the gun in order to draw out The Spider. Believing he's been mistaken when Robbie enters in The Spider's garb, he turns his back on the aging detective, thinking him harmless. All hell breaks loose when Megawatt decides to take matters into his own hands.

His empire comes apart in a single night. His coalition of powered men fractures as Leyden turns on him, his scheme to unmask The Spider yields only a bruised reporter, and the real Spider erupts in his midst. Cornered at last, he flees into a hall of mirrors with Cat behind him, and there the man who spent a lifetime refusing to be told no takes a bullet from the one person he failed to account for. He dies almost grateful that it was her hand that ended him, a small mercy for a man who gave none.