Chapter 31
Jaxx’s Point Of View
The ink on the last page was barely legible, a spidery, violent squiggle born from fingers that wouldn’t stop trembling.
Dalton dropped the Montblanc pen. It rolled off the metal tray, bounced off his blood-soaked knee, and clattered onto the concrete floor, the sound unnaturally loud in the silence that followed. Blood smeared the white margin of the final signature line, but the signature was there. Legally binding, fully executed. That was all that mattered now.
I reached down and took the folder from Marco’s hands. Flipping through the pages, I inspected each signature with a warm, satisfied smile, letting the silence stretch just long enough to remind everyone in the room who controlled the pace of things.
The paper felt cool between my fingers, a strange contrast to the heat still radiating off Dalton’s ruined body a few feet away. Somewhere above us, pipes groaned as the building settled, and Dalton flinched at the sound like it might be a gunshot.
I almost laughed at that, the way three hours of agony had reduced a man who once commanded boardrooms to jumping at plumbing.
“See?” I murmured, leaning down and tapping Dalton’s pale, sweat-slick cheek twice with the flat of my fingers. “That wasn’t so hard, was it p>
Dalton wept silently, his chin resting against his collarbone, his body twitching with every ragged breath. There was no fight left in him, only the hollow shudder of a man who had given everything he had to give. I almost admired the way he’d held out as long as he did. Almost. Men like him always believed their principles would outlast their pain. They rarely did, and the ones who lasted the longest always broke the hardest, folding in on themselves like paper too wet to hold its shape.
I turned my back on him, rolling my cuffs down over my wrists and fastening the silver links, unbothered by the small choking sounds behind me. The routine of it steadied me, cufflink after cufflink, the small mechanical comfort of order restored. “Keep him here for one more week,” I told Marco. “Bring the doctor in to patch up his legs and cauterize the skin properly. We need him alive, well-fed, and capable of reading emails by Monday p>
“Understood, Boss,” Marco said, his voice as flat as ever, the words of a man long past being unsettled by what he witnessed in this room.
I moved toward the heavy steel door at the end of the basement corridor, my footsteps unhurried against the concrete. Each step felt lighter than the last, the weight of the last three hours already beginning to lift from my shoulders, replaced by something almost like calm.
“Boss… please!” Dalton’s voice scraped out behind me, a pathetic, broken rasp that echoed off the damp walls. “Boss, let me go! I already signed it! You said… you said Choice A! Please, let me go home to my wife p>
I didn’t turn around. I didn’t slow my stride. Some part of me registered the desperation in his voice, filed it away as unremarkable, and moved on. I’d heard that particular pitch of desperation more times than I could count, and it always sounded the same… thin, cracking, useless, the sound of a man discovering too late that promises made under duress meant nothing at all.
The heavy steel door groaned as I pushed it open, and I stepped out into the cool night air of the alleyway, letting the door slam shut on his begging. The silence that followed felt clean, almost merciful, compared to what I was leaving behind.
Roman leaned against the passenger door of my matte-black sedan, arms crossed over his chest, a silver Zippo lighter spinning lazily between his knuckles. He pushed off the car the moment he saw me walk into the dim yellow alley light, his expression unreadable but alert, the way it always was, like a dog that had long since learned not to react until it knew which way the wind blew.
“How’d our favorite tax lawyer do?” Roman asked, his deep voice cutting through the quiet hum of the city in the distance.
I reached into my inner jacket pocket, pulled out a fresh pack of Cohibas, and slid out a dark cigar. Popping it between my lips, I struck a match and held the flame to the tip, taking a long, slow drag until the end glowed bright orange. I exhaled a perfect, pale ring of smoke into the midnight air, savoring the small, quiet luxury of it after the mess downstairs.
For a moment, the tension in my jaw eased, just slightly, and the ache behind my eyes dulled enough to ignore.
“He saw the light,” I said, handing the thick accordion folder to him. “It’s signed. Take the next steps with the port authority. Clean up the paper trail, get the secondary manifests loaded, and inform the guys on the docks that we’re back on schedule p>
Roman caught the folder, flipping it open to check the blood-smudged signature page. He gave a quiet, appreciative nod and tucked it under his arm. “Alright, Boss. Where are you heading from here p>
“I’m going to the bar to blow off some steam,” I said, adjusting the lapels of my dark suit jacket, the fabric suddenly feeling too heavy against my shoulders.
Roman nodded, raising the file in a brief salute. “Then I’ll handle these. Get some drink into you, Boss p>
He slapped my shoulder twice, turned on his heel, and walked over to his own SUV parked down the alley. I stood by the hood of my car, watching his red taillights vanish around the corner of the brick building before I spat a flake of tobacco onto the asphalt. The night felt heavier than usual, though I couldn’t say why.
Maybe it was the cold settling into my bones, or maybe it was something else entirely, something I didn’t care to examine too closely. I told myself it didn’t matter. I usually believed it.
I popped the cigar back into my mouth, unlocked the sedan, and climbed into the driver’s seat. I threw the remainder of the cigar out the open window, rolled the glass up, and killed the interior light, letting the darkness settle around me like a familiar coat, one worn thin in places but comfortable all the same.
The drive across town was quiet. Midnight traffic was sparse, the streetlights casting long, amber streaks across the windshield as I navigated toward the neon-lit entertainment district. My mind wandered back to Dalton’s face, the way his eyes had lost all their fire somewhere around the third hour. It didn’t linger long. It never did. I’d trained myself years ago not to let it, though sometimes, in the quiet in-between moments like this one, I wondered what exactly that training had cost me.
I pulled into the private underground garage behind The Vespers Club.
The two heavily armed security guards standing by the reinforced steel entrance instantly snapped to attention, dropping their heads in a synchronized bow as I stepped out of the vehicle.
“Boss,” the taller one grunted, holding the heavy door open for me.
I gave a curt nod and stepped straight through the private hallway that bypassed the main, crowded floor of the club. The bass from the speakers downstairs hummed through the concrete beneath my leather soles, a low, rhythmic vibration that matched the dull throb still lingering behind my temples.
It was strange, how the noise of a hundred strangers enjoying themselves could feel so distant, so irrelevant, as though I were watching their happiness through thick glass.
I walked into my private VIP booth on the elevated mezzanine level… a darkened alcove enclosed by heavy velvet drapes that overlooked the crowded dance floor below. For a moment, I simply sat there, letting the noise and the lights blur into something meaningless, my thoughts drifting nowhere in particular, which was exactly what I wanted.
The cushions beneath me were soft in a way that nothing in the basement had been, and for a while I let that be enough.
Within three minutes, the heavy velvet curtain parted slightly. A waitress stepped in carrying a polished silver tray with a fresh bottle of twenty-year single-malt scotch, a crystal tumbler, and a small bucket of hand-carved ice cubes.
She set the glass down silently, poured two fingers of amber liquid over a single square of ice, and placed the bottle beside it, her movements practiced and unhurried, the kind of quiet efficiency that came from years of working rooms like this one.
“Do you need anything else to eat, sir?” she asked, her voice smooth and polished. “The kitchen is still open for private booths p>
“No… I’m okay,” I said, my eyes fixed on the screen of my phone as I scrolled through updated shipping manifests. “You can go p>
She didn’t leave.
I could still feel her standing right beside the edge of the low leather table, the subtle scent of heavy vanilla perfume filling the small, enclosed space, thick enough to pull my attention away from the phone. Something in the air had shifted, subtle but unmistakable, and a flicker of irritation rose in me at having my solitude disturbed twice in one night.
I slowly leaned my head back against the dark leather cushion, turning my gaze up to look at her, curious despite myself.
“Do you need something from me?” I asked, my voice flat, completely devoid of heat.
The waitress smiled, a slow, practiced, seductive curve of her lips. She shifted her weight, stepping closer to the edge of the booth, running a manicured hand down the side of her fitted black apron, clearly reading my calm as an opening rather than a warning. It wasn’t the first time someone had made that mistake, and it likely wouldn’t be the last.
“I was just hoping I could help you pass the night,” she murmured, leaning down slightly so her voice dropped into an intimate register. “You look like a man who needs it p>
I stared at her for a second, genuinely surprised by the sheer audacity. Then a slow, quiet smirk spread across my face, though it carried no real warmth, more amusement at her miscalculation than anything resembling desire. She had no idea what kind of night I’d just had, or whose blood was still faintly staining the crease of my knuckles beneath the cufflink.
Taking the smirk as an explicit invitation, the girl stepped fully into my personal space. She reached out, her soft, warm hand resting flat against the center of my chest, her fingers tracing a slow line toward my tie, her confidence growing with every second I didn’t stop her.
Before her hand could wander an inch lower, my fingers clamped around her wrist like a steel vise, the sudden motion catching her completely off guard.
The easy smirk vanished from my face, replaced by an icy, dangerous stillness that seemed to suck the warmth right out of the booth.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, my grip tightening just enough to make my point without leaving a mark.