Page 213 of Their Arrangement
They call him the executioner.
A brutal relic from a dead empire. Cold. Mechanical. Made of silence and precision. He doesn’t take payment. He takespossession.
London said he lives in an old cathedral now. Keeps it like penance. They say he drowned a girl once. In a baptismal font. And when she came back up—she begged him to do it again.
Now he’s hunting the last daughter of the traitor line.
Not to kill her.
But to keep her.
The air here was damp. Cold. It made your lungs ache to breathe it in too deep.
We weren’t in Belgium yet. That would come later. For now, we met where old debts weren’t paid in coin—but in blood. Beneath the city. Under a cathedral that no longer rang with bells.
Only silence.
London stood beside the altar like it belonged to him. Hands in his coat pockets. Eyes sharper than the blade tucked in his boot.
“You came alone,” he said.
“I always do.”
His mouth twisted. Not a smile. Not quite.
“You sent a message.”
“You said ‘say when.’ This is when.”
He nodded once, slow. “So what’s the play?”
I pulled a folder from my coat. Tossed it onto the cracked stone slab where people used to confess.
“This is everyone who touched the subcontractor. Shell companies. Broker aliases. The last three shipments flagged for customs rerouting.”
London flipped through the file without looking down.
“And you want me to what—burn it or trace it back to someone with a last name?”
“Both.”
He didn’t blink.
“You want names? You’ll get bodies.”
I didn’t correct him.
Because I didn’t need names anymore. I needed consequences.
He closed the file and handed it off to the shadow standing behind him. I didn’t turn to look. Didn’t ask who it was.Anyone London trusted in rooms like this didn’t need introductions.
“There’s talk out of Antwerp,” London said. “Someone’s undercutting your channel. Pushing flawed stone into customs with pristine papers. The money behind it isn’t new. It’s someone trying to remind the table they never left.”
I clenched my jaw.
“Erez?”
London nodded slowly. “That’s my guess.”
