Page 215 of Their Arrangement
This wasn’t rage.
It was ritual.
He tilted his head slightly.
“Do you want a confession, or a receipt?”
His accent was clean. Faint trace of Antwerp. Polished like old money.
“I want your hands,” I said.
His smile faltered.
Just for a breath.
“I don’t?—”
“You moved it. Clean. Quick. Like a man who’d done it before. I want to know how fast I can break the fingers that did it.”
The first strike wasn’t with a fist. It was with the chair. I tipped it backward. Let him fall hard. He didn’t scream. Didn’t curse. But his grin disappeared like a light turned off. I pressed my boot to his shoulder.
“Tell me who paid for it.”
He said nothing. So I gave him thirty-seven minutes to think. Every sound in the room was absorbed by the walls. No echo. No mercy. I didn’t shout. Didn’t lecture. Just broke pieces.
Not to kill him.
To remind him that people like us didn’t deal in clean breaks.
We shattered.
And we left what was left behind.
When I walked out, my jaw was bruised. One hit he got in out of desperation. My hands were shaking. Not from weakness. From restraint. My coat was soaked. Elbow to cuff.
London leaned against the hallway wall, arms crossed like he hadn’t heard a thing. Like the screaming hadn’t seeped through the marble.
“Done?”
“For now.”
He handed me a lighter.
“You still smoke?”
“No.”
I lit it anyway.
Watched the flame flicker at the edge of the folder I carried. Watched it catch. The edges curl. Ink turned to ash. Paper to regret.
“We’re not done,” I said.
London nodded once.
“That was just the clean-up.”
We walked out together.
