Chapter 488: Chapter 487 - Giving Them an Ultimatum

The room took a second to process the sentence.

Then Castor Helling, the fat man with the chicken, opened his mouth —

"What? What does that—"

Three of them disappeared.

Not ’died.’ Not ’fell.’

Disappeared in the , immediate, non-theatrical way that Viktor’s ability had been operating since the morning — the three gang leaders who controlled the mines, the forged-document trade, and the grain hoarding converting, without warning, without sound, without drama, into the fine, dispersed, crimson mist that hung in the air for one moment and then was simply gone.

The chairs they’d been sitting in were empty.

The air where they’d been was slightly warm.

Nothing else.

The two women on Dagger Lom’s chains began screaming.

The chains yanked free as they bolted — Dagger Lom not stopping them, his hands suddenly very still on his own knees, his eyes on the three empty chairs, his body doing the involuntary, animal recalibration of a predator that has just identified something higher on the food chain in its immediate environment.

The women ran.

The door hit the wall as they went through it.

Silence.

The remaining six looked at Viktor.

At the empty chairs.

At the mist that had been three men.

At Viktor.

"Please—" Orin Brass’s voice. Gray-haired, three-regime-surviving, nothing-left-to-surprise-him Orin Brass, voice cracking at the top register. "Please don’t—"

"Don’t kill us," someone else.

"We didn’t—"

"Please—"

The , comprehensive sound of six powerful criminals discovering simultaneously that they are not, in fact, the most dangerous things in the room.

Viktor pulled a chair.

Sat.

His tail settled behind him.

He looked at the curtain.

Through it — the faint, visible, soft sound of a woman breathing through the aftermath of something, the occasional small, involuntary twitch and "mm~—" of a body still cycling through the last of it.

He looked at the remaining six.

"You should thank my wife," he said.

The voice of a man making a reasonable observation.

"I’m in a good mood today."

Every eye in the room went to the curtain.

To the silhouette visible against it — the woman on the bed, lying on her front, the thick, full, visible curve of her body from shoulders to hips to thighs, the , boneless arrangement of someone who has been thoroughly handled and has no remaining structural opinions.

Her hair spread. Her breasts, visible from the side profile — heavy, full, lying against the mattress, the nipple still leaking in a slow, thin, continuous drip that caught the lamplight.

The milk pooling on the sheet below her.

Her thighs — the slow, involuntary tremble of them. Still going.

The six remaining criminals looked at this.

At the man who had just eliminated three of their colleagues without standing up.

At the tail.

At the purple eyes looking at them with the , patient quality of a man who has made his point and is now waiting for acknowledgment.

Several of them were sweating.

Castor Helling had put the chicken down.

Viktor looked at Aaron.

Aaron, who was still standing at the front of the room.

Aaron, who had arranged this meeting at Viktor’s instruction and who was now understanding, with complete clarity, the reason Viktor had kept him alive when every other criminal operation in the district had been dissolved.

Victor’s mouth curved.

"First question," he said. "Are you wondering why I haven’t killed you?"

Aaron swallowed.

"...Yes."

Viktor looked around the room.

At the five others. The protection racketeer. The poison trader. The dock smuggler. The two remaining whose operations he hadn’t eliminated yet.

"Because these men need somewhere to put their frustrations," Viktor said. His voice was the voice of a man explaining something practical. "That’s what you provide."

He looked at Aaron.

"A city full of frustrated men with no outlet is a city full of men breaking things. Breaking doors. Breaking women who don’t want to be broken." His eyes moved across the room. "Better your women spread their legs voluntarily for coin than these men decide to take what they want from women who haven’t agreed."

He paused.

"Isn’t that right," he said. "Gentlemen."

The silence of a room full of men who had, until forty minutes ago, considered themselves various degrees of powerful, and who were now reconsidering the meaning of the word.

"...Indeed," Orin Brass said.

Quiet. Eyes down.

The others, one by one, echoing it.

"Indeed."

"Yes."

"...Indeed."

Viktor breathed.

The long, settling exhale of a man moving from one item on a list to the next.

"The city reports," he said. "Every corruption file. Every ghost ledger. Every unofficial tax, every protection fee, every operation running without authorization from the actual governing body of this county."

He looked at them.

"I want all of it compiled. Clean. Organized."

He paused.

"I want it delivered to the Mistress of Hartfield." His eyes moved across each face. "Eliantra Westing. Tomorrow morning. Before the sun is fully up."

The room was quiet.

"Every detail. Every name. Every operation. Every coin that has been flowing in directions it was not supposed to flow."

Sedra Vane — the poison trader, the only woman in the room, who had been watching Viktor with the , unreadable, analytical attention of someone who survives by reading situations before they fully develop — said:

"And if we don’t?"

Her voice was even.

Not challenging. Genuine question. The voice of a professional.

Viktor looked at her.

She held his gaze.

"Then," he said.

The air changed.

Not visibly. Not dramatically. But with the , atmospheric shift of something that happens below the visual range — the pressure of his aura releasing, not the full extension of it but enough. The ’enough’ of a man who had spent the last two days reclaiming his ability through several very thorough means and was now operating at a level that the air itself noticed.

It pressed.

Against every person in the room simultaneously.

The , physical, ’interior’ pressure of something that was not entirely human sitting on the soul — the weight of it landing on every chest, every throat, every lower spine in the way that ancient things land on things that have been telling themselves they’re the top of the hierarchy.

Castor Helling grabbed the edge of his chair.

Orin Brass went white.

Dagger Lom’s hands shook.

Even Sedra Vane — who had survived three assassination attempts and had never, to her knowledge, been afraid of anything — felt her breath stop.

"I will kill all of you," Viktor said.

The same voice. The same calm. The same unhurried, practical tone.

The aura pressing the sentence into every nerve it could find.

"Every one. In whatever order seems most efficient."

He looked around the room.

"Do you understand me?"

The silence that followed was not the silence of people thinking.

It was the silence of people who have stopped thinking because the body has taken over the decision-making, and the body has made a very clear decision.

"Yes," Orin Brass said. A whisper.

"Yes," Castor Helling.

"Yes." Dagger Lom. Sedra Vane. The others.

One by one. Quiet. Genuine.

The , complete, total ’yes’ of people who have understood something down to the cellular level.

Viktor looked at them for a moment.

Let the aura release.

The pressure lifted.

Every body in the room exhaled simultaneously — the collective, involuntary relief of chests that had stopped being pressed.

Someone behind him made a sound.

"Mmn~—"

He turned.

The curtain had shifted — the fabric moving with the draft of the warehouse, revealing for a moment the woman on the bed, turning in her sleep, one arm reaching across the pillow, her breasts shifting with the motion, the nipple catching the light.

She settled.

Still asleep. Still leaking. Still warm.

Viktor looked at her.

Then back at the room.

At the six people who were going to compile every corruption document in Hartfield County tonight and have it delivered to the Mistress’s door by dawn.

"Good," he said.

He stood.

Picked up his shirt from the chair back.

Put it on.

Began buttoning.

"You all may go."