"What do you want from me?"Charles said it not like a man who didn't know the answer, but like a man who wanted that answer to come out of the mouth of the person in front of him, heard by everyone there, and put clearly on the record.Victor pulled the cigar from the corner of his mouth.The smoke drifted into the morning air like he didn't care whether it bothered anyone around him."Nice to talk to someone who gets straight to the point." His smile didn't change. "Saves a lot of time."He turned his head toward Paul, standing among his men, with the bandages, the swelling, and an expression that couldn't be fully read behind all the damage on his face but made it clear enough which way his feelings ran."After what your son did to one of my favorite boys..." Victor paused for a moment, letting the sentence hang. "I've got two requests."Charles didn't answer.He waited.Victor raised one finger."First." His eyes moved to Norman, standing on the steps. "Let Paul get his payback, w

"Norman."Lily's voice.She had come down the steps and was standing at the bottom of them, her face unable to choose between two things fighting for space on it at the same time. Real panic, and a guilt that had been there since this morning and had only grown."They're obviously really dangerous." Her voice was quiet, but there was pressure in it. "And I saw Paul's face just now. The way he looked at you. The way he looked at me." She paused for a moment. "He's not messing around, Norman. And neither are the people behind him."A few moments earlier, when Paul got out of the car and his eyes found Lily in front of the mansion doors, there had been something in what was left of the expression on that wrecked face that couldn't be mistaken for anything but a threat already decided on, not one still being considered.Lily saw it.And since that moment, something cold refused to leave the back of her mind. The way real terror is different from ordinary fear, because ordinary fear can be

Two seconds of silence.Then Victor laughed.Not a small, polite laugh. This one came from somewhere deep, filling the entire cabin of the Escalade in a way that left the man on his left unsure whether the right move was to laugh along or wait."Ha!" Victor slapped the side of the car door with his palm. "Ha! That little bastard really..."He stopped for a moment, catching his breath between laughs that hadn't quite finished."He's not just ballsy." The words came out between the last of his laughter, which had faded into something closer to insincere admiration. "He's challenging me. With his own life on the line." Victor slowly shook his head. "Twenty years I've been in this business. Twenty years. And today's the first time anyone's walked out of their house ten minutes after I gave them a warning."His eyes looked out the window."I like that." Said in a tone that didn't entirely mean well. "And I hate it at the same time."The man on his left waited.Victor dropped what was left

At this point, the three men stared at their buddy on the asphalt.Broken nose. Teeth scattered around. Not moving.And all from a single punch.Not a lucky punch. Nothing about the way the man in front of them was standing looked like luck. A head tilted half an inch and a fist fired from zero distance with that kind of damage wasn't something that happened by accident.This guy isn't some ordinary bodyguard.The three of them exchanged looks. No words, none needed. One small nod from the one on the left, one from the one on the right, one from the one in front.All together.Then they moved to surround Dorian, splitting the angles evenly, cutting off his room to move from three different directions. Their steps were more careful than before. The way their eyes tracked Dorian had changed.Dorian didn't move.He let them finish getting into position.Then all three attacked at once.The one from the left came first, a split second faster than the other two, with a horizontal punch aim

Paul took one step forward from his place among the four men."Norman Calloway!"He said the name without trying to hide anything anymore. No polite layer, no trace of control left in a man who usually knew how to keep the surface neat in front of anyone he needed to manipulate."This time nobody's going to save you." The bandages on his face shifted as he spoke, following a jaw still aching from that night in the motel room. "No Calloway bodyguards. No one. You're all alone here, in a place where nobody gives a damn about the Calloway name."His eyes swept over Norman from head to toe."I'm going to make sure your face looks a hell of a lot worse than mine when I'm done."Hearing that, Norman smiled.Thin. It didn't reach his eyes in any way that made it feel warm."You're going to wreck my face?" He repeated the words like someone tasting something and finding it didn't live up to its promise. "After getting on your knees and kissing Victor's ass, begging him to help you get your re