The Seven Sins: Cross Reckoning

Chapter 1: No Mercy

The warehouse smelled like rust and spilled diesel, and Marco Vitale was on his knees, both hands pressed flat against the concrete like that would somehow keep him upright.

"Please," he said. "Please, I can, I can fix this, I swear to you, I can fix it, just, just give me, give me another week, that's all I'm asking, one week."

Silas Cross stood over him with his hands in his pockets, not even looking down yet. He was watching the two men behind Marco instead, the ones who'd dragged him in here, checking their faces for anything that looked like hesitation. There wasn't any. Good. That meant the message had already gotten through before he'd even opened his mouth.

"You were supposed to move forty crates," Silas said. His voice didn't rise. It never did. "You moved twelve. And you told my people the other twenty eight got seized at the port."

"They did, they, I swear, I swear on my mother, they got."

"They didn't." Silas crouched down, slow, unhurried, until he was eye level with him. "You sold them. Off book. To a buyer who isn't mine."

Marco's mouth opened and nothing came out of it. That was answer enough.

"I built one rule," Silas said, quiet enough that the warehouse seemed to lean in to hear it. "Just the one. You don't lie to me. Steal from someone else, fine, that's between you and your conscience. Lie to me, and there's nothing left to negotiate."

"I have kids," Marco said, and his voice cracked right down the middle of the word. "I have two kids, please, please, I'll pay it back, I'll pay back double, triple, whatever you."

"I know you have kids." Silas straightened up. "That's the only reason you're walking out of here tonight instead of not walking out at all."

He nodded once toward the two men behind Marco, and that was the whole signal, that was all it ever took. One of them yanked Marco up by the collar while the other picked something up off the crate beside them, a hammer, plain and ordinary, the kind you'd find in anyone's garage. Marco started screaming before it even touched him, which told Silas everything he needed to know about how this particular lesson was going to be remembered.

He didn't watch. He'd already turned toward the door by the time the first crack of bone hit the air, because he didn't need to see it, he only needed the room to know he'd allowed it. That was the whole architecture of fear. You didn't have to swing the hammer yourself once people understood you were the reason it was swinging at all.

He was three steps from the door when it opened from the other side, hard enough to bang against the wall, and Reyes came through it fast, faster than Silas had ever seen the man move in the eleven years he'd known him.

Reyes was older, silver starting at his temples, the kind of man who'd earned the right to walk slow and never did anyway. Tonight his shirt was untucked on one side like he'd left somewhere without checking a mirror, and his eyes found Silas across the warehouse floor with something in them that made Silas's whole body go still before a single word came out.

"Cross." Reyes's voice was rough, like he'd been running, or like he hadn't spoken in hours and the words were fighting their way out. "I need, I need a minute. Now. It can't, it can't wait."

Behind Silas, Marco was still screaming. Silas didn't so much as glance back at him.

"Outside," Silas said.

The night air hit them both the second they stepped out, cold enough to bite, the kind of cold that made your breath show up in front of your face like a ghost of the words you hadn't said yet. Reyes didn't wait for privacy. He didn't even wait for the door to fully swing shut behind them.

"It's your father." Reyes said it fast, like ripping something off before he could think better of it. "Jonathan. He's, Cross, I'm sorry, there's no, there's no good way to say this to you. He's dead."

For a second the whole world narrowed down to that one sentence hanging in the cold between them, and something in Silas's chest did a strange, involuntary thing, a stutter, a missed beat, like his own heart had tripped over a word it didn't recognize. His hand, which had been halfway to lighting a cigarette, simply stopped moving. Didn't drop the lighter. Didn't finish the motion either. Just stopped, hovering there, for one second, two.

Reyes saw it. Of course he saw it. He'd known Jonathan Cross for over twenty years, had stood beside him in rooms just like this one, and he recognized that exact stillness because he'd watched Jonathan do the same thing more than once, the same frozen half second before the ice came back down over his face like a door closing.

And then it did. Silas's hand finished its motion, lit the cigarette, and his voice came out flat, controlled, almost bored, though Reyes would have needed to be a fool to believe that.

"When."

"Two nights ago."

"How."

Reyes's jaw worked before the words came out. "They're calling it an accident. It wasn't."

"Who."

Reyes hesitated, just long enough that Silas turned his head and looked at him directly for the first time since he'd come through that door, and something about that look made the older man's shoulders drop an inch, like a weight had just been set down on them that he'd been carrying alone for two days and could finally hand off.

"The Assembly voted on it," Reyes said. "All seven. Six for. One against."

Silas exhaled smoke slow through his nose, and his voice, when it came, had dropped to something even quieter than before, which was somehow worse than if he'd shouted.

"Who ordered it."

Reyes looked at him for a long moment, like he was trying to decide whether the man standing in front of him could survive the answer, and then he said it anyway, because there was no version of this where he didn't.

"Your uncle."

Silas didn't move. Didn't blink. The cigarette burned down between his fingers, forgotten, and somewhere behind them Marco was still screaming inside the warehouse, small and distant now, like a sound coming from another life entirely.

"Dominic," Silas said, and it wasn't a question.

Reyes nodded once.

Silas dropped the cigarette, ground it out under his heel without looking down, and when he lifted his eyes back to Reyes there was nothing left in them that looked like grief. Only the flat, terrible calm of a man who had just been handed a reason to burn seven kingdoms to the ground.

"Get the car," he said. "We're going home.”