The heavy oak doors of the Continental penthouse closed silently behind Anthony.
"Good morning, Adjudicator. Lord Harbinger," Anthony said, offering a polite, minimal nod.
His smile was perfectly manufactured. If the Adjudicator hadn't radiated such a perpetual aura of cold disdain, he might have even offered to shake her hand.
Despite the sprawling, velvet-lined sitting room, the Adjudicator remained standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, her back to him. It was as if she found the mere act of sitting in a hotel chair somehow unclean.
Her posture was impossibly rigid. Her hands, encased in smooth black leather gloves, hung perfectly still at her sides.
The Harbinger stood in the far corner of the room. The flickering orange firelight from the hearth danced across his silver mask, rendering him completely still, like a phantom waiting to record a ghost story.
"Anthony," the Adjudicator's voice finally cut through the silence. It was perfectly level, stripped of all human inflection. "In the past seventy-two hours, you have turned the streets of New York into an active war zone."
"Are you attempting to use the Tarasov syndicate to redraw the geopolitical map of this city?"
Anthony didn't sit down either. He stood two meters behind the Adjudicator, his hands in his pockets, his posture entirely relaxed.
He didn't rush to defend himself. He simply let out a long, slow sigh.
"I did not initiate this war, Your Excellency. The breach was opened by someone else."
Anthony followed her gaze out the window, looking at the distant Manhattan skyline.
"The Staten Island Refinery was attacked. Twenty-one Tarasov enforcers were slaughtered, and a fully loaded tanker of processed crude was hijacked. Need I remind you, forty percent of the profits generated by that refinery are funneled directly into the High Table's tax reserves."
Anthony chuckled softly.
"Someone took a bite out of the High Table's cheese. If the Tarasovs simply tolerated such a brazen theft, who in New York would ever respect the Table's authority again?"
"My retaliation was not designed to disrupt the order. It was designed to violently enforce the High Table's dignity."
A log popped in the fireplace. A few stray sparks landed on the Persian rug and quickly burned out.
The Adjudicator gave a soft, dismissive snort. Anthony's defense clearly did not impress her.
"And so you chose to maintain this supposed dignity through open gang warfare?" she asked. "You let the Bloods and the Crips butcher each other in the streets? You allow the local precinct desks to overflow with homicide reports?"
Her voice maintained its chilling, metronomic rhythm.
"Anthony. You are making far too much noise. What the High Table requires from New York is stable, uninterrupted revenue. Not daily headlines."
"Noise?" Anthony laughed. There was genuine, biting sarcasm in the sound.
"When the Crips attacked my refinery wearing Bloods colors, carrying tactical gear ten times superior to anything on the street... they had absolutely no intention of maintaining stability."
"When I walked into Robert Clemens's office at MetLife, I intended to calmly negotiate a perfectly legal commercial claim. He flipped the table."
Anthony leaned forward slightly. The morning sunlight caught the sharp angles of his face.
"My Lord Adjudicator, does the rule of law dictate that sanctioned agents of the High Table are destined to be bled dry by the white-collar parasites of this city?"
Anthony reached into his pocket and slowly pulled out a crushed brass casing. He held it out on his open palm, letting it gleam in the light.
"This is a spent 5.56 NATO cartridge from an M16 assault rifle. The Crips do not fire NATO-grade munitions."
The Adjudicator paused for a fraction of a second. "You do not believe the Crips are capable of orchestrating an assault of that magnitude?"
"It isn't that they lack the capability. It's that they lack the nerve," Anthony said flatly. "Someone was using them as a disposable proxy."
"I captured a man named Bertrand Laroche operating behind the Crips. His combat metrics vastly exceeded those of elite Table assassins."
Anthony adjusted his stance, watching the Adjudicator's icy profile.
"I wonder... has the Adjudicator ever heard that name?"
He fired [Compensatory Perception], attempting to read her biometric response. Aside from a microscopic twitch of her eyelashes, he got nothing. Anthony suspected that if he shot the Adjudicator in the chest, her facial expression wouldn't even change. Her resting heart rate was hovering at twenty percent below the human average.
"You are here to answer questions, Anthony," she said smoothly. "Not to ask them."
Anthony sneered. "Of course. You are the enforcer of the rules. And I am simply the dog whose leash you pull tight."
"Order comes at a price," the Adjudicator replied, her voice pressing against him like a physical weight in the room.
"Rules must be upheld, Your Excellency," Anthony countered, the sarcasm bleeding back into his tone. "If protecting an agent's property and punishing those who steal from the Table is considered a violation of those rules..."
Anthony reached into his jacket. He pulled out a Glock 19 and extended it toward the Adjudicator, grip first.
"Then you should just execute me right now."
The Adjudicator didn't even blink. "Tell me about MetLife."
Anthony withdrew the gun and slammed it down onto a nearby mahogany table. The heavy thud echoed through the silent room.
He completely ignored the protocol of standing before an Adjudicator. He pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and took a deep drag.
"I didn't execute them because they denied a payout. I executed them because they represented a far more dangerous set of rules in this city."
"They wear bespoke suits. They sit behind bulletproof glass. They use insurance contracts and state laws as shields to suck the blood out of this city, and then they sit back and laugh at High Table agents like we are uneducated animals."
Anthony's voice was calm, but the latent, furious gravity in his tone was unmistakable.
"When the man pulling the strings behind MetLife ordered Clemens to classify a targeted paramilitary strike as a 'gang war' to starve the Tarasov accounts, I was forced to negotiate in the only language corporate executives understand."
"The ghost behind the curtain encouraged MetLife to trample on the will of the High Table. And so, I passed judgment upon MetLife using the will of the High Table." Anthony exhaled a cloud of gray smoke. "Was I wrong?"
In the corner, the Harbinger's pen paused. He noted the careful, manipulative phrasing of 'the will of the High Table'.
The Adjudicator remained entirely still. She still hadn't looked at him.
"Your execution of the senior executives was absurdly high-profile," she said. "It will trigger an unnecessary chain reaction. The political and financial sectors of New York will become paranoid."
Anthony waved his hand, dismissing the concern entirely.
"Since when do the financial sectors care about anything other than their own survival? I sent them a very clear, very simple message: The Tarasovs only butcher those who cross the line."
"If anyone else decides to get clever... if anyone else thinks they can put their hand on the High Table's plate because they assume the Tarasovs are weak... I don't care if it's the Pope himself. I will make all men equal."
Anthony watched her closely. [Compensatory Perception] registered zero physiological changes.
But she didn't interrupt him. And in the world of the High Table, silence was a form of tacit consent.
As long as Anthony successfully wrapped his violence in the ideological blanket of 'defending the High Table's interests,' he was technically operating within the rules.
Anthony walked over to the coffee table, picked up a heavy crystal ashtray, and walked back, holding it out as an offering to the Adjudicator.
"Therefore, Your Excellency," Anthony said smoothly, "everything I have done over the past three days -- while undeniably violent -- was executed with the sole intention of rebuilding the city's order. A cleaner, more terrifying order."
"The Table's interests in New York must be guarded by a ruthless blade. I have instilled absolute terror in my enemies, and I have shown my business partners the cost of breaking the rules. Is that not an acceptable outcome?"
The Adjudicator stared out the window, her eyes fixed on the distant skyscrapers.
The Harbinger had stopped writing completely. His breathing was so shallow it was practically non-existent.
The only sound in the penthouse was the soft crackle of the fireplace.
After a long, suffocating silence, the Adjudicator finally spoke. The chilling, accusatory edge from earlier had faded slightly.
"Your logic possesses a certain... dangerous pragmatism, Anthony."
She finally turned her head, looking at him with eyes as cold as dead stars.
"The High Table appreciates efficiency. But the High Table is incredibly wary of uncontrollable variables."
"And you, Anthony Tarasov, are a massive variable."
Read ahead with 70+ chapters now with daily updates!
@patreon.com/Authorizz