The wail of police sirens had faded into the distance long ago, but the vivid images of the three corpses remained burned into Anthony's mind.
David's distorted, ruined face. The woman's paralyzed, terrified pupils. The boy Mark's final, involuntary tremor.
"It feels... surprisingly good," Anthony murmured to himself, a genuine, dark smile playing on his lips.
Things he would have never dared to even imagine doing in his past, civilized life, he could now execute without a single shred of hesitation or consequence.
He rolled the heavy High Table gold coin back and forth across his knuckles, watching it reflect the cold, metallic light of the New York afternoon.
The absolute, sweeping power of the High Table allowed him to forge his own personal order out of the chaos.
The burner phone lying on his passenger seat suddenly vibrated violently. The screen lit up, displaying The Continental.
Anthony didn't answer immediately. He leisurely pulled the armored Pathfinder over to the curb, put it in park, and took a moment to light a cigarette.
He knew this call was coming.
After Charon received the video of Blake's execution, the concierge would have immediately reported it up the chain. But more importantly, the Harbingers had eyes everywhere. The slaughter at Le Jardin was far too public to stay hidden for more than a few minutes.
"Who is this?" Anthony finally answered, his voice languid and dripping with feigned boredom.
"Anthony," Winston's voice crashed through the speaker. It was a stark, jarring contrast to the manager's usual urbane elegance.
"What in the absolute hell did you do at Le Jardin? Have you completely lost your mind?"
There were no diplomatic pleasantries. No formal preamble. Winston was furious. The sheer rage in his voice seemed to physically assault Anthony's eardrums through the radio waves.
Anthony slowly exhaled a thick ring of smoke, squinting at the pedestrians hurrying down the sidewalk ahead of him.
"I had a lovely lunch. And I finally took care of some things I wouldn't have dared to do before."
"Wouldn't have dared?" Winston practically spat the words through gritted teeth. "Fuck, Anthony! Is there a single atrocity in this world you wouldn't dare to do?"
"I can accept Blake's execution at the pharmaceutical company. That was the Adjudicator's mandated loyalty test. But a family of three? Butchered in a high-end restaurant in broad daylight? And one of them was a seven-year-old child! Are you trying to pave your own road to hell?"
"He was eight, actually," Anthony corrected, his tone incredibly relaxed. "And frankly, I think his age was the root of the problem."
"Since he was statistically guaranteed to drag his parents down to hell sooner or later anyway, and God is clearly too busy to intervene, I decided to handle the paperwork for Him. As for the road to hell... I'll go ahead and scout the route for you, Winston."
"Jesus Christ!" Winston took a sharp, ragged breath, desperately trying to rein in his surging emotions, but the tremor in his voice was unmistakable.
"Do you possess even a fractional understanding of the line you just crossed? The Adjudicator just contacted me. She has never spoken to me in that tone before. The Harbinger's network is already gathering the physical evidence and preparing to report this directly to the Table."
Anthony casually flicked his cigarette ash out the window.
"What evidence do they need, Winston? The restaurant's CCTV footage? The terrified testimonies of the eyewitnesses? Or perhaps they just want to document how a High Table representative was openly humiliated by civilians?"
"Do not play these manipulative games with me, Anthony!" Winston finally snapped, his composure breaking entirely.
"This was not a sanctioned underworld hit! It wasn't even a street brawl! The High Table has an absolute bottom line, and you just dragged their sacred rules through the mud in front of a dozen civilians!"
"Rules?" Anthony sneered, his voice dropping to a harsh, mocking rasp.
"Tell me, Winston. What exactly is the High Table's 'bottom line'? Is it the ancient Latin inscribed on a gold coin? Is it the parchment of a Blood Oath? The fundamental rule of the High Table is that those who serve it possess absolute authority. No sanctioned Lord may be slighted, insulted, or threatened by the mundane world without immediate, lethal consequence."
Hearing Anthony actively twisting the High Table's own brutal philosophy to defend a public massacre caused Winston to pause in sheer disbelief. He quickly recovered. "What kind of deranged nonsense are you spouting?"
"I have already seen the preliminary security footage, Anthony. That family was just being arrogant. They verbally provoked you. You escalated it. That kid was just a spoiled brat who didn't know any better!"
Anthony remained completely silent for five long seconds. Then, he suddenly burst into laughter. It wasn't his usual dry chuckle; it was a fractured, chilling laugh tinged with genuine, unstable madness.
"A spoiled brat? Winston... I just crawled out of the blood and sand of Afghanistan. In my world, there is no such thing as an 'unruly child.' There are only combatants, and there are corpses."
He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was a low, terrifyingly intense whisper.
"Do you want to know the truth? Every time I close my eyes, I see the ruptured bodies of my squad. Every time I smell chemical propellants, my hands shake uncontrollably. Today, in that restaurant... the moment that kid pointed a weapon at my face and pulled the trigger, I wasn't in Tribeca anymore. I was back in Kandahar. The bullets were whistling past my ears, and the air tasted like blood and dirt."
Winston fell dead silent. He clearly hadn't anticipated Anthony playing the trauma card with such raw, convincing intensity.
"PTSD is not a legally viable excuse for slaughtering civilians, Anthony," Winston said. His voice had softened marginally, but it remained stern and unyielding.
"It's not an excuse. It's a physiological reality," Anthony countered, a bitter chuckle escaping his lips.
"The High Table handed me the Tarasov syndicate. They handed me millions in gold, and they handed me the power of a god. I am standing on the razor's edge of a cliff, Winston."
Anthony's voice swelled with manufactured, righteous indignation. "And that pathetic, entitled family stood in front of a room full of witnesses and actively mocked my authority. They threatened to use their petty City Hall connections to destroy me. They threatened to push a Lord of the High Table into the abyss."
The rustling sound of heavy paper came through the receiver.
Winston was physically reviewing a printed after-action report.
"The surveillance audio confirms that the father did verbally threaten you with his municipal connections," Winston admitted slowly. "But that is categorically insufficient to justify annihilating an entire family. Especially since they had absolutely no idea you were affiliated with the High Table."
"So, what you're saying is," Anthony interrupted, his voice suddenly turning incredibly rough and volatile, "is that a mundane civilian can threaten a High Table Lord, their brat can spray blinding chemicals into my face, and I am legally required to just stand there and take it?"
"Fuck that! Are you trying to turn me into a neutered lapdog, Winston? A dog the High Table keeps on a leash, too castrated to even defend its own territory? Is this how you protect the High Table's interests in New York? What the fuck are the Adjudicators and Harbingers doing? Are they just glorified accountants?"
A deathly, suffocating silence fell over the line. Only the sound of Winston's heavy, rapid breathing could be heard.
Insulting the dignity of the High Table, especially as a newly appointed syndicate Patriarch, was a capital offense. Even operating within the gray areas of the underworld, Anthony's explosive, blasphemous remarks had just crossed a massive line.
To make matters worse, Anthony was actively hurling venomous insults at the Adjudicator and the Harbinger.
Winston had no idea how to proceed, because Anthony had absolutely no idea who was currently standing in the room with him.
Winston stood in his private office at the Continental. He slowly covered the receiver of the phone with his hand and turned around, his face pale.
"He has severe PTS—"
Before Winston could even finish the sentence, he stopped.
The Adjudicator was standing precisely three feet behind his desk. Her face remained a flawless mask of ascetic indifference, but the absolute, sub-zero coldness in her eyes had surprisingly faded.
Her posture was as rigid and straight as a javelin. Every sharp fold of her charcoal-gray suit seemed to exude a localized chill. She wasn't looking at Winston; she was gazing up at a massive oil painting hanging on the office wall, depicting a medieval knight swearing a blood oath of allegiance to a sovereign lord.
Standing in the shadows of the corner was the masked Harbinger.
And for the very first time, there was a clear, unmistakable hint of dark amusement visible in the Harbinger's dead eyes.
"He is actively defending the supreme authority of the High Table," the Harbinger spoke. His heavily synthesized, mechanical voice vibrated through the room. "The dignity of our existence must always be defended with blood."
"No, Harbinger. He is testing us," the Adjudicator corrected, her voice cutting through the air like a scalpel.
"He is testing the flexibility of our absolute rules. He is testing the precise location of our bottom line. He is testing to see how large a shield he can forge from the Family Crest we just handed him, and how sharp a spear he can transform it into."
She took a slow, measured step forward. Her thick-soled Chelsea boots made absolutely no sound against the priceless Persian carpet.
"The PTSD? It is a clumsy, transparent, yet highly effective legal smokescreen."
"Regardless," the Harbinger replied, his tone final. "He upheld the High Table's superiority in his own brutal manner."
With that, the Harbinger turned away, signaling he was no longer interested in debating the semantics of the slaughter.
Unaware of the audience, Anthony continued weaving his intricate web of manipulation through the phone. His tone was perfectly balanced between the offended sternness of a mob boss and the terrifying, hair-trigger neurosis of a combat veteran.
"In my eyes, Winston, that family represented a direct, intolerable challenge to our supremacy. What is the fundamental purpose of the High Table? It is to maintain absolute, unquestionable order. As a newly sanctioned Lord, I have zero tolerance for any civilian who insults the very foundation of our existence. I maintained our order in the most direct, undeniable way possible."
Anthony's voice dropped to a final, lethal ultimatum.
"If the Adjudicator considers eliminating a blatant cancer to be an 'overstep,' and if she considers upholding the High Table's dignity to be 'madness'... then tell her to find some other spineless puppet to sit on the Tarasov throne. Because I won't put up with it. I'll walk away right now. And we'll just have to see how the New York underworld celebrates the High Table's sudden, pathetic display of 'magnanimity' tomorrow morning!"
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