The moment Anthony said it, Winston went pale.
He turned slowly toward Santino.
Santino's face was twisted, almost unrecognizable. Behind the shock in his eyes, there was something else now, colder and far more dangerous. A naked, simmering intent that made even Winston's spine tighten.
Winston sensed the room was about to tip into catastrophe.
He pulled out his phone and spoke into it, clipped and urgent.
"Get up here. Now. Full alert."
Santino's hands trembled at his sides.
"Fuck you," Santino rasped. "What kind of nonsense are you talking about?"
His voice cracked, not from fear of Anthony's mouth, but from the implication behind it.
How could this Tarasov bastard possibly know something that was supposed to be sealed behind blood, gold, and the High Table itself?
Anthony chuckled.
"I know what color your underwear is."
He leaned back like he owned the suite.
"Yours is black. Ares's is white. Lace, for both of you."
He smiled, all teeth.
"Do I need to start guessing sizes too, or are we done pretending you're not rattled?"
Winston's control finally snapped.
"Shut the fuck up, Anthony."
A few seconds later, the suite door was kicked open with brutal force.
More than a dozen Enforcers poured in, armored and armed, filling the room until the air felt thinner. The vibe changed instantly. Not a negotiation anymore.
A containment.
Winston grabbed Anthony by the arm, his grip sharp with anger.
"Come with me. We will speak privately."
Anthony didn't budge.
He glanced at Santino, who looked like he was about to bite through his own tongue just to keep from screaming.
Anthony smiled, soft and poisonous.
"You want to kill me? Impossible."
He spread his hands.
"I have plenty of gold coins. I can stay here a long time. I genuinely hope I get to see you every single day. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Then a sweet little good-night reminder before bed."
He finally looked at Winston, calm as a man ordering room service.
"Winston, he's close to snapping. He can't kill me in here, but he won't go after the Tarasov syndicate or my people, right?"
Winston's eyes were red with fury and exhaustion.
"Tarasov is one of the High Table's major revenue streams in New York," Winston said, voice tight. "No one is foolish enough to deliberately sabotage it."
He glanced back at the suite, then lowered his tone.
"As for your associates, the checks and balances among High Table members are not emotional. They are structural. Targeting relatives and friends directly creates consequences so catastrophic that even arrogant men hesitate."
Anthony listened, and something in his expression steadied.
This was the part of the world he needed to confirm.
The High Table was vicious, but it was not stupid. If family and friends became open season, the entire system would collapse into endless blood-feuds, and the Continental's authority would become a joke.
Wars would never end.
The High Table's infighting wasn't random slaughter. It was precise pressure inside a framework. Stripping protection. Cutting resources. Using rulings to render rivals powerless, instead of lighting fires that spread across the whole city.
That was how order survived.
And Santino, for all his rage, still feared the rules.
Not because he respected them.
Because he understood what happened to men who didn't.
Also, this was New York.
Winston practically shoved Anthony toward the hallway, forcing distance between him and Suite 366.
Then Winston turned, jaw clenched, expression colder than Anthony had ever seen it.
"Do you even understand what you are doing?" Winston demanded.
"I do," Anthony said, shrugging. "Friendly communication."
Winston seized Anthony's arm again and dragged him into the corridor's shadowed corner, away from Santino's hearing range.
His voice dropped into a low growl.
"Do you want to die violently on the street? Or do you intend to live inside a hotel for the rest of your life?"
He didn't wait for an answer.
"Santino is High Table. What you just pulled is enough to justify a bounty ten times your coin stack."
Anthony's smile returned.
"Then I'll spread the word that he's planning to kill Gianna D'Antonio."
Winston froze.
For the first time, the manager looked genuinely stunned.
"How do you know Gianna?" Winston asked sharply. "Did John tell you?"
Anthony waved it off, bored.
"Do you think you can swallow a porcupine without John?"
Winston's face tightened, ugly and pale.
"You're saying he wants to..."
Anthony laughed quietly.
"Tell me, Winston. What else could Santino possibly want with John right now?"
Winston didn't answer.
Anthony leaned closer, voice hard.
"I just want him to understand he's not the only hunter in New York."
"You're being impulsive," Winston said through his teeth.
"The Camorra hold one of the Twelve Seats. They control half of southern Italy. Provoking Santino like this doesn't make you brave. It makes you and John a problem the High Table will enjoy solving."
"Trouble," Anthony repeated, tasting the word.
He chuckled twice, humorless.
"John's trouble. Marcus's trouble. And now it's my trouble too."
He looked Winston dead in the eye.
"Letting trouble come to me isn't in my nature. I said it before. I'm not John."
Winston's gaze softened slightly, almost involuntarily.
Anthony noticed.
He laughed.
"Winston, you're too naive."
His tone wasn't mocking now. It was certain.
"The High Table will never let John truly retire. And I will never have a quiet life."
Anthony's smile sharpened again.
"Our only option is to fight."
He patted Winston's shoulder, casual as a friend.
"Don't worry. I'm very law-abiding."
He tilted his head toward Suite 366.
"At least inside the hotel."
Then he turned and walked toward the elevator, posture relaxed, steps unhurried, like none of this had cost him anything.
Winston stood there, watching his retreating back, brow furrowed.
This young man was crazier than Winston had imagined.
And far harder to control.
From the far end of the corridor, a sound rose from Santino's suite.
A wolf-like howl.
Then the sharp crack of shattering glass.
Then another.
Anthony didn't even glance back.
He didn't return to his room.
He took the elevator straight down to the underground garage.
John was already in the driver's seat, engine quiet, hands steady on the wheel.
Anthony slid into the passenger seat.
"Hurry," Anthony said, voice flat. "We're leaving for Rome right now."
He clicked his seatbelt.
"If we don't leave now, we won't be able to leave later."
John didn't ask a single question.
He started the car and drove out of the Continental like a man exiting a funeral.
Anthony lit a cigarette and laughed softly to himself, smoke curling into the darkness.
Across the street, in a room with a clear line of sight to the garage exit, Marcus watched their vehicle roll out.
His expression didn't change.
He calmly disassembled his Blaser R93 Tactical and packed it away.
Then he turned and disappeared into the night.
...
The plane's engines roared.
Outside the window was nothing but deep night, the sky a black ocean punctured by distant stars.
Anthony leaned back in his business-class seat with his eyes closed, as if resting.
John sat across from him, immaculate in a suit, hands clasped on his knees. His eyes were closed too.
Still.
Silent.
A statue that breathed.
There were only a handful of passengers in business class.
At this moment, Anthony's mind was moving at an alarming speed.
Compensatory Perception unfolded quietly.
The entire cabin rebuilt itself inside his head in clean, clinical detail.
The faint wobble of the cart wheels as a flight attendant pushed meals down the aisle.
The whisper of leather as a passenger adjusted their recline.
The tiny metallic rasp of someone in the back cabin unscrewing a whiskey bottle cap like they were committing a crime.
Anthony heard it all.
But his attention wasn't on any of it.
He was rebuilding the fight.
Every second of the battle replayed in reverse, then forward again, like a film being studied frame by frame.
Five assassins.
John.
Marcus.
Himself.
Riccardo's suppressed AK, modified for control, thirty-round magazines, a steady rate of fire that told Anthony exactly how disciplined the man's hands were.
Reload cadence. Timing. How long the muzzle dipped. How the sound changed when the shooter got tense.
A professional sniper with an AWM and .338 Lapua Magnum. Lethal at distance, slow to reposition, vulnerable up close.
MP5s. Crossfire habits. One of them left-handed. One of them always leaving a few rounds in the mag, like superstition.
Salvatore with two Berettas and a machete, strong left side, footwork that suggested training. Possibly former special operations. Possibly just a violent man who learned the hard way.
The line of the AK chewing through drywall.
The arc of glass shards spinning in moonlight.
The exact moment flesh ruptured when bullets hit.
Compensatory Perception had captured it all.
Now the System reproduced it with brutal, superhuman precision.
If Anthony had been alone, how many could he have killed inside his own territory?
The answer arrived clean and cold.
Three. Maximum.
"If I were alone," Anthony exhaled silently, "even in a familiar environment, my survival chance against just two of them would be eight percent."
His mind shifted to John.
John's tactics had been nearly perfect.
But a top-tier sniper could still read trajectories, predict movement, punish habits.
And against a marksman of Marcus's caliber, dodging stopped being skill.
It became luck.
"John's weakness," Anthony thought, smoke leaving his lips in a slow stream, "is the sniper."
If the man in that tree had been Marcus instead of that Italian amateur, John might already be dead.
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