Night fell, coating the Corvini compound in an illusion of velvet silence. We were summoned for our first Corvini family dinner, an event that felt less like a meal and more like a macabre ritual. We were led through halls that grew increasingly opulent, finally reaching a dining room of oppressive, suffocating grandeur. Long mahogany table, crystal, silver, oil paintings of stern, dead figures.
The Corvini Seven were seated. John, Sam (his leg braced, his anger palpable but contained), Vikram, Asrit, Asuma, and Kevin. They sat in still, calculated composure, moving with the slow, deliberate rhythm of people who owned the world and had all the time in it.
The recruits sat stiffly in borrowed, ill-fitting suits at the foot of the table, terrified to breathe wrong. The tension was a living thing, thick as syrup. Every clink of silverware sounded like a declaration of war.
Pranav kept his eyes down, avoiding the piercing gaze of John, the cold scrutiny of Asrit, and the simmering rage of Kevin. He knew his information, the location of Mateo Varela, was their only value right now. He had protected that intel from Sanvi, ready to present it as their strategic offering.
Then, Arpika's low, sharp intake of breath drew his attention.
We noticed the empty chair. Massive, high-backed, and immaculate, it was set perfectly between Sam and Vikram. Its place was absolute, yet it was untouched, its crystal glass filled but undrunk.
Arpika risked a whisper, the sound seeming impossibly loud in the stifling quiet.
"Whose chair is that?"
Asuma didn't even look up from her plate, which held a single, perfectly arranged piece of salmon. Her voice was icy and detached, pure arithmetic cruelty.
"That is for my brother, James." She pronounced the name with a peculiar resonance, a mixture of respect and fear. "He likes to have a seat, even when he is away. It is to remind us that he is always present in our calculations."
Silence dropped like a guillotine. James Corvini, the artistic psychopath, the silent killer whose name was only mentioned in passing, was given a place at the table even in absentia.
The meal continued for what felt like an eternity, the silence punctuated only by the delicate scraping of forks. Then came the disruption.
A knock.
It wasn't the tentative tap of a servant; it was a loud, decisive rap on the massive oak door. A courier, a grim-faced man in an anonymous uniform, entered, walked to the head of the table, and placed a large, heavy, brown cardboard box directly beside John Corvini's plate.
The box was wet.
Blood leaked through the cardboard.
Dark, viscous fluid, slow and undeniable, staining the white linen tablecloth.
The Corvini Seven remained emotionless. Not a single plate clattered. Not a muscle twitched in their faces. This was, somehow, routine.
Asrit reached for the box. He didn't use a knife or a hesitant hand. He opened it with the ease and detachment of a man checking accounting paperwork. He simply folded the cardboard flaps back.
Inside: The severed head of Mateo Varela, the Mexican cartel leader who had ordered the hit on Sam. The eyes were wide and frozen in a final moment of terror.
A note was stuck to the forehead with a thin, ornamental pin. Handwritten, the script elegant and looping, almost musical.
A gift. – J
The recruits looked like they had been dropped, fully clothed, into the hottest pit of hell.
Pranav felt the bile rise in his throat, his sophisticated strategies crumbling into dust. He looked at the head, the face of the man he was supposed to leverage, the man Sanvi was supposed to execute, and the sheer, casual finality of it was staggering.
Sanvi gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Her face was chalk-white, the bloodlust completely neutralized by the shock of witnessing such effortless, detached horror.
Gautham made a low, choking sound, immediately looking away, desperate to retreat into the non-existence he craved.
Arpika, usually unreadable, covered her mouth with a trembling hand, her eyes locked on the severed head with a mixture of terror and fascination.
Pranav realized the true cost of the Corvini power. It wasn't in the numbers Asuma crunched or the legal loopholes Asrit found. It was in the fact that before he and Sanvi had even finished arguing about strategy, James had already moved, solved the problem, and presented the results as dinner theater.
He wanted to prove his worth by bringing back intel. James had brought back the answer.
For the first time, James Corvini stopped being a whispered myth, a name in an empty chair. He was real. He was watching. And he had already acted, rendering their entire, dangerous investigation utterly pointless.
The single, elegant initial J on the note was the loudest statement of power Pranav had ever heard. The Corvini family had no need for the "New Blood's" strategy. They had James.