THE HIGH TABLE

Cannon Towers eats men alive.

Grow up. It’s not a secret, so you can stop being shocked. Of course, December softens the building just enough to invite misinterpretation. Look, there’s pretty trees in the lobby, restrained lights along the railings, music selected to imply warmth without encouraging it. A cosmetic kindness. A controlled lie.

Appearances matter at the end of the year. Investors expect reassurance. Or they start auditing the books. 

The real books.

I’m chasing other facts right now. I’m in Budapest, in the penthouse I reserve for moments when distance is an advantage and being seen is a liability. Floor-to-ceiling glass. I watch the river cutting a precise line through the city. Church façades illuminated below, as if faith itself has been scheduled for display.

This is where I last believed momentum was fully on my side. Where influence and patience, desire, when properly applied, were enough to bend events in the direction I required. I didn’t need force. I didn’t need orders. I needed the right man, nudged at the right moment.

Stone is no longer eluding me. I’ve been notified. He is contained, subdued. His transport is imminent. Not yet delivered, but close enough that the outcome is no longer in doubt. Alex Cava did exactly what I needed him to do. I gave him access, proximity, just enough of a glimpse into my world to make him feel chosen. The rest he did for me.

Stone will come back. And Brakkus will follow.

That was always the plan. Stone is bait. Brakkus does not abandon unfinished things, no matter how carefully he pretends otherwise. Cava believes he acted on his own impulse, that he followed his appetite where it naturally led. That illusion is useful. Men are always more cooperative when they think the decision was theirs.

Everything is finally moving in the direction I need. Which makes this interruption fucking intolerable. The feed opens without ceremony. Cannon Towers. Exterior camera. Snow along the curb. There’s a vehicle idling longer than it should.

Silas is back.

No notice. No report. No justification routed through me first. That alone tightens my focus. The rear door opens.  Silas doesn’t step out.

He unfolds.

Slowly. Carefully. One hand braced against the frame as if gravity itself has become unreliable. When his feet finally meet the pavement, he favors one leg badly, not a temporary limp, but a learned accommodation. His body has begun negotiating with pain instead of ignoring it.

He is thinner. Not leaner, reduced. Weight stripped without consent. His shoulders slope forward, guarded, no longer assuming invulnerability. What the fuck is this shit…? This is not the man I sent away. This is what remains after Hunter Productions. The mission did not go poorly.

It failed.

The Digital Twins were turned against him. Containment collapsed. Tobias and Micah didn’t just extract information, they inverted the system. Silas spoke my name. On record. Under pressure I did not authorize and cannot fully account for.

The fallout is already in motion. Questions are coming from people who expected clean results. Reassurances offered where none should have been necessary. Adjustments promised instead of announced. I am not accustomed to that posture. Silas straightens with visible effort and starts toward the entrance.

He’s not alone.

Someone exits the vehicle behind him, close enough to steady him, careful enough not to draw attention. He's an escort, not a guard. His head covered, unrecognizable from this camera angle. Clever. He’s another fucking  undefined variable. Another loose end left for me to tie up…or better yet…eliminate from the tapestry.

I make a note of it.

The doors to the building open before Silas reaches them. Tommy Davis steps into frame. That deviation lands harder than the injuries. Their eyes lock. Recognition passes between them. 

My chair is suddenly very uncomfortable. I didn’t pay all this money for an uncomfortable chair. Rage is expensive. I center myself. 

Silas exhales. The look a man has when he stops bracing for impact. Tommy says something I can’t make out. Silas nods. When Tommy places a hand at his back, it isn’t guidance. It’s confirmation. I observe this clinically, even as something misaligns.

Rage is expensive, I remind myself again. I sent Silas away to be corrected. To put a pause in whatever this thing is that’s building between him and Tommy.  To return sharper, quieter, more useful to me. Instead, he comes back broken, and worse, claimed. That bond didn’t break.

It adapted. Without me.

I turn away from the monitor. This is manageable. Damage can be leveraged. Failure can be repurposed. But the timing is inefficient, and inefficiency accumulates at the end of the year.

It is Christmas Eve.

Budapest insists on it. The city glows below my windows, holds hands in rehearsed reverence, markets lit in white and gold, bells marking the hour with mechanical devotion. People gather along the river, wrapped in ritual, pretending the cold is something shared instead of endured.

I remain above it.

I pour a drink. Then another. Fuck it. This is a deliberate surrender of vigilance for one night. No calls. No celebrations. No one to be competent for.

If anyone deserves sympathy, it’s me. The thought surfaces unchallenged. Someone has to hold everything together. Someone has to stay awake while others trade sentiment. There are no toasts for vigilance. Only results. The bottle empties. I'm even surprised.

I sit back, letting the edge dull just enough to rest. Tomorrow, Stone will be closer. Brakkus will follow. The board will reset.

Tonight can end.

I sit on the couch, empty bottle in front of me on the table, empty class in my hand as I let my eyes slowly close.

----------------------------------

Some men are not just sent to warn.

They are sent to survive.

And survival remembers everything.

The temperature changes. Just enough that the air thickens, that sound dulls, that my attention sharpens without my consent. But it’s my job to notice things. I open my eyes. Someone is standing across the room.

It’s Silas. Or the piece of garbage that’s left of him.

He is upright, one leg drags uselessly. His shoulders sag under injuries that no longer bother pretending to heal. His face is a ruin, swollen, split, one eye nearly closed. Blood darkens his skin, old and dry, as if it has been there long enough to become part of him.

And now the tantrum…

“You did this,” he says. The voice is wrong. Steady and deliberate, he’s never spoken to me like this. Not even at his strongest.

“I didn’t fail you,” this apparition continues. “I did exactly what you made me to do. I endured until there was nothing left in me to endure with.”

I stand slowly. Carefully. My heart remains steady. My mind does not.

“Excuses? This is what you brought me for Christmas? This tantrum I’m hearing is the alcohol,” I say. “Exhaustion. Neural noise. Nothing more. Talk to me in the morning. ”

The thing wearing Silas’ face tilts its head. “That’s the lie you survive on,” it says. “That everything that hurts you is a malfunction. That no consequence is ever earned.”

I take a step toward him. He does not retreat. More quiet tantrum comes out,  “You didn’t want a man,” he says. “You wanted an instrument. Something you could break down and rebuild without having to look at what you were destroying.”

“Your sloppy world of indecision was better? You’re acting like you were uninvolved here. That’s not how systems work,” I say. “Damage is predictable and you work to lessen the impact. At least I do. But I don’t look like you right now, do I?”

Silas laughs, and the sound is wrong. It’s fractured, carrying damage that never healed. “You don’t build systems,” he says. “You dig graves and call them infrastructure.” The room tightens around us as he continues, voice steady despite the ruin beneath it. “You sent me away to be corrected. But you don’t correct people. You hollow them out. And when they collapse, you call it inefficiency.” Frustration spikes, sharp and expensive. “You broke because you were weak,” I snap back. “Because you failed to hold on.” His eyes lock onto mine, unblinking. “No,” he says. “I broke because you never intended for me to survive.”

Silence presses in, heavy and deliberate. “You don’t have friends,” he continues. “You have leverage. You don’t have loyalty. You surround yourself with men dressed neatly in fear. And when closeness fails, and it always does, you discard what’s left and pretend it was inevitable.” I move closer. He doesn’t retreat. “You will die exactly like this,” he says calmly. “Alone in rooms you paid for. Surrounded by structures you poisoned. Remembered only as a broken shell of a man, if you’re remembered at all.” “That’s enough,” I growl. “No,” he replies. “This is your warning.”

The lights flicker. With visible effort, he straightens, standing taller than his ruined body should allow. I feel something cold cinch tight in my chest. “You are condemned,” he says now, his voice iron-hard. “To a life of control without connection. Power without legacy. Precision without meaning.” He pauses, letting it settle. “Unless,” he adds, “you change.” The word hangs between us, not mercy, not hope, but a challenge.

“You will be visited three more times before morning,” he says. “Three chances to look at what you’ve done. Three opportunities to take responsibility for the harm you call strategy.”

“And if I refuse?” I ask.

Silas doesn’t answer immediately.

He studies me with something like pity,  as if I need that shit. “Then you don’t keep this,” he says, as he waves his arms, directing me around the entirety of the penthouse.

The room seems to tilt, just slightly.

“You don’t keep the money,” he continues. “You don’t keep the influence. You don’t keep the illusion that anyone is afraid of you for the right reasons.”

I feel irritation spark. “You mistake scale for permanence,” I say. “What I’ve built doesn’t vanish because you’re angry.”

Silas doesn’t smile this time. “No,” he says. “You mistake delegation for innocence.” His voice is steady, unyielding. “You think because you don’t swing the fist, because you don’t stand in the room, because you don’t watch it happen, that what you do doesn’t reach you.” He steps closer. “Tonight, you’re going to feel every part of it.”

He steps closer now. Close enough that I can see the depth of the damage. Close enough that the smell of old blood reaches me.

“You will watch it unravel,” he says. “Deal by deal. Account by account. Ally by ally. The men who smile at you now will testify against you later. The systems you built to protect yourself will become evidence.”

The word lands hard.

“You won’t be destroyed in one dramatic fall,” Silas continues. “That would be too clean. Too merciful. You’ll be audited. Investigated. Exposed. Picked apart by people who don’t care who you were.”

My chest tightens, I don’t have to listen to this bullshit. 

“You will outlive your power,” he says. “And you will live long enough to understand what that means.”

Silence presses in.

“You will be remembered,” Silas adds at last. “But not as a king. As a case study.”

He straightens with effort, standing taller than his ruined body should allow. “You will be visited three more times before morning,” he says. “Three chances to see what you’ve done. Three opportunities to change the trajectory before the collapse becomes inevitable.”

“And if I still refuse?” I ask.

Silas’ expression hardens.

“Then you lose everything,” he says. “Not because you were weak, but because you were seen.”

The lights flicker.

“And when there is nothing left,” he finishes, “you will finally be alone.”

----------------------------------

The room doesn’t return to normal immediately.

I stand where I am for a long moment after it’s gone, cataloguing the aftereffects. Heart rate steady. No tremor in my hands. The lights behave. The glass walls hold. No sensory residue beyond the smell of stale whiskey and old blood that I refuse to acknowledge.

Hallucination, then. Or stress response. Or a symbolic intrusion brought on by exhaustion and alcohol. Maybe something I ate. A construct, born of exhaustion, alcohol, and interference.

I move away from the windows and open the cabinet again.

Another bottle waits there, sealed and elegant, orderly. I twist the cap and pour without ceremony. The burn is immediate and very real. I welcome it.

Silas intrudes anyway into my mind rent free. The miscalculation. I don’t replay the recording of his arrival. I don’t need to. The image has already been filed, cross-referenced, marked problematic. What unsettles me isn’t the damage, it’s the reorientation. Assets don’t change on their own.

That tells me something has changed. Hunter Productions did more than resist. The failure there has a feeling I don’t recognize. Accountability. I made calls that shouldn’t have been necessary. Conversations with men who don’t raise their voices but don’t soften them either. Capital doesn’t scold. It recalibrates. I am not accustomed to being recalibrated.

I take another drink, slower now.

The word failure tastes wrong. It doesn’t belong in my vocabulary. Loss I understand. Delay. Attrition. But failure implies a closed circuit, no leverage left to apply. That is… new.

I shift my weight, irritation threading into something sharper. My body responds before I give it permission to. Tension settles low, tight, focused, not unlike anticipation. Stone comes to mind. He’s on his way back. That certainty steadies me. 

My thoughts return to Stone. He is an inconvenience I can still solve. Flesh, weight, resistance, things that respond when pressure is applied correctly. I picture him restrained, broken, stripped of the momentum he mistook for power. What he and Brakkus did to Tommy carries a cost, and Stone will pay it first.

Not because he matters. Because he’s useful.

Stone’s return will be punishment, then leverage. I’ll take my time breaking him down, reminding him exactly where he went wrong, then set him where Brakkus can’t ignore him. Stone is not the end of this. He’s the lure, the noise that draws something far more important out of hiding. When Brakkus comes, Stone’s purpose will already be finished.

The thought settles me. Centers me. Whatever that encounter with Silas was, fatigue, drink, a mind wandering where it shouldn’t, it doesn’t change what still works. Problems like Stone can be handled. Used. Discarded. And the certainty of that is enough to steady my breathing and pull me back into myself.

My hand tightens around the glass.

Stone will arrive.

Brakkus will follow.

That thought sends a slow, deliberate heat through me, dark satisfaction edged with need. My cock swells in my suit pants. The body recognizes what the mind demands: restoration. Correction. Proof.

I drink again, deeper this time.

The second bottle is half gone before I realize my movements have slowed. Not dulled, weighted. Precision is slipping, not catastrophically, but enough that I feel it.

That irritates me more than the warning did.

I sit back on the couch, intending only to pause. To let the pressure settle. The city continues below, bells, voices, ritual bleeding faintly through glass and altitude.

Christmas Eve.

The irony isn’t lost on me. Men gather. Toasts are made. Stories are told about forgiveness and rebirth.

I close my eyes for a moment longer than intended.

Just long enough for the room to tilt.

----------------------------------

The past does not haunt.

It returns to finish what it started.

The sound wakes me. A single, resonant chime that forces my eyes open. The grandfather clock near the far wall is lit, its face stark and precise. I don’t remember setting it, or it ever striking this hour, but a second chime follows, then a third, each landing with deliberate weight. When the final note fades, I know I am no longer alone.

Johann Brakkus stands over me, close enough that my body expects the heat of him, the smell of sweat or leather or iron, but none of it comes. The space he occupies doesn’t press back. Nothing shifts. He is whole and unmarked, exactly as he has always been in my memory, untouched by time or consequence. He regards me with the mild, incurious focus one gives a problem already solved and discarded, something that never warranted reflection. I don’t feel watched so much as registered, catalogued and set aside. A chill runs through me. Not fear, but recognition. The room seems fixed in time around him. This is not the man himself. It is not memory either. It is something shaped by the night and by what I carry, and it has come because something was set in motion that cannot be recalled.

“You look tired,” he says. There’s no accusation in it, no malice, just observation. His voice is flat, unconcerned, not unkind. Recognition snaps into place, not fear or shock but something colder. “This is a dream,” I say. Brakkus shrugs. “If you need it to be.” He glances around the penthouse, taking in the glass, the city beyond, the trappings of success with no real interest. 

“You did well for yourself,” he adds. “That’s…unexpected.”

I sit up slowly, careful not to rush the movement. “I didn’t summon you.” Brakkus looks at me just long enough to acknowledge the sound, then lets his attention drift again. “No,” he says. “You didn’t.” He doesn’t elaborate. A faint smirk crosses his face as his eyes register the room, then return to mine and settle there. “I’m told I’m your past,” he continues. “That’s strange. I don’t remember you like that. To be honest, I don’t remember you at all.” Silence stretches between us, until, for just a moment, something like recognition flickers across his face.

“Yes…that’s it. You chased me once,” he adds, as if recalling an inconvenience. “Wouldn’t stop calling. Wanted me to book a rematch I didn’t need.”

I don’t respond.

Brakkus studies my face for a moment longer, then nods as if confirming something to himself.

“I remember the persistence,” he says. “But not the reason.”

He steps closer, not threatening, not intimate. Just enough to be undeniable.

“So,” he says calmly. “Show me what you think I took from you.”

----------------------------------

The penthouse gives way.

Glass dulls to brick. Light collapses into a single, swinging bulb. The city drains out of the air and is replaced by damp, rust, the sour tang of standing water. My lungs tighten before my mind catches up.

I recognize the place before I can orient myself in it. Not by layout or landmark, but by the way my body immediately reacts. The air feels narrower here, heavier, as if it already knows what is about to unfold.

The room is narrow. Lower than it should be. The walls sweat. The floor is uneven, tacky beneath my shoes. Somewhere nearby, water drips steadily, patient and indifferent.

I am younger.

Late teens, maybe early twenties. Lean. Athletic in the unremarkable way of men who run errands and believe speed might save them. My body is capable, but it is not prepared. Not armored. Not yet rebuilt around fear.

I don’t have a name here. Not one that matters, not one anyone gives a damn about. I’m just the boy who was sent, a messenger carrying words that weren’t mine between men who already decided how their affairs would end. Whatever I thought I was doing. Whatever small importance I assigned to the errand evaporates the moment I understand that my presence isn’t meant to be heard.

Brakkus stands across the room.

He is younger too, but already wrong in a way that draws the eye. Broad where others are still narrowing. Thick through the shoulders, forearms heavy with use. His size isn’t finished, but it’s inevitable. The kind of body that doesn’t need instruction to know what it’s for.

He isn’t alone. There are others with him, older men, louder ones, the kind who fill space with their voices while he stands apart and waits. They speak over him, around him, as if he’s already been decided on as the instrument rather than the authority. Brakkus doesn’t argue. He doesn’t posture. That alone tells me where the power actually sits.

“Make it clear,” one of them says.

Brakkus nods once. He’s a man at work, unfeeling. I step forward, still clinging to the idea that movement might count for something, that I can be seen as cooperative, useful.

That’s my mistake.

Hands seize my arms, two, maybe three. Efficient. No anger in it. They don’t shove me. They position me, turning me so Brakkus can see what he’s meant to work with.

Brakkus finally looks at me properly, not at my face, but at my build, the way my chest rises too quickly, the tension in my legs that marks me as a runner rather than a fighter. The assessment is instant and complete. I am not a threat. I am not even interesting.

“You talk?” he asks, glancing back over his shoulder as if the answer will barely register.

“Not yet.”

He nods, the matter settled without another thought. That’s the full extent of his interest in me. I still open my mouth, instinct overriding judgment. I have a message. Names. Terms that were supposed to matter. I don’t get a single word out before a hand clamps over my mouth, hard enough to jolt my teeth together. Brakkus steps closer then, filling the space I no longer have.

Up close, the difference is humiliating. His eclipses the room, close enough that I can smell sweat on him, “Shut up. I don’t care, stop thinking you have anything to say. That’s not the message.” he says with irreverence. “You’re a canvas. I’m the painter. This is how they’ll understand.” The sentence rewires something permanent inside me.

I’m forced down, knees striking concrete hard enough to jar my teeth but not injured, a cripple can’t walk. They want me upright later. I twist once. That’s all it takes. Brakkus waits for the hands to secure me properly, for my balance to be taken, for resistance to become pointless. Then he moves, precisely, without warning, without anger.

One moment he is still, weight balanced easily on both feet, and the next his fist crashes into my ribs with bone-jarring precision. The sound is dull, wet, wrong. Air explodes out of my lungs and my body folds around the impact before my mind can register pain. He does not follow with words, or threats, or any display meant to impress. He simply continues, striking again and again, methodical, brutal, each blow placed where it will do the most damage without ending things too quickly.

I am smaller. Faster, maybe, but pinned, restrained, robbed of space, none of that matters. Fists dig into me blasting me against the wall. I flex hard to defend and it all falls apart. I strain against hands that hold me in place. He’s beating me. Over and over. My frame absorbs punishment it was never built to withstand. 

I thought I was strong. Such bullshit. 

Brakkus’ eyes never change. No anger. Just a blank, working stare, like a man driving nails into wood. I feel every impact ripple outward, each strike rewriting what my body understands about strength. My skin splits under impact. Then my face. What he does to my face. 

I remember screaming in the mirror days later. My face!

In the present, my chest locks up violently. Breath tears out of me as if the blow has just landed. Pain erupts across my ribs, sharp and immediate, and I double forward on the couch, fingers digging into the leather as my body tries to protect itself from something that isn’t there, but once was.

I pick my head up and look for the intruder who brought me back to this place. At the edge of the room, another Brakkus stands  Older. Broader. Complete. He is not the one striking me. He is watching. His expression doesn’t change. Not at the first blow. Not when my body gives. As if this moment belongs to someone else entirely. Certainly not him. 

Time fractures. I’m back in that cold dank room again. 

Brakkus shifts angles.

A knee drives into my thigh, collapsing my leg instantly, followed by a crushing forearm across my shoulders that snaps my head down. The world narrows to pressure and sound, my own breath breaking apart, the scrape of shoes on concrete, the quiet approval of someone watching. Brakkus doesn’t rush. He lets each strike land fully before delivering the next, ensuring there’s no confusion about who controls the pace, the pain, the outcome.

I try to brace. It doesn’t matter. My body is learning a lesson faster than my mind can process it: resistance only makes it worse. Every attempt to tense is punished. Every instinct to protect myself is dismantled. Brakkus uses my own reactions against me, exploiting my smaller frame, my reach, my limits, until all that’s left is endurance, and even that is slipping.

In Budapest, my hands shake violently. My leg spasms as if struck, muscles seizing without warning. Sweat breaks cold across my spine and my jaw clenches hard enough to ache. I am no longer watching the past, I am inside it, trapped in the same helpless awareness, my present body finally understanding what my younger one never could: this was not a fight.

I’m being erased.

I lose track of sequence and time, replaced by sensation that arrives without warning or order. Brick scrapes my cheek. Cold air burns against skin that shouldn’t be exposed. My breathing fractures into something fast and shallow, loud enough to feel humiliating even as I struggle to control it. Sounds drift in and out around me, laughter, instructions, the casual tone of men already thinking about something else.

Brakkus looms over me through it all without raising his voice. Simple directions, given once. He doesn’t rush. He doesn’t look at my face. The attack is brutal, calculated, without mercy. When he finally stops, it isn’t because he’s finished, but because he decides the moment has come for whatever he’s doing to be understood.

Hands still pin me in place. My body shakes uncontrollably now, not from fear alone but from the effort of staying conscious when everything in me wants to fold. Brakkus steps in closer, invading the space I no longer have the strength to protect. He doesn’t strike. He doesn’t rush. He waits until my breathing betrays me, until I’m aware of how small I’ve become inside my own skin.

“Look at me,” he says.

Up close, the difference is undeniable. His frame blocks the light entirely, turning him into something larger than flesh. There is no rage in his eyes. No excitement. Just ownership. He tilts my chin with two fingers, an intimate, humiliating gesture that strips whatever resistance I had left and leaves me exposed to his inspection.

He moves in behind me, Two others with their hands on my shoulders, keeping me in place on my knees. I know better than to try to resist. The heat radiates off his sweaty muscled body as his thick hard shaft presses up against me.  It presses against me, firm, hard, as the waistband of my sweats gets pulled down.  

Exposed as they all look on. Searing pain as it presses deep inside me.  A roar of satisfaction.  The smack of skin slapping skin as I get torn from inside out.  My howl of pain and disgust gets stifled as some grimy sweat stained cloth gets shoved down my throat. 

Muscles tensing against me as the snake inside me pulsates, throbs and then explodes.  His seed filling me, forcing my own hardened cock to tense and do the same.  The men holding me scoff and laugh, seeing my physical reaction to what this man has done to me.  Surmising that somehow I enjoyed it. My face remains blank…not wanting to let on…that part of me actually did. 

He leans down, his breath close to my neck, still warm from exertion. “You understand now,” he says, “The message you’ll take back.” I don’t answer. I can’t. Whatever words I brought here were taken from me long before this, and the silence does exactly what he intends it to do.

He straightens, already disengaging, and that withdrawal hurts more than the blows ever did. The men holding me loosen their grip just enough for me to stay upright without falling. Brakkus turns away, satisfied. I’m destroyed. Mission accomplished.

The destruction says what words could not accomplish.

Back in the present, my stomach clenches hard enough to steal my breath. Heat coils low and sharp, sickening in its familiarity, and my body reacts before thought can catch up, my chest seizes in spasms… I want to vomit. 

Revulsion and recognition braided together. This is the moment that never loosened its grip on me. It wasn’t the pain or the blood, but the understanding that settled in its place: that strength decides what is true, that dominance has the power to rewrite who you are, and that anything less than standing over someone else reduces you to nothing at all. I remember knowing it then, on my knees in that filthy room, and I remember the vow that followed just as clearly, that I would never tolerate being there again.

At some point Brakkus crouches again, close enough that I can make out the faint scar near his eye. I fixate on it, clinging to the detail as if it might anchor him to something human. “You get to live,” he says. “That’s the deal.” He pauses, listening to someone behind him, the way a man does when the outcome has already been decided. Then he adds, without turning back, “Tell them we’re done negotiating.” Another pause. “And if they send another punk-ass messenger,” he says, already rising, already disengaging, “I won’t waste this much time.”

He stands, and that’s it. The hands on me loosen and then disappear. Barely catching myself, I pitch forward. My palms slide through something wet. Blood drips onto the floor in slow, dark drops, and I can’t tell where it’s coming from. Nothing sits where it belongs. Breath, balance, pain, all of it shifted, miswired. Whatever held me together before has been taken apart and reassembled without care or consideration.

Brakkus is already walking away.

I force myself to look up, waiting for the moment where my presence might register, where he might glance back and recognize what he’s done. It never comes. He doesn’t turn. Not once.

Pain blooms now.  In the present.

My ribs ache as if pressure has only just been released. My hands shake uncontrollably, fingers curling as though they’re still being held in place, and my throat tightens around breaths that refuse to settle. 

I’m back on the couch in Budapest, gasping, sweat slicking my skin, the room tilting as past and present grind together. Brakkus stands where the overlap holds, watching me with mild curiosity, as if assessing an unexpected reaction rather than a revelation.

“That??!!” he says. “That’s what you’re carrying?”

My jaw locks, The burning in my chest is freezing my breath! I can’t answer … and the silence stretches long enough for him to study me properly. 

Then he nods, once, to himself. “I remember the message,” he says. “Not the messenger.” 

His gaze drifts, taking in the penthouse, the city beyond, the life I assembled piece by piece. “And you turned that into this?” Genuine surprise. Brakkus turns away, his indifference permeating the room, the memory releases me. It doesn’t end with pain or blood, but with the quiet certainty that settles in its place: 

I was never the point.

----------------------------------

I come back to myself in pieces.

I can’t breathe…. I CAN’T BREATHE!!!” Clutching my chest, my forehead hits the cold floor. Breath finally comes! At first, ragged and shallow, gagging agony! My chest feels wrong, crushed from the inside, as if something heavy has only just been lifted and my lungs haven’t learned they’re allowed to expand again. 

I drag air in anyway, teeth clenched, every inhale scraping on the way down. Oh… this hurts! Pain follows,my  body remembers being handled  like a bitch. My fist thunders on the floor. Tears running down my face.  My ribs ache as if they were struck minutes ago instead of decades, a dull pressure radiating outward with each breath that keeps my shoulders hunched, instinctively defensive. When I shift on the couch, my thigh spasms hard, muscle seizing as though bracing for another blow that never comes.

I look down. Bruises bloom beneath my skin as I watch! Dark fingerprints along my arms. A livid shadow across my ribs. He beat me… A mottled ache between my shoulders where pressure once pinned me in place. HE beat me! They aren’t precise replicas, they’re impressions. The body’s best guess at something it was never meant to forget.

Dragging myself up into my chair, I swallow hard.

Lower down, a different sensation coils, heat without desire, tension without pleasure. My body reacts to remembered dominance with sickening familiarity, muscle tightening, pulse stuttering. It disgusts me. It always has. The shame of it hits harder than any blow: that my body learned this language even when my mind rejected it.

I completely hate myself. Again.

I press my palm flat against my body, grounding myself, forcing my breathing to slow. The reaction fades, but reluctantly, like a system unwilling to release a command it learned too well. 

Across the room, Brakkus stands whole and unmarked, unchanged by what I’m still shaking off. I find myself waiting anyway. For some sign of recognition. A hesitation. Anything that would suggest my pain has registered with him. It doesn’t. 

He studies the moment with detachment, then speaks at last. “This is inconvenient,” he says, as if remarking on the hour, the room, the interruption itself.

I laugh then, short, broken, not from humor but from the sheer absurdity of it. My laughter catches painfully in my chest and turns into a hissed breath instead. “Inconvenient,” I repeat.

He tilts his head, studying me the way a man studies a problem that doesn’t belong to him. “I did what I was told,” he says. There’s no defensiveness in it, no pride. Just a statement of fact. “There were a lot of you.”

The words sink in slowly, heavier than cruelty would have been. A lot of you. My hands curl into the cushions, knuckles whitening as another wave of disgust and self-hatred rolls through me. I can still feel the floor against my knees, the imbalance. The realization that to him, I was just another task, another command and order fulfilled. The cancer that was seeded in my soul at that moment… Brakkus didn’t register any of it. Why would he? To him, it was labor. A task completed and forgotten. To me, it was what defined me.

I look down at my body again, at the bruises blooming and aching, each one a reminder that this night never really ended. Everything I built afterward was meant to make sure no one could ever put marks like these on me again. And still…he doesn’t remember my face. 

He watches with mild interest as I struggle to breathe, to sit upright, to reclaim a body that learned this lesson too well and never fully unlearned it. “Is that all?” he asks, genuinely curious. “Because if it is, we should move on.”

Move on.

The pain answers first, pulsing once more through my ribs, deep and insistent, as if my body refuses to let the moment pass unmarked. And that’s when it finally settles into place, not as punishment, not as some belated accounting, but as proof. What destroyed me never registered to him at all. It barely slowed him down.

The understanding is colder than guilt, sharper than regret. Something locks into place where hesitation once lived, and I recognize it immediately for what it is.

Resolve.

----------------------------------

The present does not wait for permission.

It takes what it is owed.

The grandfather clock chimes again.

I wake under pressure! I can’t move! Squirming on the couch, as if the room has decided I’m not meant to rise. I’m not alone. Tiberius Stone is already here, in the present, in front of me, shirtless. Maybe I never noticed before the sheer threat level he carries. I’m panicking, trying to get up. 

The glass walls of the penthouse glow with the city beyond, Budapest lit in gold and white. The windows reflect the room perfectly.  Everything reflects…Except him.

He’s not here… is he?

“You were warned, weren’t you? I’m not here as a memory,” Stone says. His voice is low and steady, carrying without echo. “I’m the shit you’re dealing with right now.”

I gasp violently! The pressure eases just enough for me to pull air into my lungs. FUCK this hurts! My body remembers too much, too quickly. Bruises continue to emerge beneath my skin, dark and immediate, layering themselves over marks that never fully faded. 

Stone’s eyebrow arches as he takes in what I’m going through. “We have work to do.” He turns slightly, and the room responds, folding inward rather than backward or forward, until distance loses its meaning. We are still in the penthouse. And we are not.

“So this is where you like to work?” Stone continues, his attention fixed on me, not the city beyond the glass. “Above the fray. Removed. Watching things happen instead of standing where they land. I bet you feel nothing up here. Nice design.”

Images begin to surface around us, slow and deliberate, impossible to avoid. Training floors. Private gyms. Back rooms where violence is discussed the way other men talk logistics. I see myself everywhere, calm, composed, untouched, giving direction, shaping outcomes, never standing where blood pools or bones break. Stone’s presence presses closer, the space itself blurs around him, tightening around me.

“You don’t fight your wars,” he says. “You design them.”

He turns and looks. The next image sharpens. Tommy Davis…focused, loyal, hungry to prove himself. I see myself beside him, offering guidance and approval. Providing him with something warmer than mentorship but colder than affection. A hand on his shoulder that lingers just long enough to mean something.

“You wanted Brakkus hurt,” Stone says. “You wanted him humiliated.”

The room turns inward again, resolving into the aftermath without preamble. Brakkus on the mat, pinned beneath the weight of a loss that goes beyond the physical. The crowd is on its feet, loud, ravenous, as Davis stands over him, relentless, ensuring the defeat is public, undeniable, and carried past the point of sport. Brakkus, broken and humiliated after Davis pounded him into submission, and then had his way with him in front of a sold out crowd of blood thirsty men. 

Stone’s shadow bleeds into the moment, not as a participant, walking around them in a shining freeze-frame. “And when Brakkus finally answered back for what was done to him,” Stone continues, “you pretended you didn’t know what the outcome would be.”

The room tightens again and resolves into the alley behind Comptons. The room fills with the aroma of rain-slick pavement, the sour stench of refuse and spilled beer. Tommy’s body lies where the night abandoned it, too still, too broken to mistake for sleep, blood dark against the concrete. The image holds there, long enough to strip away denial.

My breath catches painfully. “Th-th-that..that wasn’t supposed to happen,” I stammer. “Was it?” Stone’s fist clenches, his arm swings forward through the misty air. “WAS IT??!!”

Pain rips through my gut as if a fist drove right through me, hitting me with crushing precision. My body folds instantly, air ripped from my lungs as I double over and retch, gagging on nothing. I can’t see and with Tiberius looming over me, it’s a terror I can taste. My vision flashes as my knees threaten to give out.

“You built the game board,” Stone says evenly.

My eyes finally lock on Stone, He raises his arm again.  A quick flick of the wrist. Before I can draw breath, the space behind me hardens. I’m hurled backward, shoulders slamming into brick the brick wall,  hard enough to jar my teeth.  My body pinned there as pressure clamps down and holds. My ribs scream as fresh bruises bloom beneath skin already marked by memory.

“You moved the pieces.”

The force doesn’t let up. It keeps me upright only because the wall allows it, the truth settling with the same certainty as the pain. Tommy’s blood. My design. A consequence I pretended belonged to someone else.

“I didn’t work for you,” Stone continues, unchanged. “I wasn’t yours to command.” The pressure eases just enough for me to breathe, held in place by brick and gravity alone. Stone remains where he was, untouched, inexorable, his presence pressing in not as rage, but as judgment finally made physical.

The room reshapes again, resolving into Hunter Productions. Silas is there, exposed, injured, stripped down to the bone by systems I set in motion and didn’t fully control. Stone watches the scene without satisfaction.

“You sent him to see how far things could go,” he says. “Not to win. Not to survive.”

Stone’s attention settles back on me. “And when it failed,” he says, his voice unchanged, “when your name surfaced?”

The air cinches hard around my chest, compressing until pain flashes white-hot. I choke, grasping at nothing as my body folds inward on instinct, breath ripped away before I can brace for it.

“You weren’t there,” Stone continues. “You never are.”

I swing at Stone without thinking, a useless reflex born of panic and anger. My fist cuts through empty space. The air answers instead, collapsing against me with brutal force and hurling me backward. My ribs scream as I hit and drop to one knee, breath tearing out of me in broken, ugly bursts.

“This is your present, James Cannon,” Stone says quietly. “Men you used. Damage you outsourced. Consequences you don’t get to step away from, any more.”

I lift my head, and that’s when I see him. At the edge of the room, just beyond where the pressure loosens, someone stands watching. Silas. Upright now, scarred in ways that don’t fade, his presence marked by what he endured rather than how he holds himself. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t move. He simply observes, steady and unflinching, as if he’s been there the entire time and I’m only just permitted to notice. A witness. 

The Watcher.

If he were a statue, he'd be called “accusation.” Stone follows my gaze.

“He lived. Ooopsies!!,” he says with a smirk. “Now...that wasn’t part of your design. Was it?”

The pressure loosens, and the room seems to exhale with it. Stone’s presence begins to thin, not fading or retreating, but being drawn back, the way something claimed by the present is reclaimed by it. “I don’t get to stay, but I never really leave. ‘Now’ is like that, ” he adds, without regret or relief. Just fact. “But this stays."

I’m hyperventilating as the weight lifts completely. The room stops moving. Stone is gone. Silas lingers a heartbeat longer, watching, then he too is gone.

I wake on the couch gasping, body aching, new bruises layered over old ones, ribs burning with every breath. The present hasn’t passed. It never does. 

----------------------------------

The future does not need permission.

It only needs time.

I wake …

There’s no ache in my ribs, no pressure on my chest, no lingering reminder of what the night has put me through. My body feels light, unnaturally so, as if something essential has already been stripped away. I’m standing, but not in the penthouse. I’m in a room that used to matter. The board room in Cannon Towers.

The walls are bare, the screens dark, the furniture arranged for utility rather than dominance. Even the air feels thinner here, stale with neglect. Near the far wall stands Micah McIntyre. He doesn’t advance or threaten. He watches with the detached calm of a man who survived something he was never meant to be part of.

“I don’t know you,” he says evenly. “And that’s how this ends.”

The room doesn’t shift so much as reveal itself. A long table comes into focus, familiar faces seated around it, fighters, handlers, men who once lowered their voices when I entered. They’re relaxed now, laughing quietly among themselves, unconcerned with my presence.

At the head of the table sits Tommy Davis.

He’s older, broader, harder in the eyes. Confidence rests on him the way loyalty once did, easily, without effort. His posture is open, commanding, unquestioned. He belongs here in a way I no longer do.

My chest tightens as I start to speak, but Micah doesn’t interrupt, and he doesn’t need to. Tommy raises his hand, and the room quiets. Not for me. For him.

“You taught me everything,” Tommy says as his eyes lock on mine. His voice calm and assured. “About power. About control.” He finally looks at me then. “And about betrayal.”

The word lands with a weight that has nothing to do with volume. I step forward, but the space refuses me, not with pain or force, but exclusion. Invisible resistance presses against my chest, denying even the illusion of approach.

“You used me,” Tommy continues. “You told me it was necessary. That Brakkus needed to be humiliated.” Images surface without permission, the converted warehouse, the loss, the rage it planted. “And when he answered? When he came back with Stone?”

The scene resolves into rain, concrete, blood outside Comptons. My breath stutters as recognition sets in. “You weren’t there,” Tommy says. “You never are.”

Silas stands beside him now, whole and scarred, but no longer broken. There’s no apology left in him, no need to explain himself.  “I survived,” he says simply. “That was your mistake.”

Brakkus steps forward next, unchanged, unrepentant. “You made it personal,” he says flatly. “I just finished it.”

Stone joins them, silent and certain. “You set all of this in motion,” he says. “And now you don’t get to step out of it.”

Micah stands with them at the table. Silent. His presence settled, unquestioned. He belongs here not because he sought it, but because I dragged him into the fallout and mistook distance for insulation.

They stand together, not allies born of affection, but of consequence. Forged by what I did.

Tommy rises from his seat, and something fractures inside me, not bone or muscle, but something deeper. He walks toward me and stops just short of where the space denies me further movement.

“I trusted you,” he says, not softly, not angrily, just plainly. “I believed in you. And you turned that into a weapon.”

“You don’t get to watch this part,” Tommy continues. “You don’t get to manage it. You don’t get to survive it.”

He turns away, and the others follow, not dramatically, not ceremonially, but efficiently. The room empties as if I were never part of it.

I am left alone as the lights dim and the silence stretches.

This is what remains: a man with no leverage, no loyalty, no witnesses.

Micah remains.

“You see it now,” he says. “This is what happens if you don’t change.”

He studies me for a long moment. “You don’t disappear,” he adds. “You suffer a fate far worse than that.”

He gestures to the empty room.

“You’re not even remembered.”

----------------------------------

I wake gasping on the couch, heart hammering, sweat cold on my skin.

The bruises are back, They’re real, unmistakable, already setting into places that ache when I breathe. They anchor me to the room, to the pale morning light creeping through the windows, to the fact that none of it was merely imagined.

But something else has taken root.

They think this was meant to save me. They think what I was shown was mercy. I push myself upright slowly, breathing through the pain, and the realization settles with unnerving clarity. Every name is clear now. Every threat accounted for, Davis, Thorne, Brakkus, Stone, McIntyre. Even that blond bloke of a buffoon Atlas is in there, somewhere. So he’s included. No blind spots left. No illusions about where loyalty ends and ambition begins.

There are others, ones who don’t belong on that list. Ones who never do. Cava understands leverage the way I do. He will prove useful…already has. The war ahead will need men who know how to move between sides without mistaking tactics for allegiance. 

The future didn’t frighten me. It clarified me.

I won’t wait to be replaced. I won’t allow loyalty to decay into rebellion. I won’t be erased quietly and called a lesson. If this is the shape of what comes for me, then I will reshape it first, completely, decisively, without hesitation. Thanks for the warning, bitches.

Christmas morning breaks over Budapest, pale and indifferent.

And James Cannon begins planning the war that will make sure it never arrives the same way twice.

----------------------------------

I will not live in the Past.

It tried to break me.

I will not submit to the Present.

It mistook consequence for control.

And the Future, 

the Future thinks it can wait me out.

I have seen what comes for men like me when they hesitate.

I have seen loyalty curdle, strength repurposed, affection sharpened into a blade.

I will not be corrected.

I will not be replaced.

I will not be remembered as a lesson.

I will live ahead of the Past, ahead of the Present, and ahead of the Future, 

where memory cannot reach me

and consequence arrives too late.

Let them keep their warnings.

Let them believe this night was mercy.

Christmas does not change me.

It reminds me of what must be done.

----------------------------------

Epilogue ,  Christmas Morning, Budapest

Morning comes quietly.

No bells. No carols drifting through open windows. Just the muted hush of snow settling against glass, the city below slowed by ritual and sleep.

James Cannon stands alone in the penthouse kitchen, black coffee cooling untouched in his hand. The bruises remain, dark, stubborn shadows beneath his skin, reminders etched too deeply to fade overnight. He does not bother covering them.

Pain is information. His phone lights up with a single message.

CAVA:

I have him. We’re moving.

Cannon exhales slowly.

Stone is no longer theoretical. No longer a loose end hiding in shadows. He’s in motion, being brought back by a man who believes closeness equals leverage. Alex Cava has always confused desire with control.

For now, Cannon lets him.

Another device comes online at the far end of the counter. Not a feed, reports. Time-stamped. Concise. Written by people who know better than to editorialize.

SILAS THORNE ,  STATUS: Returned to London.

CONDITION: Mobile. Guarded.

ESCORT: Unknown male. Not previously flagged.

CURRENT LOCATION: Cannon Towers vicinity.

CONTACT: Tommy Davis aware.

Cannon reads it twice. No footage to review. No dramatics to embellish. Just facts.

Silas is back.

Not broken enough. Not alone. And not coming to ground the way Cannon once trained him to.

The escort bothers him more than it should. Unknown variables always do.

A man outside the system. Not bought. Not tested. Not shaped by Cannon’s hand. Someone who chose Silas rather than being assigned to him. That changes the equation. Silas returning to Tommy’s orbit will force conversations Cannon can no longer choreograph. Stories will be compared. Motives questioned. Loyalty strained in ways Cannon once relied on unquestioned. And Tommy…

Cannon’s jaw tightens slightly.

Tommy has always been the soft point. The one thing Cannon allowed himself to mistake for something cleaner than ownership. That indulgence will be corrected.

Cannon sets the phone down and finally takes a sip of coffee.

Stone is inbound.

Silas is destabilized.

Tommy is exposed.

And a stranger has stepped onto the board without permission.

Good.

The future showed him what happens when men are given time to align.

James Cannon will not make that mistake again.

He reaches for another device and begins issuing instructions, quietly, efficiently, without emotion.

Christmas morning brightens the city below.

And in the penthouse above it all, James Cannon begins designing a world where anyone who aligns against him will have a lifetime of agony and suffering, until death releases them from their pain. 

Guest Appearances:

Tommy Davis: https://mars.chatfighters.com/characters/Tommy_Davis

Dream Breaker (Alex Cava): https://mars.chatfighters.com/characters/Dream_Breaker

Need to catch up on the events leading up to this Christmas Eve event?  All previous chapters can be found in the book 'Cannon's Cantata's:  https://mars.chatfighters.com/book/1164

Published: 2025-12-22, viewed 121 times.