I didn’t need hobbies.


    But if I ever imed one, it was this, watching Alexander Adams suffer in his own boardroom.


    Dynasty polished. Men seated on both sides who still believed their surnames were currency. Contracts stacked like altars. Titles. Old money.


    And then me.


    The Crow they wished wasn’t here.


    The reminder that Viin wasn’t theirs and theirst names meant nothing to us.


    Today, I wasn’t here for sport. Unlike every other month when I attended just to humiliate Alexander.


    Instead, I was here for the kill.


    Alexander had nearly pushed a marriage across the line. Before fucking lunch on her twenty first birthday. Our girl wouldn’t have been awake more then three hours before Alexander greedy fingers was scribbling his signature to add to the Adams legacy.


    Two wedding mergers I had stopped the night before. And still, by midday, on her birthday, he almost had her wed.


    I hated him for that.


    I hated him on principle.


    And I was furious with myself for how close the Vales got.


    I’d already fixed it, of course. The Vale family was formally backing out of the merger, clean, polite. They had reconsidered the strategic timing.


    The Adams didn’t know yet.


    Evander Vale had an opinion about it.


    Bastion’s jaw wore the conversation.


    The Vale Dynasty was down an heir now. Six feet down to be exact.


    Alexander started with docks. He always started with what he thought he understood.


    “Revenue margins increased twelve percent sincest quarter,” he said, projecting. “With the port stabilized, projected imports will?—”


    “You left out the offload tax.” My voice stayed even. Controlled. “Again.”


    His jaw ticked. Small, but I saw it.


    “Six million,” I added. “Maybe you forgot. Or maybe you hoped the room wouldn’t notice.”


    Pens froze. They hated that I saw through polished reports and lies.


    The truth was the Adams could host the meeting, but the cranes moved because Bastion said so.


    Clubs opened because Rome enforced loyalty.


    And the syndicates stayed bnced because I held their books like a knife to the throat.


    “Adjustments can be made. It doesn’t change the overall growth trend.” Alexander said.


    I tapped the contract with one finger. “It changes everything.”


    They all heard what I didn’t say, growth trends didn’t mean a thing if I pulled the cranes tonight and left their containers to rot in the bay.


    “The international contracts require stability. If Viin copses—” A Thorne heir tried to be useful.


    I turned my head. Looked at him once.


    He stopped talking. A wise fucking choice.


    Stability. That was their obsession. Because dynasty business thrived on appearances, wealth polished until it was legacy framed like art on a wall.


    But the Crows?


    We thrived on control.


    Distribution that ran from back-alley corners to offshore ounts. Customs officers who knew when silence was the answer.


    ounting systems that bent to our numbers, not theirs.


    We didn’t y dynasty games.


    We changed the rules and broke the board.


    I enjoyed watching as I reminded them over and over their name meant nothing to us.


    Alexander pivoted to zoning, construction expansions, and building timelines.


    “You’re counting the Orlen steel twice,” I said. “You’ll be thirty-one dayste on the east truss because your supplier can’t berth without our escorts. And you won’t have our escorts if your offload report keeps lying to my face.”


    Another tick of his jaw.


    I lit a cigarette. I did it every time I came into his broad-room. Hemented once it was unmannered. Who the fuck even says unmannered.


    “Try again,” I told him.<fn8580> Find the newest release on </fn8580>


    His gaze flicked to the smoke, then to my hand, then to the heads at the table who were pretending not to watch the power dynamic unfold. I could have stopped there. Made him bleed slowly. That was my hobby. What I normally did.


    But today wasn’t for my hobby. Today I wanted to gut his books publicly.


    I slid a single envelope across the table. Cream stock. Heavy. The kind old men trusted, and the kind I hated.


    “New business,” I said.


    He hesitated, then opened it. I watched his eyes move left to right. Twice. His grip tightened at the second line.


    House Vale regrets to inform…


    Strategic realignment…


    Withdrawal from all merger discussions effective immediately.


    He lifted his head, fury showing, “You?—”


    “Correction,” I said, my voice dropping reminding him who he was speaking to, “They withdrew.”


    Someone coughed. Someone else put down a pen like it weighed more than it should. The Thorne heir stared at his water.


    “It doesn’t impact Adams growth—” Alexander tried to stand on what he had left.


    “You keep using that word like it matters to me.” I flicked ash on his polished Mahoney table.


    Watching his jaw twitch as I did.


    “Pull the cranes, growth bes decay. Freeze the escrow on your Midtown expansion, growth bes a hole in the ground with your name on it. Lose union cover at the docks, your shipping schedule bes nothing.”


    He knew all of that already. I said it for the room.


    Because I wanted them to watch him break.


    “I’ll need a revised docks packet by tomorrow morning,” I keeping my tone bored. “This time with the offload tax, urate berth windows and without pretending you can move steel without our escorts.”


    “I’ll have my team?—”


    “Your team lied to you,” I said, meeting his eyes. “They lied because you like the numbers clean more than you like them true.”


    A vein started at his temple. I could have stopped. I wasn’t finished.


    “You’ve got a nine-figure hole in your construction front your auditors missed. Six shellpanies out of Ashgate, all funneling invoices through the same two banks. Clean way to hide overruns. Sloppy way to hide losses.”


    His stare didn’t move. The room stopped breathing.


    “Fix it,” I said. “Or I fix it for you.”


    “And if you ‘fix’ it,” he asked, his voice steady by force, “what does that mean?”


    “It means,” I said, “your contractors discover that every concrete pour in Viin now requires a Crow security sign-off. It means your inspectors retire early. Your ss doesn’t arrive. Your steel sits on water. And your lenders re-price you overnight because someone quietly downgraded your risk.”


    I butted the cigarette out on his precious desk. “It means you stop confusing a chair at this table with power.”


    He looked like a man standing at the edge of a cliff and pretending it was a step. “You think this is leverage.”


    “No,” I said. “This is mercy.”


    I hated him. He was ordinary in a city that required monsters.


    And I was annoyed with myself, furious, at how close the Vales had gotten to my wife.


    Our legacy.


    Close enough to breathe the same air.


    My jaw tightened until it hurt. Jealousy wasn’t the word. Possession came closer. Obsession was honest. But even those weren’t enough for what we felt for her.


    And this fucker who can’t even calcte offload tax thought he held her future.


    When she was out of his control and back where she belonged. I would rip his legacy apart, slowly.