Page 70 of A Vicious Love

I put the phone face down.

Reeves watched me carefully.

“Problem?”

“No.”

That was a lie.

Everything was a problem.

Gideon was still silently begging on the screen. Harrington had touched my city. Marrow had burned my hotel.

And now I had to put on a tuxedo and attend some candlelit dynasty circle jerk so Harlan could see the Crow empire still standing.

I unmuted Gideon. His pleading filled the room mid-sentence.

“—please, Mr. Crow, I’ll fix it, I can fix it, I have names, I have proof, I⁠—”

“Good,” I said.

He stopped.

“Give Reeves every name.”

“Yes. Yes, anything. I swear. All of it.”

“And if one detail is missing,” I said, voice calm, “I send your wife the ledger with your mistress’s name highlighted before I take the villa.”

His face went white.

Ah.

There it was.

Men could steal from me, sell codes, lie about fire, and weep over family. But threaten the secret that made them look pathetic to the people they needed to impress, and suddenly they understood stakes.

“You have twenty minutes,” I said.

I ended the call.

The screen went black.

I turned to the route map. “Lock down corridor six.”

Reeves nodded at one of the men.

“Move Crow freight through corridor two under medical classification until the audit clears. Triple the escort on west river shipments. Every driver gets a second tail. Anyone complains, fire them. Anyone asks why, fire them and then find out who they talked to first.”

“Done.”

“Put eyes on Harrington clubs in Harlan.”

“How many?”

“All of them.”

Reeves nodded.