Month 3, 920
Overlook Park
The carriage looked identical to the one which had escorted the late Sarah Gilman, The Boss’s former favorite squeeze who had a penchant for running away for reasons that were obvious to everyone but the man she was fleeing from. And, like her, Thorne was being escorted by Jack and Marco, both more serious than usual. Jack sat across, Marco to his side. The men dodged his usual banter, Marco swallowing insults he would usually bite at, and Jack kept his eyes mostly fixated out the window, avoiding Thorne’s.
‘The Boss wants a word with you,’ was all they offered.
The ride across town was slowed by thick crowds, leaving ample time for uncomfortable silence to fill the cabin.
Ethan stared out the window, absently biting his thumbnail. This part was always risky. And unless he went an entirely different direction, it was also painful.
Jack and Marco ushered Thorne into the same overdone foyer, brass fittings winking under the lamplight. The rain had left a thin film on the marble floor, dulling its mirror shine. The air smelled faintly of cigar smoke and something sweet—polish, maybe, or perfume lingering from someone else’s visit.
Overlook Park’s most tasteless address hadn’t improved since his last visit.
The Boss’s office waited at the end of a short hall, doors thrown wide like the entry to a stage. Inside, the air was thicker—cigar smoke curled in slow ribbons beneath a brass chandelier hung just low enough to feel oppressive. Over-polished wood gleamed at the edges of the desk, the gilt trim catching the light like costume jewelry. It looked like the kind of place built by a man who thought “expensive” and “good taste” meant the same thing.
Thorne was seated in the leather chair opposite the desk, jacket rumpled, hair out of place—the sort of look you get when two men, let’s call them Jack and Marco, pull you out of a deep, whiskey-induced sleep and unceremoniously toss you into a carriage in the dead of night.
The Boss leaned back, smoke coiling from the cigar in his fingers.
“You know what your problem is, Thorne? You don’t show the right respect.”
Thorne said nothing.
The Boss puffed hard, voice gravel-thick. “You pay, sure. But there’s no… acknowledgment. No ‘thank you for keeping your place from getting torched.’ No nothing. Makes me think you’re not entirely clear on who runs what in this part of town. Gratitude is its own form of payment…”
Jack and Marco stood on either side of Thorne like bookends, silent, immovable.
Thorne’s gaze wandered past the desk—to the gold-leaf picture frames on the wall, to the mounted pistol above the bar—before settling back on the Boss. His expression didn’t change.
The Boss’s lips pressed thin. “Tie him up,” he ordered. Jack grabbed both of Thorne’s arms and pulled them behind the back of the chair. Marco dutifully bound his wrists together with a coarse thread of rope. Thorne bucked and struggled, but he was less than half the size of Jack and likely not a quarter as strong. He spat various objections but within a short time his legs were also bound to the chair.
He began to plead.
“Hey! Boss… Boss! Come on! You made your point. I’m an asshole. I should show you the proper respect… Please!” They continued tying as The Boss made his way around the front of his desk, loosening his cufflinks, cigar still in hand.
“Boss, I pay! I pay on time, every time…” His voice was cut short with a backhand that silenced him, the slap reverberating off the thick wooden desk and left a ringing in his ears. He barely made out The Boss’s reply of, “Sure, you pay. But you never pay enough!”
The half-dwarf wasn’t much taller than Thorne was sitting strapped to the chair, but his hands were the size of two bricks and stung only slightly less.
Thorne shook his head, trying to collect his senses when a fist exploded into his abdomen, knocking the wind out of him.
“Out,” The Boss told the others suddenly, arrogantly rolling up his sleeves and taking one last deep drag of his stogie before snuffing it out.
Jack frowned. “Boss, you sure—?”
“Out,” the Boss repeated, sharper. “Thorne and me are gonna have a nice little chat.” He gripped the back of Ethan’s hair, pulling his head back, smiling menacingly down at him, blowing puffs of cigar smoke into his face as Thorne struggled for breath. “Man to man.”
Reluctantly, they stepped outside, the heavy door shutting behind them.
The muffled sounds that came from beyond the door were nothing new. Jack had lost count of the number of ‘closed door meetings’ The Boss had with people. Marco had told him ‘you get used to it,’ but Jack hadn’t. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to.
This was Thorne’s first ‘meeting’ though. He should be able to walk out on his own two feet. The meetings where they couldn’t were the ones that Jack really hated…
Minutes later, the Boss leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk, winded. He absently cleaned blood from the hair on his knuckles with one of his monographed handkerchiefs. Thorne once again sat across from him, now hunched over, his face already swelling, covered in the same blood that ungraciously spilled itself onto The Boss’s fists. The ropes that bound him had dropped away somewhere in the scuffle when the chair was broken, the pieces of it were scattered along the floor. Thorne sat in the chair’s surviving twin.
“Here’s the thing, Thorne.” The Boss began. “I’m getting tired of…–No!” The Boss shouted as Thorne raised a hand towards the side of his bleeding forehead.
Thorne froze.
“NO!” he repeated. “Don’t touch it! You sit there and you let it bleed!” He commanded.
Thorne obeyed, his hand dropping back to his side in a jerky, mechanical motion. He leaned forward, blood dripped from the gash on forehead onto his pant leg.
The Boss’s face relaxed. His tone returned to falsely congenial tones. “As I was saying, I’m getting tired of these, light and late payments. So, you keep up with your payments and you keep this little chat in mind as you’re making them. Otherwise, we’ll have to have this conversation again… and I won’t be so gentle next time. You got it?”
Thorne nodded his head in acknowledgment, his eyes half-lidded. He stood, using the armrests to balance and raise himself to his feet. He adjusted his torn, bloodied shirt, almost as if in a trance.
Thorne staggered but managed to reach the door, slowly opening it. Jack and Marco were positioned on either side, standing as sentries. Jack turned and saw Thorne from over his shoulder as the door partially opened.
“Of course,” the Boss said, voice turning sly, calling after him. “It should be easy to keep up with payments when you’ve got friends in high places. Beryl Vanadium, for instance.”
Ethan froze.
“Yeah, that’s right. I had one of your little friends followed—the funny talker you play dragon chess with. ‘Save.’ Works for the House of Beryl. Guess that’s your benefactor too, huh? Explains a lot. Like why those payments don’t hurt the way they should…”
The Boss leaned back in his chair, arms folded across the girth of his stomach, wearing a self satisfied grin. “I’m thinking, maybe Save needs to make payments too. What do you say, Thorne?”
Later, thinking back on the moment, Jack was never able to find the words to describe what he saw. Something changed in Thorne; something behind the eyes. His posture shifted. His face relaxed. The dazed expression faded away.
Thorne inhaled, deep and slow. “Okay… okay.” he murmured slowly, barely above a whisper, as if resigning himself to a long delayed chore. The words were spoken in a voice that was different from any Jack had ever heard him use.
Deeper.
Colder.
Thorne quietly closed the door.
From the other side, Jack and Marco thought they heard a sound—short, ugly, final. They exchanged a quick glance. Jack was reaching for the door when it opened again.
Ethan stepped out, calm, cleaning a black obsidian blade—its bone-crafted hilt inlaid with gold filigree—using the Boss’s monogrammed, embroidered handkerchief.
Inside, The Boss laid lifeless, his face resting on the desk in a pool of his own blood.
“Sorry about the mess, Jackie,” Ethan said, slipping the blade out of sight. He drank a small, red healing potion and his injuries faded as the magic coursed through him.
Thorne’s accent was gone.
The bodyguards just stared at him.
“I don’t suppose it’d look good for either of you if word got out the man you were guarding died right next to you,” Ethan continued, voice even. “So let’s just say the Boss found something that he was sure would get him past the gates. So he packed up and decided to try his luck with Angels. Left everything he couldn’t carry behind.”
Jack blinked. It didn’t make any sense.
But…how…? The door wasn’t closed more than… And why did he wait until after…?
“Jackie…” Ethan repeated.
Jack shook from his reverie and again looked at The Boss’s corpse.
“Uh… yeah. That works.” He said.
“Good,” Ethan said. “Tell me where he keeps his safe. Whatever coin I find inside, you two can split. Consider it severance pay.”
They exchanged another look, still frozen.
“Hey.” Ethan snapped his fingers twice, quickly.
“It’s… it’s in his bedroom. Behind the painting of… uh.. Him,” Jack said.
“Good. You two get rid of the body. I’ll open the safe,” Ethan said, turning towards the stairs.
The furnace in the basement had swallowed plenty of bodies before. Sliding the Boss himself onto the slab and shutting the iron door was surreal. Neither of the men spoke during the process. Marco was sweating through his clothes; his hands shook as struggled to remove one of The Boss’s rings.
They found Ethan in The Boss’s bedroom, although Jack supposed now it was just a bedroom. The lifesized painting of the dead man’s self-image was leaned against the wall; the uncovered wall safe now yawned open, short stacks of coins and small, expensive metal bars sat inside. Thorne was across the room, sifting through items on the small oak desk next to the bed, his back to the pair of them. He didn’t bother looking up as they entered.
“Help yourself,” he offered, one hand dismissively waving towards the safe as he remained focused on the letters in front of him. The pair hesitated before taking the contents of the safe and splitting it between themselves.
Ethan finished before the split was finalized. He stuffed a handful of pages into his ripped coat’s pocket as he made his way towards the bedroom door and the stairwell beyond. He paused in the doorway.
“I need you two to make sure his office is cleaned up. Use whoever or whatever people you normally would…”
“And then…?” Jack asked. Was he really going to let the two of them just walk away?
“Then?” It took Ethan a moment to catch his meaning. “And then… take some time off. Spend some of that coin. Come see me in a few weeks. I’ll have work for you. Fair work. Honest work. The pay is…” Ethan paused. And then he did something Jack would never forget: the man smiled.
“It pays on time,” Ethan said, grinning at the pair, his fiercely green eyes meeting theirs.
Relax guys, his grin seemed to say.
Jack shuddered.
Three weeks to the day after The Boss disappeared, the pair showed up at Thorne’s office; neither were certain if the job offer had been an ultimatum. They just knew he could find people.
But when they arrived he seemed to be back to being Thorne. He acted the same, at least. And he offered them work just like he said.
They were assigned to guard some actor—keeping him clean, keeping him out of trouble… basically saving the man from himself. The pay was good. The work, more honest. People didn’t look at Jack the way they used to. He wore a suit that fit him. Things got a little better for both of them. All three of them did, if you counted the actor—bratty as he was about their efforts.
Thorne told Jack they could call him ‘Ethan.’
Ethan never mentioned The Boss again.
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