"That's the sensitive part." I lower my voice further, forcing him to lean in. "Your brother is one of them."
Edmund's eyes widen. I watch the calculations race across his face. His brother, implicated. Evidence of wrongdoing. A path to the Custodian seat that doesn't require waiting for natural causes.
"You have proof?"
"I have everything." I reach into my jacket, and he doesn't even flinch, too focused on the prize I'm dangling. "But there's a problem."
"What problem?"
"You."
The blade is in my hand before he can react. Four inches of ceramic, invisible to metal detectors, sharp enough to split atoms. I drive it up through the soft tissue under his jaw, angling toward the brain stem.
His eyes go wide. A gurgling sound escapes his throat.
The bodyguard is turning, reaching for his weapon, but I'm already moving. I grab Edmund's head and twist, using his bodyas a shield while I pull the blade free. The bodyguard has his gun out but can't fire without hitting his employer.
That hesitation costs him everything.
I throw the blade. It takes him in the throat, severing the carotid. He slumps against the door, blood spraying across the leather seats.
The driver is screaming, slamming the brakes. The car swerves, tires shrieking on asphalt. I brace myself against the seat, ride out the momentum, and wait for the vehicle to stop.
When it does, I lean forward and press my fingers against the driver's neck. The pressure point drops him instantly, unconscious but alive. He's a civilian. A witness, but not a threat. I'll deal with that later.
I sit back in the blood-soaked seat and look at Edmund Holloway's corpse.
His eyes are still wide, still surprised. Men like him always are at the end. They spend so long calculating other people's moves that they never see the blade coming for their own throat.
I feel nothing.
That's not true.
I feel something. A cold satisfaction, maybe. The knowledge that this particular threat will never touch Jonah. That this particular dickhead will never use what he knew to hurt the investigation, the truth, the man waiting in my apartment.
I take out my phone and make three calls.
The first is to a cleanup crew. Ministry-adjacent, paid to ask no questions. They'll dispose of the bodies and the car, create a story about Edmund disappearing during a business trip.
The second is to a contact who can handle the driver. Memory modification. Expensive, but effective. He'll wake up in a hospital with a concussion and no recollection of the past twelve hours.
The third is to the apartment.
Jonah answers on the first ring.
"You're alive," he says.
"I'm alive."
"Did you handle it?"
I look at Edmund's corpse, at the blood dripping from the leather seats, at the bodyguard slumped against the window.
"Yes."
Silence on the line before a shaky breath out. "Are you okay?"
No one has ever asked me that after a kill. Not once.
