Power

Cold sweat dripped down Silas Croft's battered face, the ticking of the mechanical alarm clock echoing in his ears. Kneeling on the plush carpet of his own opulent office, the notorious crime boss tasted a genuine fear he had not experienced in over twenty years. For decades, he had ruled Riverdale's sprawling illegal associations with an iron fist, crushing rivals and silencing anyone who dared to speak against him. He was the apex predator who instilled terror in everyone he met, a man whose mere name commanded respect and dread. Now, staring down the deadly, smoking muzzle of Jaxon Reed’s gun, that freezing dread coiled tightly in his own stomach.

These two young intruders were lethal, a different breed of danger altogether. They had walked right into his stronghold and incapacitated his best enforcers.

Swallowing the metallic taste of blood, Silas forced a calm, composed expression onto his features. He needed to assert control before the situation spiraled further out of his grasp.

"Who are you?" he asked cautiously, his voice gravelly but measured. "If you came here for money or territories, we can talk it over. Name your price. I have plenty of both. I haven't offended either of you."

Dante Thorne ignored the plea. He turned his back on the kneeling crime boss, wandering slowly over to the massive, glowing aquarium built into the office wall. The blue light cast long, eerie shadows across the room, illuminating Dante's sharp profile. He stared idly at the exotic fish gliding through the artificial coral.

"My name is Dante Thorne," he introduced himself softly, his tone a stark, eerie contrast to the deafening gunfire from moments ago. "You are right. You have not offended me directly. But you have offended my loved ones."

Silas’s mind raced, his mental gears grinding as he searched his extensive memory of victims, debtors, and rivals for the name Thorne. Nothing came to mind.

"Ten years ago," Dante continued, his tone methodical and unhurried. "You wanted a specific piece of land. It belonged to a retired veteran who refused to sell. You seized it anyway. You had your men break his leg, threw him into a stinky gutter, and left him there to die."

Dante turned away from the glass. The ambient light caught his eyes, making them look like twin shards of ice. His voice dropped to absolute zero. "That veteran is my adoptive father."

The pieces of the puzzle slammed together, and realization clicked in Silas’s mind. The freezing terror that had paralyzed his heart evaporated in an instant. The tense lines of fear on his face morphed into a ferocious, ugly sneer as he processed the revelation.

"I remember now!" Silas exclaimed loudly, letting out a harsh, barking laugh that echoed mockingly in the quiet room. "So that is who you are! You are nothing more than the adoptive son of that old bastard, Arthur Mercer."

He pushed himself up from his knees, brushing the dust from his tailored trousers, ignoring Jaxon’s aimed weapon. His previous panic vanished without a trace. He had assumed Dante was a high-tier assassin sent by a formidable rival syndicate or the scion of some untouchable political dynasty. But this? This was just Arthur Mercer’s kid. A nobody. A hot-headed, impoverished army veteran armed with a useless gun and zero political backing.

Silas wiped the blood from his mouth with his thumb. His usual overbearing arrogance returned in full force, puffing out his chest as he looked down his nose at Dante.

"I heard the old man sent you to the military," Silas mocked, a cruel smirk twisting his lips. "I thought you might have grown into someone formidable, someone ruthless enough to actually challenge me. Instead, you are just a foolish brat."

He took a confident step forward, sneering at the dark barrel of the gun. "Take my advice, little brat. Put that toy away and leave my office right now. Leave one of your own legs behind as compensation for this mess, and I promise to treat this intrusion as if it never happened."

Silas’s eyes narrowed maliciously. He leaned forward, dropping his voice into a gravelly, venomous threat. "Otherwise, with just one single order, I can guarantee that you and the entire Mercer family will not survive to see the dawn of tomorrow."

"Are you afraid of dying?" Dante asked casually, tilting his head as if he were inquiring about the weather.

Jaxon moved instantly. He stepped into Silas’s personal space and leveled the gun directly at the center of the crime boss's forehead. The hot metal hovered millimeters from his skin, carrying the stench of burnt gunpowder.

Silas scoffed loudly, unfazed by the imminent threat. "Of course I am afraid. But you? You simply do not have the courage to pull the trigger."

He spread his arms wide, gesturing to the sprawling empire beyond his mahogany doors. "Go ahead. Shoot me. It is easy for you to do it right now. But remember this. I have three thousand loyal subordinates currently occupying this building and the surrounding streets. I have deep, impenetrable ties to both the legal authorities and the dark underbelly of this province. Kill me, and you sign your own death warrants."

Silas laughed, mocking Dante's reckless, poorly planned attempt at vengeance. "In this world, it takes far more than a single gun and naive aspirations to exact revenge. You think your righteous anger makes you a god?"

He pointed a thick, manicured finger at Dante's chest, his eyes bulging with manic superiority. "You are helpless. Ten years ago, I ruined that old man. I took his livelihood and shattered his bones. And what can you do about it? Nothing. You can only endure. You must hold back your tears and suffer in silence. That vast difference in authority is what separates street peasants from those with true power."

Hearing their boss assert his dominance, the surviving hooligans in the room regained their courage. They crawled up from the floor, clutching their bleeding wounds, and began hurling vicious insults at Jaxon and Dante, promising brutal retribution.

Jaxon furrowed his brows. The muscles in his jaw ticked. His finger twitched on the trigger, itching to end the arrogant babbling once and for all and scatter Silas’s brains across the mahogany desk.

Dante raised a hand, stopping Jaxon with a subtle, fluid gesture. He merely looked at the bleeding, boasting crime boss with a sense of mild, mocking amusement.

"Are you truly that confident in your power?" Dante asked, his tone laced with dark, quiet humor.

Silas offered only a scornful, haughty smile. He rested on the laurels of his billions of dollars in wealth and his untouchable provincial political backing. Standing there, surrounded by his recovering men, he felt like the most superior person in the entire world. An untouchable king looking down upon insignificant street peasants.

"It is great that you feel that way," Dante threw the words out lazily, stepping back toward the center of the room and inspecting his immaculate cuffs.

He checked the mechanical clock resting next to Silas's bloody handprints on the desk. "You have exactly two minutes left."

Dante’s eyes turned dead and predatory, locking onto Silas with an unrelenting, terrifying gaze that stripped away the crime boss's remaining bravado. "Do whatever you can. Use your vast connections. Take full advantage of your supposed authority and all that power you just preached about."

He motioned toward the heavy black telephone sitting on the desk. "Let us see who can actually save you. If you can be saved, you get to live. If you cannot... you die."