The soft clink of heavy flatware was balanced by the faint tinkling of crystal overhead as a solo violin played in the background. Beautiful china gleamed on the pristine linens draped on the table that his expertly manicured fingers tapped impatiently against as he gritted his teeth.

A runner silently bloomed beside him, placed a bowl on the plate before him and waited.

She looked at the space beside him placidly, acting as though she could not hear the highpitched diatribe that boomed in the dapper man’s ear that had made him wince. A busboy that had been with the steakhouse for 23 years to the runner’s seven came up with big smiles, his drink and a bottle of water to replenish the man’s glass, saw the faint look of concern on the waiter’s face, plastered on a humongous smile and sprinted into action.

“Water, Sir~?” he whispered gregariously, leaning in to puncture the tight space that had formed around the man wedged apologetically at a table that was by no means the one he’d otherwise gotten sans demand for the past seventeen years.

The man looked up, saw Eduardo and the bubble of tension around him popped. Color flooded back up into his face.

“Eddie, my man!” he mouthed happily and gave a hearty handshake sans sound. Only then did he notice the new to him runner that he smiled wryly at and nodded, understanding she’d been in limbo due to him. He motioned with his hand for her to continue.

Eduardo filled the man’s crystal glass to about a centimeter below the rim of it as she deftly placed the chilled palate cleanser in front of him and got out of dodge as fast as her legs could carry her, sweating bullets.

---

He rolled his eyes, casually popped one of the earpieces out, picked up the teeniest spoon and stabbed into the cucumber sorbet palate cleanser. He brought it to his lips with an air of jocular elegance and was revived by it actually rinsing the bad taste the proceedings he was audibly tethered to had coated his mouth with. He sank back against one of the soft yet firm chairs that had sold him and his cronies on this place as much as the dry aged steaks and the wine list over fifteen years ago.

“No! …noo~” he growled, the sharp, lush smile of an apex predator momentarily flashing across his face. “That’s not what we agreed to.” he snapped,”That is NOT how this is going to go- Your feelings? Who gives a fuck about your feelings = this is business and you know it-“

“I know- the market-” he rolled his eyes as one of the other men on the line descended into preening performative madness, lunging at the heartstrings of everyone else patched into the conference call that were scattered all over the planet to absolutely no avail whatsoever. 

“jOnathan- what do you think this is and where do you think you are?” he interjected roughly.

The harsh clip of his tongue did not match the polished veneer of the poised man in the slightest, but it did match the dark look of intent that glowed in his eyes. He was a tiger reacting quietly to blood on the wind. 

Besides. The drama queen whinnying about on the line now suddenly begging rather audaciously for mercy was a pompous faggot whose down-low zaddy had quietly brought him into the fold in exchange for whatever he’d done to the man with the tip of his tongue on some yacht in the aegean sea ages ago.

He had turned out to be a smart kid, smarter than any of the sharks had sized him up to be at the start of things. Took care of himself rather nicely, made use of the crumbs of intel and tips that sailed his way for many years. Intelligent. Feathered his own nest, if you will, even though the zaddy had been the one to acquire it through various companies on his behalf. 

But he’d gotten greedy, like these ageing showpony twinks always did. Arrogant. Had showed up where he’d known not to, silently making threats he thought the old man was still too in love with his technique to bristle against. 

Nobody cared what anybody did off in the twisted cuts of their own narratives as long as everyone involved was discreet. The aging twink had forgotten all that when he’d caught wind of the zaddy- who’d been quietly giving him berth the way a man with enough money onhand to not put up with the nonsense of other people still wired to give a fuck about it tends to when they respect whatever was between you two but were intent on politely wrapping things up so you could both move on with equanimity- having gone off and finalized his divorce. 

That the man had finally squared away shit within himself to have cut himself out of the loveless marriage was one thing. That he’d done it with a whiff of actual respectful aplomb was one the twink had thought he’d been in a position to rally deceitfully against. 

The shutdown of the attempted showout had been the stuff of legend.

Instead of a man keyed to shame over what he’d demanded done to him in the bedroom out of the pervasive habit of the only humiliation ritual that’d make ‘it’ work… jOnathan had run instead into a no longer embittered man who’d finally loved himself enough to have extricated himself from both a loveless marriage and a demimonde life.

And the man motioning for his second course to be brought had never liked the guy. 

Because he loved his best friend. He’d hated his now ex-wife, but saw jonathan’s covert abuse as the degradation that it always had been from jump.  They’d put up with jOnathan watching their friend with his actual family like a praying mantis planning perverse bouts from off in the cut for years. 

He was so glad it was all over, that at 62 his friend was finally free. His mind veered between thoughts of violently chopping heads off in a huff and dragging it out in the abusive way he was known in many circles to have a rich affinity for. 

Either way, It was going to be a massacre, and everyone patched in paying to play alongside him knew it. He popped the other earpiece back in as she placed the slab of flesh down in front of him, picked up his knife and cut to the chase.

“Enough already!” he barked, loosening a tie that cost about as much as what a studio apartment went for a month these days. 

“You have made out better than most in this mess- you want to be around to enjoy it or not? Threat? In these days? Me? Jonathan, noooo- I’d-”

A crony across the room raised a glass towards him in celebration, listening in to the routing alongside him. Far and wide, JOnathan was know to have been a prick. This bloodletting had been a long time coming, and did not bode well for any of the sidepieces in play on the field at all, because he’d positioned himself as the feckless queen of them all.

He mirrored the man, took as sip from his glass and went in for the kill.

©AngelBrynner 2025