Watching Gramont's triumphant expression, Chidi carefully delivered the next piece of intelligence.
"My Lord. Last night, the five extraction operatives we dispatched to the Bowery were executed. The King's men dumped their bodies on the steps of the 9th Precinct."
Gramont's smile froze for a fraction of a second, then deepened into something much darker.
"The Bowery King... that filthy street rat," Gramont murmured smoothly. "I underestimated his audacity."
"Should we retaliate, Your Excellency?"
"Retaliate?" Gramont tilted his head, as if pondering a quaint philosophical dilemma. "Why would we retaliate?"
"The King will actively hinder the supply chain for the Hunting Ground," Chidi stated. "He has his eyes on our extraction vans. Furthermore, John Wick has already made contact with him."
"Then let them ally," Gramont interrupted, his voice tinged with a sudden, aristocratic impatience.
"Chidi, when did you become so timid? The Bowery King and Anthony Tarasov are nothing but rats. John Wick is an aging wolf. What can rats and wolves accomplish when they band together? They will simply tear each other apart fighting for the scraps."
"They are completely insignificant when measured against the authority of the Adjudicator. Our primary objective right now is to serve the absolute elite... and to secure their wealth."
Gramont stood up and walked toward the floor-to-ceiling window.
The Manhattan skyline unfolded beneath his feet, millions of city lights glittering like scattered diamonds across the dark velvet of the night.
"The Hunting Ground will not be shut down. On the contrary, we are expanding operations."
Gramont's voice carried a chilling, bloodthirsty edge.
"For next week's Royal Hunt, we will increase the VIP capacity to thirty participants per sector. Double the volume of the prey. Inform Enrique Pritzker that his requested organ quota will also double. Ensure he prepares the necessary capital."
Chidi frowned slightly. "My Lord, if we double the extraction rate, the volume of missing persons will become impossible to ignore. If the NYPD buckles under the public pressure, the resulting media circus and civilian protests could pose a genuine operational risk to your syndicate."
"Risk?" Gramont turned around, his eyes freezing over.
"Chidi, I do not employ you to inform me of the risks. I employ you to engineer those risks into profitable opportunities."
He glided back to the surveillance wall and pulled up a new digital overlay.
It was a satellite map of Los Angeles, a sprawling, glowing grid of endless streets and highways.
"Have you forgotten that New York is merely a fraction of the board? There are vast swaths of America currently occupied by men who have absolutely nothing to lose."
Gramont dragged his finger across the digital map.
"And there are syndicates vastly more powerful than the Tarasovs."
Chidi looked at the glowing California coastline and immediately understood.
"The Mexican Cartels."
"Precisely," Gramont smiled again, his good humor returning.
"The Los Mendoza Cartel. The Gulf Cartel. Sinaloa. Those Mexicans are ten times more ruthless and possess a hundred times the manpower of these petty New York street gangs."
"And they possess one truly exquisite virtue: they are willing to execute absolutely any atrocity, provided the profit margins are high enough."
Gramont tapped a key, opening a highly encrypted dossier containing dozens of high-value target files.
"Emilio Vargas. The primary enforcer for the Gulf Cartel." Gramont pointed to a surveillance photograph of a heavily scarred man. "He owes me his life. Three years ago in Tijuana, I provided the intelligence he required to purge his treacherous lieutenant."
He swiped to the next file.
"Rafael Mendoza. Carlos Mendoza's 'Angel of Death.' His motivation is far simpler. He requires permanent diplomatic residency within the United States to legitimize his banking infrastructure. I possess the authority to grant that."
Chidi studied the dossiers, calculating the geopolitical cost in his mind.
"Mobilizing cartel strike teams across the country will require significant time, Your Excellency. And the financial cost will be astronomical."
"We have an abundance of time," Gramont said, taking a slow sip of his Burgundy.
"Anthony is currently entirely consumed with consolidating the Crips' shattered territory and preparing for his inevitable betrayal of the Bloods. It will require at least a month for him to establish total hegemony over Queens. That month provides us ample time to lay the trap."
Gramont closed the digital folder and sank back into his velvet sofa.
"Inform Carlos Mendoza that if he is willing to visit New York as my personal guest, I will officially award him the entirety of the Crips' former drug distribution network in Queens."
"Inform Emilio Vargas that if he smuggles fifty of his elite Sicarios into the city, I will grant him and his immediate family full American citizenship, accompanied by a five-million-dollar signing bonus."
Chidi rapidly memorized the parameters of the negotiation. "And if they refuse the terms?"
"They will not refuse," Gramont smiled with absolute certainty.
"For Carlos, the Queens transit network represents a minimum of twenty million dollars in clean, untraceable annual profit. For Emilio, a legitimate United States passport is a commodity that physical currency simply cannot buy."
Gramont set down his wine glass, interlacing his fingers resting them on his lap. He looked entirely relaxed.
"However, the Cartels are a secondary concern. Right now, everything must yield to the logistics of the Royal Hunt."
"Instruct the Game Masters that I require genuine theater. I am bored of watching homeless vagrants expire. I want to witness a true clash between the slaves and the masters."
Chidi nodded slowly. "You are referring to the former Delta Force operator and the Army Ranger."
"Exactly," Gramont's eyes lit up with a sick, brilliant joy.
"Disperse those highly trained assets into the premium hunting sectors. And issue them weapons. Real weapons. Not firearms, but blades. Machetes. Hunting knives."
"Weapons?" Chidi's heart skipped a beat. His professional caution flared. "My Lord, arming Tier One operators will pose a legitimate, lethal threat to the VIP hunters."
"That is precisely what makes it exhilarating!" Gramont sneered. "My game is not designed exclusively for the hunters in the forest. We are broadcasting to a global audience."
"Notify the VIP betting syndicate. Inform them that the mortality rate for this week's Royal Hunt could spike to five percent. Both the prey and the hunters are at risk of expiring. Therefore... the baseline odds for survival are being raised to one-to-five."
Chidi ran the mental arithmetic rapidly. "If you raise the odds to that margin, the global betting pool could easily exceed half a billion dollars."
"Let it break a billion," Gramont waved his hand dismissively. "Winning or losing capital is merely a matter of statistical probability, Chidi. The true currency of this game is the sheer, unadulterated thrill."
"The ancient men sitting in the penthouses of London, Dubai, and Tokyo... they already possess everything. They have infinite money. They have absolute political power. They have access to any vice they desire. The only thing they lack is the sensation of their own hearts racing."
Gramont stood up, gliding over to his mahogany liquor cabinet to pour a fresh glass of wine.
"I intend to provide them with that sensation. I want them sitting in their velvet chairs, swirling their cognac, watching the exact moment the 'vermin' they so deeply despise suddenly unleash a terrifying, primal violence. I want them to gasp. And then..."
Gramont turned around. His smile was as bright and innocent as a child's.
"I want them to watch that brilliant spark of life be violently extinguished."
Chidi remained silent for a few seconds before asking the critical question. "What happens if Anthony and the Bowery King actually succeed in geolocating the Hunting Ground?"
"That would be magnificent," Gramont said, his voice as light and breezy as if he were discussing a weekend picnic. "I sincerely hope they manage to find it."
"Can you imagine the sheer poetry of it? John Wick, the legendary Baba Yaga, being hunted through an old-growth forest like a wounded stag. Anthony Tarasov, the arrogant prince of New York, fleeing through the mud like a feral dog."
"A global, high-definition live broadcast! What an intoxicating climax that would be! That is a spectacle even the Nine Elders of the High Table would pause their lives to watch."
Gramont strolled back to the massive surveillance wall and brought up the live, thermal feed from the Adirondacks.
It was 3:00 AM. The forest was pitched in absolute darkness. The screen displayed the world in shades of thermal orange and stark black.
A dozen crimson dots were scattered throughout the digital canopy—the biometric trackers surgically implanted into the prey.
Four distinct blue dots were advancing slowly in a diamond formation—a squad of fully equipped VIP hunters.
Gramont pointed a long finger at the screen. "A purely asymmetrical slaughter... is terribly dull."
"Observe Prey #17. The former DEA agent. He has been hiding in the canopy of that pine tree for six hours without moving a muscle. He is intelligent. But he is not intelligent enough."
Gramont pressed the silver intercom button on his desk.
"Game Master. Instruct Hunter #3 to look straight up. Tell him there is a surprise waiting in the branches, fifteen meters above his current position."
A few seconds later, on the thermal feed, one of the blue dots halted and tilted its visual axis upward.
In the grainy night-vision footage, a blurry thermal silhouette suddenly plummeted from the treetop, screaming downward with a sharpened wooden spear aimed directly at the hunter's throat.
The hunter sidestepped with practiced ease and blindly fired a high-caliber rifle round from the hip.
Prey #17 jerked violently in mid-air, his thermal signature exploding into a spray of hot white fluid before he crashed heavily into the forest floor. The crimson dot on the tracker flatlined.
"What a terrible pity," Gramont sighed softly. "I truly believed he possessed the stamina to survive until dawn."
Chidi stared at the screen, his expression completely blank.
Gramont tapped a button, turning the massive screens off. He stretched his arms elegantly.
"Very well. Execute your orders, Chidi. I am going to retire for the evening. Contact Emilio and Carlos immediately. Tell them a magnificent feast is being prepared for them in New York."
Chidi bowed deeply and turned to leave the penthouse.
Gramont walked back to the window, staring out over the sprawling, glowing metropolis.
The city appeared to be sleeping. Or rather, pretending to sleep.
But Gramont knew the truth. He knew the countless, brutal games being played in the shadows beneath those streetlights. The street gangs slaughtering each other for scraps of asphalt. The police happily accepting their bribes. The politicians weaving their intricate, hollow lies.
But high above all of them, Gramont was playing the only game that mattered. The grandest, most dangerous, and most exquisite game on earth.
"Anthony Tarasov," Gramont murmured, his breath fogging the cold glass. "Please... enjoy your petty victories in the gutter. Because you will soon discover..."
He took a final sip of his wine, his reflection warping and twisting in the curved glass of the window.
"The throne of the wolf pack is a very, very difficult place to sit."
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