The deep, brooding scent of aged oak and charred embers filled his nostrils. Each sip gouged a slow-burning fire down his throat.
"Swell," he muttered, eyes pinned to the city, its lights bleeding into the glass like dying stars.
"That meeting really took it out of me."
His body sagged, a crumbling monument in an overpriced suit. The promotion was still fresh, the ink barely dry, but it already tasted rotten. A hollow victory that clung to his ribs like a cancer.
Sixty-five years old. Sixty-five years of clawing, bleeding, winning. Now, all he felt was the cold draft of the end.
Victor had climbed every rung, stabbed every back, bought every silence needed to wear the crown at McKenzie back in the 1970s—a title he once thought would turn him into a god.
Instead, it turned him into something else entirely.
Through the glass, the city sprawled out beneath him — glittering, crawling, gasping — and in the tight squint of his eyes, in the slight twist of his mouth, something almost tender lurked. A yearning look that hinted at rot too deep for language. The kind of hunger only heaven could weep to see. And somewhere, buried under the immaculate suit and measured words, lived a thing that took joy — real joy — in grinding people into the dirt. In watching belief die behind their eyes.
"What use is any of it," he muttered, "if I'm already dead?"
The office stretched around him like a mausoleum. Leather, oak, steel, all polished to a shine no one cared about anymore.
The phone rang — a jagged sound cutting the stillness.
"Sir, Cole is here. Should I let him in?"
Victor straightened, habit sliding over him like armor. A dead king might wear his crown more humbly.
"Let him in."
The door swung open. Richard Cole stepped inside — tie perfect, shoes shining, spine stiff.
"Hello, sir," Cole said, voice low, respectful. Like a lamb introducing itself to the slaughterhouse.
Victor just stared, heavy and unblinking, until the younger man squirmed.
"You know what your problem is, Cole?"
Cole swallowed. "Sir?"
Victor smiled — not warmth, but anatomy; a slow flex of teeth.
"You thought I was too tired to see. Too old. That I wouldn't notice a leech crawling across my desk."
He toyed with a cigarette, rolling it with idle fingers, the way a cat bats at a dying bird.
"The missing invoices. The little side deals. You thought you were clever."
Cole opened his mouth, but Victor flicked a hand — a lazy, kingly gesture — and cut him off.
"I let it play out. Wanted to see how much rope you'd use to hang yourself."
He leaned in, voice a slow bleed.
"And now, you're out of rope."
Cole's face drained pale. Sweat glazed his forehead. A stammered protest clawed its way up, but Victor spoke over it.
"The money's back. Your friends won't return your calls. And by the time you hit the lobby, security will be waiting to hand you your walking papers — and nothing else."
He dragged the cigarette across the desk without lighting it, leaving a faint scratch like a scar.
"And if you even think of breathing my name outside these walls…" Victor's smile grew colder. "You won't have a future to ruin."
Cole sagged, a puppet with its strings cut.
Victor stood, slow and terrible. He gripped Cole's shoulder — firm enough to leave a memory there — and leaned close.
"You'll leave quiet. You'll leave grateful. Or you'll never leave at all."
Cole nodded, a ragged, broken thing.
Without another word, he left.
The door clicked shut, sealing Victor into his kingdom once again.
He lit the cigarette at last, inhaling the bitter smoke, feeling it sear the inside of his lungs. Satisfaction curled in him, dark and ugly, but real.
And yet — the ache.
The coil in his chest tightened, writhing. He brushed it off. Weakness was for other men.
He took another drag.
The world twisted around him. Lights blurred into cruel halos. The desk tilted.
Victor clutched at his chest. His mouth opened, but no sound came.
Pain flared, devouring. His legs buckled.
He slid from the chair, but not gracefully — it was more a controlled fall, one last petty act of defiance against gravity itself.
He collapsed, eyes wide, still staring out the window at the city he once ruled.
The cigarette rolled across the desk, leaving a blackened trail behind it.
And then — nothing.
Only the city lights blinking on, indifferent.
The empire rotting in silence.
The king, dead.
----
They found him the next morning.
The secretary, a small, brisk woman who prided herself on efficiency, opened the door — and stopped dead.
Victor was there, exactly where he had fallen.
Only — he hadn't crumpled like a man should.
No, he lay strangely straight, his back rigid, head tilted just enough to catch the dawn light like a mockery of a halo.
His jaw was set. His lips curved in the faintest, most withering sneer — a final judgment carved into marble.
Even death hadn't dared touch the arrogance clinging to him.
An air hung around the body — sharp, cloying, heavy. Something unseen pressed against the walls of the office, something that whispered of old cruelties and deeper hungers no one spoke about anymore.
The secretary stumbled back, heart racing, bile rising. She didn't know why, but the room felt... wrong. Like something was still alive in there. Watching.
Victor's corpse seemed to stare through her, past her, into some darkness only he could see.
And in the heavy, lingering stillness, the faint smell of burnt smoke and something far fouler filled the air.
No prayers were said.
No one lingered.
The office was sealed, locked, left to gather dust and shadows — the final monument to a man who had spent his life breaking and trampling on others...
and somehow, even in death, refused to bend.