Taming Maximilian Cross

Chapter 9: Debt

Maximilian sat alone in the dim of his study with elbows on his knees, and palms folded as if in prayer. The vintage pocket watch lay open in his hand as its tiny second hand scraped forward with perfect, indifferent patience. He closed his eyes and let the ticking mark the rhythm of his grief sharpen into a promise.

“Father,” he began as if his father, Arthur Cross, was seated opposite him in the leather chair. As if the span between the dead and the living were nothing but a poor excuse for cowardice. “I am almost at my victory.”

He let the name Lionel Liroux slip through his teeth like both a curse and a lesson. Lionel is already dead. The old wound had been struck, but a body on the ground is only the first thing a killer can take. “You remember him,” Maximilian went on, softer, with the memory sharp like a blade. “He killed you, father. The very man you thought would be the one to defend you. He thought taking your life would make him untouchable. He thought blood answered blood and the ledger closed there.”

A bitter smile cut his face. “He was wrong.” He watched the watch as if the tiny hand could be taught to slice. “Lionel Liroux is gone, but the stain of his cowardice lingers. Killing a man does not end what he started. It builds an empire of ghosts. It leaves descendants who still breathe the arrogance of their grandfather.” His fingers tightened around the watch until the metal creaked.

He pictured Lionel’s line, his bloodline parading like a jewels, including Evelyn Liroux, Lionel’s beloved granddaughter. “He loved her,” he said, almost pitying the dead man. “Lionel cherished that granddaughter like a talisman. He thought she would cement his name into eternity.” Maximilian’s voice cooled.

The ticking was the only answer in the room, and he let it sit with him a beat longer. “I will not answer your death with spectacle,” he told his father as if describing a plan out loud to a man who would understand the precision of ruin. “I will unmake him the way a surgeon unthreads a wound. I will take from him the warmth he slept beside when he trusted his name to keep him safe.”

He leaned forward, and the lamp light finally caught the angle of his face. “I will take what Lionel thought inviolable. I will take his pride, his alliances, the men who followed him for the comfort of his coin. I will take his wealth until his name is less useful than a curse.”

And then, the hardest bone of all, the aim sharpened to a single figure. “I will take his granddaughter. And hurt him even in his death.”

He said her name plainly, as if it were already sealed in ink on a contract. “Evelyn Liroux.” The syllables fell from him like a verdict. “She was his weakness and his golden thing. The piece he polished and paraded, the promise he pointed to when he wanted to be remembered. He wrapped her in the Liroux name and called it armor. He thought he could shield her from the world.” His voice narrowed, edged with something colder than contempt.

A ghost of a smile touched his mouth, not warm but precise. “You taught me to be patient, to hold my temper and measure the angle of every blow. You were too good for your own sake, father. That kindness...your code, left me vulnerable when they came for you and for mother. Left a boy to learn the world by hunger and by blade.”

He closed the watch and pressed it to his chest, feeling the indifferent tick like a small, steady verdict. “I learned the other lesson alone that pain left unreturned becomes vanity. Revenge without design is only noise. I will not scream. I will calculate.”

Maximilian’s voice dropped, quieter and harder, as the confession turned into ordinance. “Soon I will make them suffer down to the last descendant. Though Lionel is dead and his body gone, but his house endures, and in that endurance is his arrogance."

He looked up as if he could see her face in the dark. “Evelyn is merely a woman, stubborn and fierce and far too proud to know what will come for her. She believes in honor and in the rules she was taught. She thinks a man who lays claim to her will be bound by the same laws. She does not yet understand the shape of what I will do.”

His tone softened for only an instant, and in that second the cruelty and the want were almost indistinguishable. “I know what will break her,” he said plainly. “I know the promise that will make her hold on, the name that will make her pause. Presented by the right hand, in the right light, even the most headstrong will hesitate. When a man she thinks would die for her, offers safety, devotion, history...how can she not accept? How can she refuse the future he professes?”

He set the watch back on his knee and leaned forward until the lamp caught the hard planes of his face. “I will taint the very last pride and purity she will ever have. She will carry my children and they will bear witness to what he started and what I will finish. That will be the true ruin of a man who believed a blade could end debts.”

The room held its breath with him, the ticking a cold metronome to the promise. “This is not about cruelty for its own sake,” he repeated, softer, inexorable. “It is about balance. It is about making sure the ledger is paid in full.”

He closed his eyes as if taking counsel with a dead father, and when he opened them the patience in them was absolute. “Soon...every debt, every wound, every betrayal will be accounted for.”