All Chapters of RETURN OF THE LEGENDARY NORTHERN DRAGON: Chapter 21
- Chapter 30
78 chapters
ONE HOUR TO DIE
Westside District was bleeding forty-eight hours after the Triad massacre.The power vacuum left by Kaine's disappearance had transformed the neighborhood into a war zone. Gangs that had operated in careful hierarchy for decades suddenly fought like rabid dogs over territory. Drug corners. Protection rackets. Gambling dens. Everything was up for grabs, and the streets ran red with ambition painted in blood.Then a new player emerged from the chaos like a demon crawling out of hell.Marcus Shaw—known to those who remembered him as The Butcher—walked out of state prison after twenty years with an army of ex-convicts at his back. Men who'd learned violence as a second language. Men who'd survived concrete jungles where weakness meant death. Men hungry for the empire their mentor had promised them in whispered conversations through prison bars.Shaw was sixty-three years old but moved like a man half his age. Prison had hardened him into something less than human and more than beast. His
GOING TO PRISON
Sacred Heart Homeless Shelter sat quiet at eleven PM, its worn brick walls holding fifty souls who had nowhere else to go.Director Sarah Martinez walked through the building doing final rounds, checking that doors were locked and windows secure. Twenty years she'd run this place. Twenty years of feeding the hungry, sheltering the desperate, giving hope to people the world had forgotten.She had no idea she had less than an hour before it all burned.Fifty people slept inside—families clustered in the common room, children curled on cots in the kids' section, elderly residents who had nowhere else to go. This shelter had saved Ava Morgan's life years ago when she was fifteen and had nowhere left to turn. Sarah Martinez remembered that scared girl sleeping in the corner, refusing help until hunger finally broke through her walls.Sarah finished her final rounds, checking locks, ensuring the heating system was working properly for the cold night ahead. She was about to activate the secu
BETRAYING GRAYSON WELLS WAS HER MISTAKE
The emergency room smelled like antiseptic and desperation.Razor lay on the operating table behind reinforced glass, surgeons working frantically over his gutted torso. Blood soaked through gauze faster than they could replace it. Monitors beeped with irregular rhythm, each one growing weaker, slower, fading like a dying heartbeat.Grayson stood outside surgery, still covered in soot from the shelter fire, watching through the window with expression carved from stone. He'd seen men die before. Hundreds. Thousands. But watching someone die for doing the right thing never got easier.Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Ava appeared, breathless from running, eyes wide with fear and hope."Is he going to make it?" she gasped."Fifty-fifty." Grayson's voice was clinical, but his hands clenched at his sides. "Blade punctured his liver, nicked an artery. He lost too much blood before the ambulance arrived. But he saved thirty children tonight. Risked everything to warn them."Ava pressed her
THEY NEVER DESERVED IT
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO.The luxury hotel suite overlooked the city like a throne above peasants. Patricia Reed—then Patricia Morrison, newly married but already regretting it—sat across from a man whose eyes held the kind of violence that never fully disappeared.She slid an envelope across the table. Cash. Untraceable bills in large denominations."You're sure about this?" Her voice was steady despite the magnitude of what she was arranging.The man—younger then, hungrier, not yet the Dragon Master who would terrorize Westside for a decade—counted the money with practiced efficiency. Kaine. Twenty-eight years old and already building his reputation in blood."Fifty thousand to destroy the Morgan family?" He looked up, gold teeth catching lamplight. "Easy money. What did they do to you?""Make it look like debt collection gone wrong. Random violence. No connection to me." Patricia's hands trembled slightly as she poured herself whiskey. "Can you do that?""For this price? I can make them d
THE PERFECT REVENGE
The Reed mansion dining room glowed with candlelight that threw dancing shadows across expensive wallpaper.Carter sat across from Vanessa, wine flowing between them like liquid courage, classical music playing softly from hidden speakers. He'd arranged everything perfectly—the ambiance, the timing, the moment when desperation would override caution."You've been so supportive through everything." Vanessa's words came slightly slurred, the third glass of wine finally hitting her bloodstream. "After Logan's betrayal, after the FBI, after watching our empire crumble... you're the only one who stood by us."Carter took her hand across the table, thumb stroking her knuckles with practiced tenderness. "I see your strength, Vanessa. Your brilliance. The fire inside you that refuses to surrender." His voice dropped to intimate warmth. "You deserve better than what life has given you. Better than Logan. Better than Grayson. Better than all of them."Gerald watched from the doorway, nursing hi
A BLOODBATH
The Italian restaurant's private back room smelled like garlic, wine, and old money.Matteo Vittore—sixty-five years old, silver hair perfectly groomed, eyes like a shark evaluating prey—cut his steak with the surgical precision of a man who'd spent forty years making people disappear. Around the table sat his captains, men whose hands had built an empire on violence disguised as legitimate business."Tell me about this Dragon." Matteo's voice was soft, cultured, carrying the educated accent of someone who'd learned English in private schools while learning murder in back alleys. "My nephew says he's vulnerable. Soft. Easy prey."His consigliere, Marco—fifty-eight, scarred hands, eyes that had seen too much death—spread photographs across the white tablecloth. Military records. Surveillance photos. Intelligence reports stamped with classifications that shouldn't exist outside government vaults."Marcus Kane, also known as Grayson Wells. Former U.S. Army General. Classified black ops d
MONSTERS SHOULD BE KILLED
The underground training facility beneath Grayson's penthouse was a secret most people would never know existed.Steel-reinforced walls. Combat mats covering concrete floors. Equipment that belonged in military installations, not civilian buildings. Ava stood in the center wearing workout clothes that felt foreign on her body, hands wrapped in tape that felt too tight, facing a punching bag that looked like it weighed more than she did."Again." Grayson's voice came from behind her, clinical and patient. "You're still telegraphing your right hook. Pull back your shoulder and you might as well send a text message announcing your intention."Ava threw the punch anyway, frustration overriding technique. Her fist connected with the bag with a satisfying thud that did absolutely nothing to move it."I've never fought before!" The protest burst out of her, years of avoiding conflict making this training feel impossible. "I don't know what I'm doing!""That's why we're training." Grayson cau
LASER ON THE SNIPERS' CHEST
The Metropolitan Museum's red carpet blazed under camera flashes like a runway to execution.Elite society arrived in designer gowns and tuxedos, each outfit worth more than working families earned in years. Diamonds glittered. Champagne flowed. Charity masked as social climbing, everyone pretending they cared about homeless children while really calculating whose presence mattered most for their reputation.A limousine pulled up, black and sleek and expensive. The door opened.Vanessa Reed stepped out on Carter's arm, her engagement ring catching every flash like a weapon designed to blind. Her smile was poison wrapped in silk, practiced perfection that photographers would call radiant in tomorrow's society pages.Reporters swarmed immediately, microphones thrust forward, questions overlapping into chaos."Ms. Reed! Are the engagement rumors true?"Vanessa's laugh was musical, calculated. "Carter proposed last night. After everything I've been through—the divorce, the financial strugg
JUST TO KILL YOU
Chaos consumed the Metropolitan Museum like wildfire through dry timber.Guests scattered in every direction, designer gowns trampled, tuxedos torn, society's elite reduced to panicking animals fleeing predators they couldn't see. Security guards shouted conflicting orders. Emergency lights cast everything in red that looked like blood.And in the center of it all, Grayson Wells stood calmly behind a terrified Carter, one hand gripping the younger man's collar with iron certainty."How—" Carter stammered, mind trying to process the impossible. "You were supposed to enter from the stage entrance! The spotlight! The applause!""I've been here for three hours." Grayson's voice was conversational, almost bored. "Watching your snipers position themselves. Counting your men. Identifying which guests were real and which were plants. Planning."His smile was arctic. "Did you really think I'd walk into an assassination attempt without reconnaissance? I'm insulted."Vanessa backed away, her eng
KILLING THEM SLOWLY
Isabella Wolfe stood in the museum's grand entrance like death wearing designer clothing, twenty men in black suits arrayed behind her in military formation.Each one carried weapons openly—submachine guns, no concealment, no pretense of legality. They didn't care about laws or witnesses or consequences. They were soldiers in a war most people didn't know existed."You killed my men." Isabella's voice was silk wrapped around steel, her English perfect with an accent refined by expensive international schools. "Two hundred soldiers. My father's entire operation in this district. His reputation, built over decades, destroyed in one night."Grayson faced her across fifty feet of marble floor, weapon still drawn but knowing it wouldn't matter against twenty automatic weapons. "They threatened an innocent woman. Terrorized families. Burned a children's shelter. I responded appropriately.""Innocent?" Isabella's laugh was cold and musical, like wind chimes made from frozen metal. "Ava Morga