Ethan looked at the two beaten guards on the floor, then at Lily’s wet eyes, then at Mrs. Summers shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. His face didn’t change. His breathing didn’t change. But something behind his eyes went very quiet and very still, the way the ocean goes still before a wave big enough to swallow a city.“Who hit them?” Ethan pointed at Rose’s guards on the tile.“His gorillas.” Lily’s voice was raw. She pointed at the six bodyguards without taking her eyes off Troy. “They jumped them from behind. Two on one. Like the cowards they are.”Troy Whitfield sipped his tea from his antique chair like a man watching dinner theater. His round glasses caught the light and his empty smile hadn’t moved a millimeter since Ethan walked through the door.“Ah. The son in law.” Troy set his cup down on its saucer with a delicate clink. “Mrs. Summers promised you would sort this out. So please, sort it out. Ten million dollars for the vase your mother in law destroyed. Cash or wire tran

Troy’s jaw dropped. What was left of it that could still move dropped as far as physics allowed. His sister stopped crying mid sob, her mouth frozen in an O shape that made her look like a fish that had just been told the ocean was closed.The eight armed officers looked at each other with the confused faces of men who had been told they were going to a fight and arrived at a tea party.“Commander.” Ethan’s voice was calm and polite and carried no urgency at all. “Your nephew has been running an extortion operation out of this shop. He planted a fake vase, had his bodyguards assault my people, and used your name as a shield.”Big Tony stepped forward. “The vase is counterfeit. He’s done this to at least six other people this month. And he beat two of my guards unconscious while threatening an old woman and her daughter.”Commander Blake listened. His face got darker with every sentence, the way the sky gets darker before a storm that is going to destroy things. By the time Tony finish

Ethan was sitting on Lily’s porch watching the sunset when his phone buzzed. Richard Morrison’s name glowed on the screen like a warning sign that someone had forgotten to take seriously.The message read: “I have information about your mother Sarah. Come to the Morrison estate tonight if you want to hear it.”Ethan stared at the text for five seconds. His thumb hovered over the delete button. Then it moved to his pocket instead.Trap, the Spirit said immediately. Obviously a trap. The kind of trap that a monkey could spot from space. You’re going anyway, aren’t you?“Yes.”Of course you are. Because someone mentioned your mother and now your brain has left the building. Fine. But if Sullivan breaks your arm, I’m going to say I told you so for the next six thousand years.The Morrison estate sat on a hill on the west side of Crestwood, surrounded by iron gates and security cameras and the kind of manicured hedges that rich people use to remind poor people they’re not welcome. The hous

Sullivan’s face went from shock to rage. He swung his left fist at Ethan’s temple with everything he had.Ethan released Sullivan’s wrist, placed his palm flat on the man’s chest, and pushed.Sullivan flew backward through the wall. Not through a doorway. Not through an opening. Through the actual drywall. His body tore through two layers of plaster and framing lumber with a sound like a car crash happening inside a house. Wood splintered. Dust exploded. Chunks of wall tumbled across the floor on both sides.He landed in the study on the other side. A bookshelf collapsed on top of him, burying him under three hundred pounds of mahogany and hardcover books. He did not get up.Silence.The dust settled slowly. The hole in the wall was roughly Sullivan shaped, ragged at the edges, with electrical wires sparking inside it like severed nerves.Derek’s smirk had died. His mouth was open and his arms had fallen to his sides and his face carried the look of a boy who had just realized the mou

“Everything.” Lily sat up straight. Her shoulders squared. The trembling girl from the antique shop was gone. In her place was something harder and clearer and much more determined. “I don’t want to be the person who gets rescued every time. I don’t want to be a liability. If you’re going to fight the entire world, I want to stand beside you while you do it.”I like her, the Spirit said with genuine warmth. She’s got more spine than half the warriors I trained in the old dynasty. And she’s prettier than all of them.“Not the time,” Ethan muttered.It’s always the time.Ethan smiled. He placed his hand on Lily’s shoulder and sent a tendril of qi into her body. It was a diagnostic technique, invisible to the naked eye, a thread of Dragon Force flowing through her meridians and mapping her internal physique the way a doctor’s scan maps the inside of a body.What he found made his eyebrows rise.“What?” Lily looked at his face. “What is it? Am I dying?”“No. The opposite.” Ethan pulled hi