When Raymond’s car pulled into the company compound, he immediately sensed it. The air felt heavy. The usually lively building once filled with movement, ambition, ringing phones, determined footsteps now stood tense and uncertain. He stepped out of the car, through the glass doors, he could see them. All of them. No one had gone home, every staff member was gathered in the main hall. Some were seated. Some stood in small clusters. Some stared blankly at the floor. The energy was not loud chaos anymore it was something worse. It was fear. As he pushed the door open and walked in, conversations died instantly. All eyes turned toward him, he noticed things he hadn’t expected. Bruises on a few faces. Torn sleeves. Signs of scuffles. He could already guess City Hall representatives had not come alone. Enforcement officers must have tried to intimidate them. Perhaps someone had resisted. The sight tightened something inside him. Slowly, one by one, they began to stand. Then they

Hearing what Raymond just said, the men finally stopped attacking Joe, though not out of respect only because they had made their point. Joe, the Chief Engineer, remained on the floor, breathing hard, clutching his side as pain rippled through him. His shirt was rumpled, his face swollen, and the rage in Raymond’s eyes darkened at the sight. But the men who had just attacked him showed no remorse. Instead, one of them straightened up and laughed under his breath. “So,” he said mockingly, “you actually have the nerve to speak.” Another dusted his hands off as though he had done nothing wrong. “Oh, now you have the audacity to give us orders?” he added. “Who the hell do you think you are?” Sergeant Mark folded his arms, his face carrying the smug satisfaction of a man enjoying every second of the tension he had created. “We’ve been waiting here for you for over an hour,” one of the others said. “Over an hour. While your workers were outside causing nuisance, acting out, refusing

Sergeant Mark lifted his chin, clearly pleased with himself, as though he had just delivered an irrefutable argument. “I’m a sergeant,” he declared proudly. “And as a sergeant in the military, I have every right to command my men to deal with anyone who poses a threat to me.” He pointed toward the doorway where Joe had been attacked. “Your workers posed a threat. They were confrontational. They were hostile. That is why I dealt with him.” He folded his arms with smug certainty. “So no law was broken. Not in any way.” For a second, the room was still, then Raymond snapped. not with a shout, not with panic. But with a cold, cutting force that instantly shifted the air in the room. “Well,” he said, his voice dangerously calm, “you seem to know just enough about the law to sound confident… and yet nothing at all about how it actually works.” The smugness on Mark’s face wavered. Raymond took a step closer. “So let me remind you,” he continued, each word precise, deliberate. “You

Summer froze for a second after Sergeant Mark barked at her. The sharpness in his voice caught her completely off guard. She had expected resistance, yes. Anger, certainly. But the sheer hostility in the way he shut her down made her heart pound harder, because now she understood something clearly This was no longer just an argument. This was on the edge of becoming something far worse. And Summer knew it. If no one stepped in, the situation would get messy terribly messy. In her mind, everything was already beginning to unravel. The damage to the office. The men on the floor. Joe’s injuries. The threats. The arrogance. The tension. If this escalated any further, there would be consequences far beyond raised voices and broken furniture. More than that, she was deeply worried about Raymond. No matter how calm he looked, no matter how fearless he acted, she could not understand where all this confidence was coming from. As far as she knew, Raymond was pushing himself into a conf

Sergeant Mark stood there, trembling. Not from cold, not from exhaustion. From disbelief. His lips moved slowly, the words barely making it out through his shattered, swollen mouth. “How did he…” he muttered, his voice barely recognizable. "How was he able to… I couldn't even… not even one punch… nothing." His hands were still hovering near his broken face, as though he kept hoping that if he touched it carefully enough, it would feel less destroyed than it was. "It was like being hit by a sledgehammer," he whispered to himself, his eyes unfocused and distant. "Directly into my skull… every single time." His legs had begun to shake beneath him. Sergeant Mark the man who had walked into this office with the full weight of City Hall behind him, barking orders, humiliating staff, and treating Raymond like something beneath his attention was now struggling just to remain upright. "What the hell is going on?" he breathed. "What the hell just happened?" Raymond watched him for a qu