Divorced on Monday, Bought the City on Tuesday: The Infinite

The Bait

Chapter 20

The Obsidian Club was closed on Tuesday mornings. Normally, the grand foyer would be filled with the quiet hum of cleaning crews polishing the black marble floors and restocking the crystal bars.

Today, the club was a tomb.

Arthur pushed open the heavy glass doors. He didn't bother being stealthy. The Leviathan Marrow Serum allowed him to hear the heartbeat of a mouse inside a wall. Right now, he heard three distinct human heartbeats. One was faint, erratic, and failing. The other two were perfectly calm. Slow.

He walked past the velvet ropes, his bespoke suit catching the dim emergency lighting.

"Elias." Arthur’s voice echoed through the cavernous space.

He found his manager in the center of the VIP lounge. Elias was bound to a heavy wooden chair with zip ties. His pristine three-piece suit was soaked in dark crimson. His face was unrecognizable swollen, bruised, and bleeding heavily from a deep laceration across his forehead.

Elias cracked a swollen eye open. He saw Arthur and tried to shake his head, a pathetic, wet gasp escaping his throat. "R-Run... sir... trap..."

Arthur didn't run. He walked forward, stopping ten feet from the chair.

"How touching."

A man stepped out from the shadows behind the bar. He didn't look like a street thug. He wore a tactical black combat suit lined with Kevlar mesh. A matte-black ballistic mask covered the lower half of his face. He held a silenced tactical pistol, resting it lazily against his thigh.

A second man, dressed identically, dropped silently from the second-floor balcony, landing with the grace of a panther right behind Arthur, blocking the exit.

"The Shadow Guard," Arthur stated. He didn't turn around to look at the man behind him. He kept his eyes locked on the leader behind the bar.

"Marcus Thorne bought our services with the last of his gold reserves," the leader said, his voice muffled slightly by the mask. "We specialize in extracting high-value targets. You made a lot of noise, Vance. You humiliated the Thorne Syndicate. You disrupted the Capital City's ecosystem."

"I bought a club and a bank," Arthur said, checking his watch. "Hardly an ecosystem."

"You don't understand the game you're playing," the man behind him chuckled darkly. He unholstered a serrated combat knife. "The money you're throwing around? It threatens the Old Families. We were ordered to peel your skin off and broadcast it to whoever is funding you."

Arthur tilted his head. He looked at Elias, who was barely clinging to consciousness. The loyalty the old man had shown him flashed in Arthur's mind. Elias had stood up to Julian Sterling for him. Elias had managed his properties.

Nobody touched what belonged to Arthur.

"System," Arthur thought. "Scan them."

[Target: Shadow Guard Operative (Alpha & Beta)]

[Status: Genetically enhanced mercenaries. Lethality rating: High.]

[Warning: Targets possess micro-explosives implanted in their molars to prevent capture.]

"Let the old man go," Arthur said quietly. "He has nothing to do with this. You want me. I'm right here."

"Oh, the manager is already dead," the leader sneered, raising his silenced pistol and aiming it squarely at Elias’s chest. "He just doesn't know it yet. Watch."

The leader pulled the trigger.

The mechanism clicked. The firing pin struck the primer.

But the bullet never left the chamber.

Arthur moved.

To the genetically enhanced mercenaries, Arthur had been standing ten feet away. In the space of a single heartbeat, the air where Arthur had been standing shattered with a sonic crack.

Arthur closed the distance before the bullet could travel down the barrel of the gun. He grabbed the hot metal of the suppressor with his bare hand and crushed it flat, welding the barrel shut with sheer, terrifying physical force.

The gun exploded in the leader’s hand, sending shrapnel tearing through his tactical gloves.

The mercenary screamed, stumbling backward, staring at his ruined, bloody hand. "What the fuck?!"

Arthur didn't give him a second to process. He grabbed the mercenary by the throat, hoisting him completely off the floor.

"You broke my manager," Arthur whispered, his eyes glowing with that predatory gold light. "I am going to break everything you have ever loved."

The second mercenary roared, lunging at Arthur’s back with the serrated knife, aiming directly for his spinal cord.

Arthur didn't even turn his head.

"Vera."

From the absolute darkness of the ceiling rafters, a blur of charcoal-gray dropped like a guillotine.

Vera landed directly on the second mercenary's shoulders, her thighs wrapping around his neck in a brutal headscissors takedown. The kinetic force drove the man face-first into the marble floor with a sickening crunch. Before he could twitch, Vera drove her combat blade directly through the back of his hand, pinning him to the stone.

The man howled in agony.

Arthur tightened his grip on the leader's throat, cutting off his air supply.

"Who sent you?" Arthur demanded. "Marcus Thorne paid you, but he doesn't own you. Who holds the leash?"

The leader thrashed wildly, his eyes bulging. He reached up, trying to pry Arthur’s iron fingers apart, but it was like trying to bend a steel beam. Realizing he was outmatched, the mercenary’s jaw clenched hard. He was trying to bite down on the micro-explosive in his tooth.

Arthur saw the muscle twitch in the man's jaw.

With a brutal, precise strike, Arthur drove his free hand into the man’s stomach, completely paralyzing his diaphragm and forcing his mouth open in a desperate gasp for air. Arthur reached in, grabbed the man's jaw, and violently dislocated it.

"You don't get the easy way out," Arthur said, dropping the crippled mercenary to the floor.

He turned to Elias. He placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder. "System. Buy the Advanced Genetic Healing Serum. Inject it into him."

[5,000 SP Deducted. Administering cure.]

A golden glow surrounded Elias's body. The deep lacerations on his face began to knit together instantly. The bruising faded.

Arthur turned his attention back to the bleeding mercenary pinned to the floor by Vera.

"Talk," Arthur commanded.

The mercenary spat a wad of blood onto Arthur's expensive shoes. "Screw you. You think you won? We were just the distraction."

Arthur frowned. "A distraction for what?"

The mercenary cracked a bloody, broken smile. "We did our research, Vance. We know about your ex-wife. She’s currently sitting in a diner on 4th Street. Our sniper has her in his crosshairs right now. You let us walk, or her brains paint the window."

Arthur stared at the mercenary. The silence in the club stretched out, heavy and suffocating.

Then, Arthur started to laugh.