2026-11-02 18:41:42Inside the basement, Rhys watched the security feed and sipped his tea.
Right on cue.
Nothing the Stowes did escaped him. They had no idea he could see them.
All four had come. They wanted to subdue him, maybe kill him, and take over his house.
Rhys smiled, set down the cup, and opened the door when Lexi knocked.
Michael and Henry charged in at once.
Bang!
A second later, two bodies flew back out through the doorway like laundry thrown from a window.
Rhys stepped out with his arms folded and looked at Lexi with mocking admiration.
“How enthusiastic. You brought the whole family.”
Lexi stared, frozen in the glow of the corridor lights.
She had been married to this man for years. Even if she’d barely paid attention to him, she knew what he was— a man who swallowed insults without chewing.
How is he suddenly so good at fighting?
Rhys reached behind the door and drew out a baseball bat. In truth, he’d pulled it from the dimensional space, but to their eyes it simply appeared in his hand. He tapped it lightly against his palm.
“The whole family shows up, and the moment I open the door, you rush in to restrain me. Were you planning to take my house?”
He smiled coldly.
“How does that old saying go? We welcome friends with fine wine. But wolves get the shotgun.”
His gaze hardened.
He swung.
Crack!
“Ahhhh!”
Henry screamed first. The bat had caught his arm, and something inside it had snapped. His face went pale. Sweat poured down his forehead in streams.
Rhys smiled, cruel and patient.
“How many years did you feed off me, brother-in-law?”
He raised the bat again.
“Stop! Stop hitting him!”
Britt threw herself forward and covered her son with her body. Lexi was one thing. But Henry was her baby.
“If you’ve got the guts, beat me to death!” the old woman shrieked. “Do you dare? Do you?”
Crack!
Rhys swung without hesitation.
Had any of them ever been decent? Not once. In his last life, every one of them had played a part in his death.
If he could resurrect people, he’d gladly kill all four Stowes, revive them, and kill them again, hundreds of times over. Only that might satisfy his anger.
But for now, he had to be careful not to kill them.
Why let them go so quickly?
Britt screamed at the impact, then crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
Rhys didn’t stop.
He turned the bat toward Michael and broke the old man’s right arm with a crisp crack. Michael bellowed, a wet, animal sound, and curled around the injury.
“You… you son of a…”
“You called me a dog for fourteen years, old man,” Rhys said quietly. “Dogs bite.”
He wasn’t finished.
He turned toward Lexi.
She froze for half a second. Then she screamed and ran.
She didn’t get far. Rhys caught up in three strides, swung, and brought the bat across her chest.
There was a dull pop.
Her implants had ruptured.
All the color drained from Lexi’s face. She doubled over, mouth open, unable to draw breath. Her expensive new features, so carefully stiffened, twisted into something that couldn’t quite be called an expression.
Rhys looked down at her for a long moment.
Then he dropped three packets of instant noodles and one bottle of water at her feet.
Why was he being kind?
He’s not.
First, he didn’t want the four of them dying too soon. Second, how were four people supposed to divide three packets of noodles and a single bottle of water?
Let them fight over it.
“If you want food again, come back here and take another beating.”
His long shadow fell across her face. The frightened woman shivered on the floor like a dog under a raised hand.
“Now get the hell out.”
He turned his back on them.
Holding the bat loosely, he walked into the house, closed the heavy door, and slid the bolt across.
The sound of it echoing in the quiet basement was the sweetest thing he had ever heard.
Rhys leaned against the wall and let out a long, slow breath.
Every part of him was filled with the clean satisfaction of revenge.
Behind the door, Duke trotted up, tail wagging, and pressed his head against Rhys’s knee.
“Good boy,” Rhys murmured. “Good boy.”
Outside, in the dark, he could hear them dragging themselves away.
Three packets of noodles? he snickered.
Let’s see how long that lasts.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 47: six men and a plan
Sara left.Rhys worried she’d struggle to stay alone in that apartment, with the blood and the silence. So he introduced her to Jenna Dawson. Jenna was delighted. Living alone made her feel unsafe, too.He gave them both advice. Keep your doors locked. Don’t open them for anyone. Check carefully before you step outside.The last point was unlikely to matter, though, because the weather was getting worse. The city had never seen temperatures below minus ten, and people’s winter clothes weren’t built for it. A short walk might be bearable. Staying out was another story.And that was only minus ten or fifteen. At minus forty or fifty, the air could freeze the lungs and damage the organs. Even twenty minutes outside might be fatal.They just had to be careful.Rhys wasn’t offering this help out of the goodness of his heart. Sara was beautiful. She had a good figure.“After killing Paul in public, I’ll probably become something like a demon king in this neighborhood.”He thought.The dow
Chapter 46: Ten packets
Whoosh!The flashlight beam speared straight into Paul’s eyes.He threw up a hand to cover them. It didn’t help. He stumbled backward until his spine thudded against the wall of the passage.The light shifted. Rhys stepped out through the doorway, tall and calm, his shadow rolling across the concrete like a wave.“You’re asking for a lot,” he said coldly.“Rhys! I’ll kill you!”Paul roared and swung the knife. In truth, he couldn’t see where Rhys was. He just hacked toward the light, blinded and swollen with rage.Rhys sneered and kicked him.Paul couldn’t see his opponent. Rhys could see him perfectly. The kick landed squarely in Paul’s stomach, folding him in half and flinging him backward out of the passage. He dropped onto his backside in the garage.Clang!The kitchen knife skidded across the floor.Rhys walked over, picked it up, and stepped toward him. By the time Paul recovered his senses, the blade was pointed at his face.He nearly piss himself.All the courage that anger ha
Chapter 45: The audience
Paul had burst into the underground garage with a kitchen knife in his fist.He looked like a man ready to kill. Everyone he passed hurried out of his path.“What’s going on?”“Is he going to fight someone to the death?”“Did somebody steal his family’s food?”At a time like this, what could be worse than having your food and water stolen?Paul was too furious to notice any of it. He marched straight toward Rhys’s mansion.He had seen Sara walk through that door with his own eyes. What else was there to understand?“That bitch sold me out for food!”The thought made him angrier. His hand shook around the handle.He plunged into the long, black passage. His phone battery was dead, so he had no light. In his rage, he kept charging forward through the dark, slammed into walls, cursing even louder.At last, he found the steel door and started hammering it with the knife.“Rhys! You motherfucker! You touched my wife! Get out here! I’ll hack you to pieces!”The noise drew more and more nei
Chapter 44: hot water
Sara made her way down to the underground garage.Even at midday, the place was so dark she had to use her phone as a flashlight. The beam skated over concrete and puddles of black ice, and every echo of her footsteps felt like a gunshot.She reached the entrance to Rhys’s basement, typed a message with trembling thumbs, and knocked softly on the steel door.Creak!The door swung open on its own.She hurried inside.But some distance behind her, tucked into the black shadow of a pillar, Paul had seen everything.Rhys.It really was Rhys!Paul’s whole body shook. Rage and humiliation rolled through him in a single wave. His wife had been sneaking out to see another man! No wonder she kept managing to bring home food. He wanted to charge in right then. But the steel door was as thick as a bank vault. He could have beaten his fists to pulp against it all night and never so much as scratched the paint.He ground his teeth.“I’ll get a knife.”He turned and ran.Inside, warm air wrapped a
Chapter 43: Whispers in the cold
On the morning of the sixth day, Rhys took Duke down to the garage.The air was tight enough to snap.Everyone watched everyone else with narrowed eyes, as if the neighbors they’d lived beside for years had overnight become enemies. Conversations died when he walked past. People clutched their coats closer.“Maybe I should walk the dog only at night from now on.” He thought.With the ammunition in his dimensional space, Rhys could kill everyone in this neighborhood several times over in a straight fight. But if people turned into enemies, would they all attack from the front? He had no eyes in the back of his head. What if someone came from behind?Open attacks were easy to avoid. Hidden ones were the dangerous kind. It was better to be extra careful. He’d gotten a dog to ease the boredom, not to put himself at risk.And he noticed plenty of people watching him with hostile interest.“Showing off my supplies in the group chat has made me a target.”He wasn’t especially worried. If t
Chapter 42: Bang!
Crack!Only when they heard the lock slide home did the five of them understand what had happened.What’s going on?A light snapped on overhead, flooding the room.The Parks froze. Is this place haunted? The door had opened by itself. It had shut by itself. And now the lights were coming on, too?“What are you doing here so late at night?”Rhys leaned against the far wall with a yawn, one hand rubbing his eyes.He had been on his way to bed when an alert on his phone woke him. The infrared cameras had picked up movement in the garage. Watching the five of them turn to leave, he’d thoughtfully opened the door with his remote. Now that they were inside, he had simply closed it.At first the intruders were startled. But in a few seconds, they realized that Rhys had controlled the door and the lights the whole time.Then they calmed down.One man. Five of them. Rhys wasn’t even holding a weapon. How could they lose?“There’s electricity in here!” Mrs. Park gasped.Kang grinned, delighted.
You may also like
The Billionaire's Revenge
Hare Ra84.3K viewsThe Billionaire Husband in Disguise
Banin SN193.7K viewsEthan Storm’s Dark Awakening
Magical Inspirations315.1K viewsI Made $900 Trillion In 24 Hours
Jericho Chase194.8K viewsThe Dragon King's Revenge
Weaver241 viewsMONARCH OF BILLIONS: CAPITAL CONQUEST
NYMERIA38 viewsThe Dismissed Heir
chloe174 viewsFISHING IN A WATERPOT
Vidoh Kunex236 views