No Fortune Can Buy His Mercy

Chapter 005

Every head in the room turned toward the voice. A woman approached from across the banquet hall, her bearing unmistakably aristocratic. She moved with the unhurried grace of someone who had never once been denied anything in her life, each step deliberate, each gesture radiating the cold confidence of absolute authority.

The woman was none other than Vivian Sterling, the undisputed power behind the Sterling family.

At her side walked a man even broader than Gideon. His skin was sun-darkened, his hair cropped close to the scalp, and his eyes burned with an almost unnatural intensity, as though live current ran behind them. His temples bulged visibly, the telltale sign of someone who had trained their body to its utmost lethal potential. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of combat could see it immediately: this man was an elite-level fighter.

Silas Carmichael clutched his severed finger, his face drained of color. He cast one final look at Gideon and forced the words through clenched teeth. "Impressive. I underestimated you, but this isn't over." He turned on his heel and walked away. Moments ago he had been boasting in front of Reginald Sterling, and now he had been humiliated and maimed in front of the entire gathering. The shame of it burned worse than the wound.

Elias Vance's gaze slowly sharpened, focusing with quiet intensity on the approaching woman. Three syllables fell from his lips like stones dropped into still water. "Vivian Sterling."

The woman who had feasted on Arthur Vance's corpse to build her empire. A pit viper dressed in silk.

Chloe Sinclair had already scurried to her cousin's side, one hand pressed against her swollen cheek. "They went too far," she whined. "You have to do something about them."

Vivian didn't spare her a glance. She waved Chloe aside with a flick of her wrist and fixed her eyes on Elias instead. "Causing this kind of scene at my father's birthday celebration," she said, her voice carrying effortlessly across the hall. "That takes a remarkable lack of respect. I don't believe either of you were on the guest list, so why don't you tell me exactly who you are?"

Elias met her gaze without a flicker of emotion. "Respect? What makes you think you deserve any?"

A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. Vivian's composed expression froze as though someone had slapped her. The man beside her went rigid with fury, his killing intent radiating outward like heat from a furnace.

Elias let a cold smile touch the corner of his mouth. "Everything you have belonged to Arthur Vance. Even if you weren't the one who orchestrated his death, none of it would rightfully be yours. Arthur was a titan in this city, yet he never saw you for what you truly were. He was blinded enough to want to marry a woman with venom running through her veins instead of blood."

Whispers erupted around the room.

"Did he really just say that out loud? In three years, nobody has dared mention Vivian and Arthur in the same breath."

"He's got a death wish. There's no way he's walking out of Cresthaven alive."

"His bodyguard beat Silas Carmichael, sure, but that's nowhere near enough to challenge the Sterlings."

The words struck exactly where they were meant to. Everyone in Cresthaven knew the truth: the Sterling family's fortune was built on the bones of Arthur Vance. But knowing it and saying it aloud in Vivian Sterling's presence were two very different things. Those who had been foolish enough to whisper about it in the past had a tendency to disappear into the river.

The man at Vivian's side surged forward a step. "I don't care what happened in the past. All I know is that I don't like your face, and if you die ugly, that's your problem."

"That's Darius Slade," someone murmured nearby. "He's supposed to be an apex-tier operative from some classified tactical unit. I heard he once went solo into the Western Badlands and wiped out an entire hundred-man Crimson Cartel strike force by himself."

"No wonder Vivian looks so confident. Silas Carmichael is dangerous, but he's just an underworld fighter. Slade is government-trained, a completely different animal."

Elias didn't acknowledge Darius at all. His attention remained on Vivian, and his voice was quiet, absolute. "You will regret everything you did."

Vivian's composure returned, sharpened into contempt. "So arrogance runs in the family. Your brother was even worse than you, and look where it got him."

Darius stepped forward, his voice thundering across the hall. "Today you die by my hand, and you should consider it an honor. I've killed more important men than you. Dozens of them."

Reginald Sterling chuckled from his seat. "Try not to make too much of a mess, would you? This is my birthday banquet. I'd rather not have the carpet ruined."

Julian Sterling spoke up lazily. "Since he's so fond of visiting Arthur's grave, break both his legs and leave him kneeling there until he rots."

Elias lifted his gaze slowly until it rested squarely on Darius Slade's face. Then he took a single step forward.

In that one step, everything about him transformed. His presence erupted outward like a pressure wave. His temples swelled, his eyes ignited with a terrifying inner light as though lightning crackled behind his pupils, and his spine drew taut like a bowstring pulled to its breaking point, loaded with the promise of catastrophic release.

Darius felt the air leave his lungs as though a giant hand had seized his chest. He tried to draw breath and couldn't. The sheer weight of Elias's presence crashed down on him, pinning him in place. When his eyes met Elias's gaze, searing pain stabbed through his eyeballs, and tears spilled involuntarily down his cheeks.

The Warrior's Codex states: "When masters clash, their eyes meet first. The one whose gaze falters has already lost half the battle."

The eyes are the sovereign organ of the body. A man in peak condition radiates power through his gaze; a man in decline cannot hide the dullness in his stare.

Elias channeled the totality of his refined killing intent into his eyes. That gaze, forged across ten years of wading through oceans of blood and mountains of corpses, was not something any living man could endure lightly. Those who met it would weep at minimum, and at worst, they would carry the nightmares for the rest of their lives.

"I..." Darius realized his hands and legs were shaking uncontrollably.

Elias simply stood there, and yet Darius felt as though he were staring up at an immovable mountain, something so vast and ancient that the very idea of challenging it seemed insane.

In that moment, Darius Slade, the elite operative who had slaughtered a hundred men in the Western Badlands, lost every shred of courage to fight.

"You served this nation once," Elias said, his tone flat and dispassionate. "You killed terrorists in the Badlands. For that alone, I'll spare your life today."

"Darius!" Vivian's voice cracked like a whip. "What are you waiting for? Attack him!"

Elias shifted his gaze back to Darius, and his voice dropped into a single thunderous command. "Kneel."

Darius's knees buckled as though the tendons had been cut. He collapsed to the floor with a heavy thud, his body trembling violently at Elias's feet.

"He isn't even worth making the Marshal draw a weapon," Gideon said with a cold smirk, sweeping his gaze across the Sterlings. "And this was supposed to be your ace in the hole?"

The color drained from all three Sterling faces simultaneously.

Darius had not even exchanged a single blow with Elias before dropping to his knees. The crowd could not comprehend what they had just witnessed, could not fathom how the fight had ended before it began.

Elias ignored the man kneeling before him. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, slowly scanning the room, and when he spoke, each word rang out like a hammer striking an anvil.

"My brother, Arthur Vance, was born in Federal Calendar year 988. The world knew him as Overlord Vance, a hero of Cresthaven. He was murdered through the treachery of Vivian Sterling. Today, his brother Elias Vance has returned to collect that blood debt."

Those among the gathered elite who had once conspired with Vivian involuntarily retreated two steps.

Vivian's composure finally shattered. "Lies!" she screamed. "Arthur brought his death upon himself through his own sins! Everything I did was justice!"

She had always looked down upon the world from her throne, yet today, a few measured sentences from Elias Vance had stripped her bare in front of everyone who mattered.

"Arthur deserved to die," Reginald Sterling said coldly from behind her. "I never considered him a son-in-law worth acknowledging."

Elias's gaze snapped to the old man like a blade finding its target. "Insult my brother's name one more time, old man, and I will kill you right here as an offering to his spirit."

Reginald Sterling's entire body seized. His legs gave out beneath him, and he slid off his chair, landing gracelessly on the floor.

Several onlookers had to bite their tongues to keep from laughing. This was, after all, Old Man Sterling. Nobody could afford to offend him, even when he was sitting on the ground in terror.

Elias turned back to Vivian, and every syllable he spoke fell like the blow of an executioner's blade. "When you plotted to destroy my brother, you reached out to countless families and turned his own people against him. Do not expect mercy from me."

"Every single person who played a part in his death will publish a public confession of their crimes. Then they will go to my brother's grave and beg his forgiveness on their knees."

"You have one month. That is the anniversary of his death." His voice dropped to something barely above a whisper, yet it carried to every corner of the silent hall. "Anyone who refuses, I will wipe out every last one of them, down to the last drop of their bloodline."