Reborn Apex: The City Is My Cage

Chapter 4: Firepower and Foreclosure

Smoke drifted from the smoking, splintered wreckage of the bedroom door as a heavy steel-toed boot kicked the remaining wood inward.

"Get on the ground, you piece of garbage!"

It wasn't Marcus standing in the shattered doorway anymore. It was Chloe’s uncle, Victor—a disgraced ex-bounty hunter and career thug who had spent the last decade drifting in and out of maximum-security prisons. In one hand, he gripped a short-barreled tactical shotgun with the safety clicked off; in the other, a heavy brass knuckle duster already fitted over his right fist. Behind him, Marcus and Brenda hovered in the corridor, their faces twisted into venomous grins of absolute triumph.

Ethan didn't blink. He didn't drop to his knees, and he certainly didn't cower.

Sitting leisurely in his leather desk chair just inches from where the shotgun slug had embedded itself into the drywall, Ethan slowly lowered his smartphone. A cold, sardonic smile curved across his lips, devoid of an ounce of fear.

"Victor," Ethan said smoothly, his voice carrying an eerie, unnatural calm that made the ex-con's trigger finger twitch instinctively. "I wondered how long it would take them to call the family attack dog."

"You broke my nephew's throat and threatened my sister, you little punk," Victor snarled, taking a heavy step into the room and leveling the shotgun barrel directly at Ethan's chest. "Chloe signed the domestic interference waiver ten minutes ago. Family mediation is over. Today, I'm breaking every bone in your body, and then we're cleaning out your accounts before throwing you into the river."

In the past timeline, this exact moment had been Ethan’s ultimate breaking point. Victor had beaten him half to death in this very room, shattering his collarbone and forcing him to sign away his vehicle titles under duress while Chloe watched without shedding a single tear. It had taken him three weeks to heal, three weeks of agonizing pain right as the world collapsed into ice.

Now, time had reversed. And Ethan possessed a spatial storage dimension capable of holding ten thousand cubic meters of absolute stasis.

"You think a shotgun makes you a king?" Ethan stood up slowly from his chair, his tall frame uncoiling with lethal, panther-like grace. "In ninety days, Victor, men with guns won't rule the streets. Corpses will."

"Stop running your mouth!" Victor bellowed, enraged by Ethan's total lack of submission. He lunged forward, swinging the heavy brass-knustled fist straight toward Ethan's jaw with enough force to shatter bone.

The punch moved fast, cutting through the air with violent velocity. But to Ethan, whose physical reflexes had been sharpened by three brutal years of surviving the freezing wasteland before his death, it looked like moving in slow motion.

Ethan didn't duck. He didn't block with his hands.

Instead, at the exact millisecond Victor's fist came within an inch of his face, Ethan's right hand flashed outward with blinding, supernatural speed. His fingers clamped down like an industrial hydraulic vise directly around Victor's wrist, halting the momentum of the punch dead in its tracks.

Victor's eyes bulged in pure, unadulterated shock. The massive punch that should have shattered Ethan's jaw had been stopped by one hand, effortlessly, as if he had punched a concrete wall.

"What the—" Victor gasped, trying to pull his arm back, but his wrist felt like it was locked inside a vice made of solid steel.

"Your timing is terrible, Victor," Ethan whispered, his eyes flashing with a terrifying, predatory light. "Because I have a meeting with a liquidation broker in two hours, and you're standing in my way."

Before Victor could squeeze the shotgun trigger or scream for help, Ethan twisted his grip with brutal force.

Crack!

The sickening sound of snapping radius and ulna bones echoed sharply inside the bedroom. Victor let out a blood-curdling shriek of agony, the shotgun slipping from his ruined, dangling hand and clattering onto the hardwood floor.

Before the weapon could even touch the ground, Ethan moved with terrifying efficiency. His hand shot forward, gripping Victor by the throat just as he had done to Marcus minutes earlier, lifting the two-hundred-pound ex-con clean off the floor with one arm.

Outside in the hallway, the triumphant smirks vanished from Marcus and Brenda's faces instantly. Their jaws dropped, their eyes glazing over in absolute horror as they watched their family's most dangerous enforcer dangling helplessly in the air like a ragdoll.

"Victor!" Chloe shrieked, sprinting up the stairs with a heavy iron fire poker in her hands, her face distorted with blind rage. "Let him go, you psychopath! I'll kill you myself!"

Ethan didn't even look back. With a casual flick of his wrist, he hurled Victor's writhing body backward out of the bedroom.

Crash!

Victor slammed headfirst into Chloe as she reached the top of the landing, sending both of them tumbling violently down the wooden staircase in a tangled, screaming heap of bruised limbs and shattered drywall.

Marcus and Brenda scrambled backward in sheer terror, pressing themselves flat against the corridor wall as Ethan stepped out of the ruined bedroom, towering over them like an executioner descending from the gallows.

"The police aren't coming, Marcus," Ethan said softly, his voice dripping with an icy malice that froze the blood in their veins. "And neither are the divorce lawyers."

He raised his right hand, and before they could even draw another breath, the front door downstairs was violently kicked off its hinges, replaced not by the police, but by four armed men in black tactical suits carrying legal briefs and cashiers' cases.

The lead broker stepped into the foyer, looking up the stairs with a cold, professional smile.

"Mr. Vance," the broker called out, his voice echoing through the silent house. "The cash settlement is secured. Shall we begin clearing the property?"

Ethan turned his head, looking down at his paralyzed, trembling family, and smiled.

"Start with the people," Ethan said coldly.