SUPREME WAR GOD The Despised Son-in-Law Returns

"Damon, the water's too hot again! Are you trying to cook my daughter's feet?"

Damon Vale didn't answer his mother-in-law. He knelt on the cold bathroom tiles of the Whitmore villa, added a cup of cold water to the bowl and kept washing his wife's feet, slowly and carefully, as he had done every morning and every night for five years.

Vivian Whitmore sat on the edge of the bathtub in a white silk dress and scrolled through her phone. She didn't look down at him once.

"Hurry up," Margaret snapped from the doorway, her pearls clicking as she folded her arms. "Tonight is Vivian's twenty-seventh birthday, and the best families in Eastbay will be here in one hour. You'll serve the drinks, you'll keep your mouth shut and you'll stay out of every photo. Understand?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Don't call me that. I'm not your mother; I'm the woman who feeds you."

That was how all of Eastbay knew him. He was the brain-damaged beggar that old Arthur Whitmore had found under a bridge and married to his eldest granddaughter; he slept in the storeroom behind the kitchen, he ate after the dogs, and he never complained, because he didn't remember enough of himself to know he should.

One hour later, the ballroom glittered with crystal lights and diamond earrings. Damon walked between the tables with a silver tray, and the guests laughed as he passed.

"Look at his shoes," a woman whispered. "I think they're older than my car."

"Hey, idiot!" A man in a velvet jacket held out his glass. "Fill it, and don't drool in it."

Damon filled it and moved on.

At the head table, Grandmother Agatha struck her dragon-head walking stick on the marble floor. The band stopped, and every face turned toward her.

"Thank you all for coming," she said. "But I won't lie to my friends. This morning the bank called back our loan, and in ten days Whitmore Pharmaceuticals will be bankrupt."

Gasps rolled across the room from table to table.

Vivian stood up, pale. "Grandmother, you promised we'd discuss this in private..."

"Sit." Agatha didn't even look at her. "There's a way to save us. The Grant family will pay every cent we owe, and they only want one thing in return."

The main doors opened, and Lucas Grant walked in. He wore a grey suit and an easy smile, and he carried a velvet box that he opened as he crossed the floor; inside, a diamond necklace caught the light, and someone near the stage whispered the price, five million.

"Mrs. Whitmore," Lucas said with a small bow, "I hope my offer is still welcome."

"More than welcome, my boy." Agatha smiled for the first time all night. "By spring, the Grants and the Whitmores will be one family."

Lucas turned and looked across the room at Damon, the way a man looks at a stain on the carpet. "Good. But some old furniture has to go first."

"Vivian will divorce her husband tonight," Agatha announced, "and next month she'll marry Lucas Grant."

Margaret clapped first, then the whole room clapped with her. A servant laid a folder on the head table, and inside were the divorce papers, already signed by Agatha, waiting for two more names.

Vivian sat back down without a word. Her hands were flat on the tablecloth, and her knuckles were white.

Margaret found Damon by the wall and smiled sweetly. "Well? Go pack your bags. Oh, I forgot... you don't own a bag."

Derek raised his glass. "Don't worry, Mom, I'll help him pack; I'll throw his rags off the balcony myself."

The guests roared with laughter. Damon looked at the papers, then at his wife, and the old ache started behind his eyes again. It always came like this, as if someone were knocking on a door inside his skull that he couldn't open.

Lucas hung the necklace around Vivian's neck, then closed his fingers around her wrist and squeezed. "Happy birthday. Tonight you'll start learning how to please your new man, so let's begin with a dance."

"Let go of me, Lucas. You're hurting me."

"Then stop pulling, and it won't hurt."

She pulled anyway, and he twisted harder, and by then Damon was already moving.

He never knew why his body did this. Five years in this house had taught him almost nothing about who he was, but they'd taught him one thing; whenever someone tried to hurt the Whitmore girls, his feet moved before his mind could catch up. He set down the tray, stepped between them and placed one hand on Lucas's chest.

Then he pushed, hard.

Lucas flew backward into the cake table, and five layers of white cream exploded over his grey suit. A tower of champagne glasses swayed, tipped and shattered across the marble floor.

The whole ballroom froze.

Lucas sat up with cream sliding down his chin and hate in his eyes. "You filthy dog. Do you have any idea who I am?"

"She said let go," Damon said quietly.

"Security!" Lucas shouted. "Get this animal away from me!"

Two guards hurried forward, but they stopped when they saw who was coming, because everyone in Eastbay knew Derek liked to do this part himself.

"On your knees!" Margaret shrieked. "Apologize to Mr. Grant this second, or I'll have you thrown into the street!"

Derek Whitmore shoved through the crowd. Vivian's younger brother had a gold chain on his tight shirt and a tiger tattoo on his thick arm, and he grabbed a full bottle of red wine from the nearest table without stopping.

"Derek, no!" Vivian cried.

He swung it with both hands.

The bottle burst against the left side of Damon's head. Wine and glass sprayed across the floor, and Damon fell, his cheek hitting the cold marble while something warm ran into his eye. Red wine and redder blood spread together under his face.

"Get up!" Derek kicked him in the ribs. "Get up and lick the cream off Mr. Grant's shoes!"

"Look what you've done to my daughter's party, you useless thing!" Margaret screamed.

Their voices faded, as though someone had shut a heavy window between them and him.

A new sound came through instead, the hiss of snow over stone and the crack of fire on a mountain cliff at night. Beneath it rose a roar like the sea, millions of voices shouting one word again and again until the ground shook.

Asura. Asura. Asura.

Damon's fingers twitched on the marble.

Lucas had wiped his face, and now he walked over and pressed his wet shoe down on Damon's hand. "After the wedding," he said, loud enough for everyone, "I'll keep you around as a pet. Every house needs a dog, right?"

The guests laughed, and pain shot up Damon's arm. With the pain came a face, an old man in grey robes reaching down to a starving boy in the snow; then another face, kind and smiling, holding out a cup of wine.

"To victory, brother."

He remembered the burning in his veins after that cup, a cliff edge white with snow and masked men with cold blades closing around him in a ring.

Then there was a long fall through the dark, and black water closing over his head.

Damon opened his eyes.

They weren't empty anymore.

Lucas felt it before anyone else did. He looked down into those eyes, and his mouth went dry; he lifted his shoe and stepped back without knowing why.

On the floor, in a pool of wine and blood, the useless son-in-law of the Whitmore family whispered three words that only Lucas heard.

"I remember now."

He was the Asura, the God of War, and the men who had killed him were still alive.