SUPREME WAR GOD The Despised Son-in-Law Returns

Chapter 10: The Papers Torn in Half

Dr. Henry Moore walked down the center of the ballroom, and the guests stepped back to let him pass. Elena walked at his side with a thick white folder under her arm, and the Channel Six camera swung around to follow them.

Agatha rose so fast her walking stick clattered to the floor. "Dr. Moore! What an honor! We had no idea you were well enough to..."

"I came on business, Mrs. Whitmore." He stopped in front of the head table. "Two days ago, my hospital moved its supply contract to Kane Pharmaceuticals. Yesterday, my granddaughter tested their herbs."

"They're fake," Elena said, loud and clear. "Rice powder, dyed tree bark and cheap fillers. Kane Pharmaceuticals has been selling useless medicine to sick people."

The whole room went silent.

"So tonight," Dr. Moore continued, "I'd like to sign an exclusive five-year supply contract with Whitmore Pharmaceuticals, worth two billion dollars."

Somebody dropped a glass, and it shattered on the marble.

Agatha's mouth opened and closed without a sound. Margaret grabbed the back of a chair to stay standing, and Vivian looked up for the first time all night, her grey eyes wide.

"There are two conditions," Dr. Moore said. "First, Ms. Vivian Whitmore remains CEO. Second, there will be no merger with the Grant Group, not now and not ever."

Lucas laughed, far too loudly. "That's ridiculous! Without my family's money, the Whitmores still go bankrupt. They owe the bank..."

"Not anymore."

Leonard Shaw stood in the doorway in a black suit, breathing a little hard, with two lawyers behind him carrying steel briefcases. He walked to the center of the floor and held up a thick stack of papers.

"Good evening. I'm the president of the Northern Star Bank. Last night, my bank bought every debt the Grant Group owes to the Kane family, eight hundred million dollars in total." He turned to face Lucas. "As of tonight, Mr. Grant, we are calling all of it in. Your family has twenty-four hours to pay."

Lucas went white. "You can't do that. We don't have..."

"Then by tomorrow night, the Grant Group belongs to my bank."

Lucas looked around the room for help and found only cameras. Then he noticed something that made no sense to him. Leonard Shaw, the most powerful banker in the south, glanced once toward the head table and gave the smallest bow, a tiny tilt of the head, aimed at the man in grey work clothes.

Lucas stared at Damon, and his face twisted. "You... this is you! You did this!"

He threw himself across the table and grabbed Damon's collar with both hands.

Damon slapped him across the face, once.

The sound filled the silent ballroom, sharp and loud. Lucas spun halfway across the floor and crashed into the edge of the stage, then sat there holding his face, with blood running from his nose onto his white suit.

Damon picked up the divorce papers, looked at them for one second and tore them in half, then in half again. He let the pieces fall like snow onto the ten-thousand-dollar envelope.

"Keep your money," he said. "And stay away from Lily."

Agatha found her walking stick and stood up straight. Her voice shook, but it carried to every corner. "The engagement between the Whitmore family and the Grant family is cancelled, as of this moment." Then she looked at Damon for a long moment, and for the first time in five years, there was no contempt in her eyes, only confusion.

The ballroom erupted. Reporters shoved forward, guests shouted questions at each other, and Lucas's father ran in from the hallway, pale as paper.

"Father, it's him!" Lucas pointed a shaking, bloody finger at Damon. "The idiot did all of this!"

His father dragged him up by the arm. "Shut your mouth, you fool. You've already ruined us once tonight."

By the time the crowd began to thin, the Whitmores had already decided what had happened.

"It was Vivian's beauty, of course," Margaret told a circle of her friends. "Dr. Moore has always admired my daughter; anyone could see that."

"Actually, it was me," Brandon said, straightening his tie. "Last week I called Dr. Moore through a close friend at the hospital. I just didn't want to brag about it."

Derek said nothing. He leaned against the wall holding his cast, staring at Damon the way a man stares at a dog that has turned out to be a wolf.

Vivian didn't speak either. She stood by the head table holding the torn pieces of paper, and she looked at her husband across the empty dance floor for a long, long time.

Damon didn't explain anything. Lily slipped past her mother and grabbed his sleeve. "You didn't sign," she whispered, smiling through tears. "I knew you wouldn't."

"Go back to your table," he said gently. "Your mother is watching."

He walked out through the side door.

Shaw caught up with him in a quiet corridor behind the kitchens. "Sir, these came with the Grant debts, just as you asked." He held out a carved wooden box and a brown envelope. "The box is the five-hundred-year Blood Ginseng from the Grant vault. The envelope holds the deed to their seaside hotel on the east coast."

Damon lifted the lid. The root inside was dark red and shaped like a sleeping man, and a warm, sweet smell filled the corridor. Deep in his belly, the Asura Core stirred at once, hungry.

"Give the hotel to Old Gus on Lantern Street," Damon said. "He'll know what to do with it. There are Legion veterans in this city with no beds, no doctors and nobody who remembers their names."

Shaw bowed low again. "It will be done tonight, sir."

"And Leonard, find out who called you from Ironcrest about the vault. Quietly."

"Yes, sir."

Footsteps clicked behind them. Vivian stood at the end of the corridor, holding the torn papers against her chest, and Shaw quietly stepped away.

"Damon," she said. "Was it you? The hospital, the bank, all of it?"

He looked at her calmly. "Your company is safe, and your sister is safe. Isn't that enough?"

She opened her mouth, closed it again and walked away without another word.

Damon carried the Blood Ginseng down to the harbor wall alone. He sat on the cold stones, ate it slowly, root and all, and closed his eyes.

Heat poured through him like a flood breaking through a dam. The Asura Core pulled in every drop, and his thin stream of inner force doubled, then doubled again, roaring through the half-healed channels of his body. By the time the moon was high over the water, he had reached the peak of the Inner Force realm.

Three days ago, he had been an idiot washing feet. Tonight, he had his memories, his seal and one hundred billion. He had beaten a Master, saved a dying man and broken the Grant family in a single evening, and he had a black lotus badge in his pocket that pointed toward a much bigger enemy. Somewhere in the north, his brothers were still behind stone walls, and every step he climbed tonight was a step closer to them.

He stood up and started walking home along the dark docks.

He had gone twenty steps when a small red dot appeared in the center of his chest.

It didn't shake, and it didn't move.

Damon didn't run either. A man who ran from a sniper only died tired, and whoever held that rifle had chosen not to shoot yet.

High above the harbor, on top of a dark shipping crane, something glinted once in the moonlight. Someone was watching him through a rifle scope, and their finger was already resting on the trigger.