SUPREME WAR GOD The Despised Son-in-Law Returns

Chapter 3: Two Fingers and a Black Ring

The storeroom door crashed open at sunrise.

"Up, dog!" Derek stood in the doorway in a tight gym shirt, his gold chain swinging. "You're crawling to the Grant mansion today, on your hands and knees, up Harbor Hill. Then you'll kneel at Lucas's gate until he forgives you."

Margaret appeared behind him in a silk robe, her red hair still in rollers. "And you have three days to sign the divorce papers. After that, you leave this house with nothing, not even those rags you sleep in."

Damon stood up slowly. Dried blood still marked his temple, but his back was straight, and he looked at them both without blinking.

"No."

Derek's mouth fell open. "What did you just say to me?"

"I said no. I'm not crawling anywhere."

"Five years you've been licking our floors, and now you think you can say no?" Derek's face turned red. He pulled back his right fist and threw the same punch he had thrown a hundred times before, straight at Damon's nose.

Damon caught his wrist with two fingers.

Derek pulled and couldn't move his arm an inch. Damon turned his hand slowly, the way a man turns a stiff key in a lock; Derek's knees bent, his face went white, and then a sharp crack echoed off the kitchen tiles.

Derek dropped to the floor, screaming and clutching his wrist.

"My hand!" he howled. "Mom, he broke my hand!"

"Mad dog!" Margaret backed into the fridge, knocking a jar off the counter. "He's gone mad! Somebody call security!"

"Call the police instead," Damon said calmly. "Tell them the man you've beaten for five years finally hit back; I'm sure they'll laugh."

Footsteps came down the stairs. Vivian stopped halfway in a tailored white suit, her black hair already tied back for work. She looked at her brother rolling on the floor, then at her husband.

"Damon," she said slowly, "what did you do?"

He raised his eyes to hers, and she took a step back without meaning to. These were not the empty eyes she had ignored for five years. They were cold and sharp, and they seemed to look straight through her.

"Something that should have been done a long time ago," he said.

He walked past Margaret, past Vivian on the stairs and out through the front door in his torn grey work clothes, and nobody tried to stop him.

The Northern Star Bank stood in the heart of Eastbay's business district. It was the oldest private bank in Valoria, a grey stone building with tall brass doors, and it looked down on the glass towers around it like an old king looking down on children.

The security guard put a hand flat on Damon's chest. "Whoa, whoa. No begging inside, buddy. Try the bins round the back."

"I'm a customer."

The guard laughed and turned to his partner. "Did you hear that, Joe? He says he's a customer!"

He grabbed Damon's collar from behind, but Damon twisted free without even looking back, and the guard stumbled sideways into a potted palm.

"Hey! Get back here!"

Damon stepped around him. Inside, the marble floor shone like a mirror, and rich men in pressed suits waited on soft leather sofas. A woman in pearls lifted her phone and began to film.

"You won't believe this, everyone," she said to her screen. "Northern Star lets literally anyone in now. Look at this guy."

At the counter, a young teller covered her nose with one hand. "Sir, we don't give out spare change. Please leave, or I'll call the police."

"I'd like to see your president."

"The president?" She laughed out loud. "Mr. Shaw doesn't meet millionaires without an appointment. Why would he ever meet you?"

A fat man on the nearest sofa called over, "Just give him a coin, Clara. Maybe he'll leave faster," and the whole waiting area laughed.

"Tell him someone is here about the Black Dragon account."

Her smile slipped a little. A manager in a navy tie hurried over. "Is there a problem here, Clara?"

"This beggar is asking for Mr. Shaw, sir."

The manager looked Damon up and down, from his cheap shoes to his bloody temple. "Sir, you need to leave this building right now, or..."

Damon slid the ring off his finger and set it on the counter.

The manager looked down at it and stopped talking. Then he picked up the desk phone with fingers that were no longer steady, turned his back and whispered into it.

Twenty seconds later, the private lift opened, and an old man in a dark suit ran across the marble floor. He was over sixty and moving too fast for his age; this was Leonard Shaw, president of the Northern Star Bank. He stopped at the counter, looked at the black ring, then lifted his eyes to the scarred face above it.

His knees hit the marble.

The whole lobby went silent. The woman in pearls lowered her phone, and the teller's mouth fell open, while the guard at the door went pale.

"Sir," Shaw whispered with tears in his eyes. "They told me you were dead."

"Get up, Leonard. People are staring."

Shaw rose, wiped his eyes and turned to his staff with a hard face. "Nobody films. Nobody speaks. Anyone who says one word about this loses their job today." He bowed and gestured toward the lift. "Please, sir. This way."

They went down past the public vaults and the gold rooms, until they reached a steel door with no handle and a dragon carved in its center. Damon pressed the ring into the dragon's open mouth, and the door rolled back with a deep, heavy groan.

Inside, lights came on one row at a time. There were gold bars stacked to the ceiling, old military chests, piles of bond papers and walls of screens covered in numbers.

Damon walked between the rows and touched one of the old chests. A black dragon was painted on its lid, faded but clear, and under it were the words his soldiers had shouted before every battle: We stand, so others may stand.

"One hundred billion," Shaw said softly. "The Black Dragon Legion's war fund. Nobody has touched a single cent in five years, sir. Draven's lawyers came three times and tried, but the seal was lost, and the law says only the seal can open this door."

Damon stood still and looked at the numbers for a long time.

He had his memories, every fighting art, every battle plan and every healing technique he had ever learned. He had the Asura Core, which would let him rise faster than any man alive, and now he had one hundred billion and a bank president who would kneel for him.

"Has anyone else tried to open it?" he asked.

"Not since the seal vanished, sir. But every year, on the anniversary of Frostgate, someone from the capital calls to ask if it has turned up." Shaw lowered his voice. "I always tell them no."

"Keep telling them no."

The useless son-in-law of the Whitmore family was gone. Somewhere out there, the men who had stolen his life were sleeping well, and they had no idea he was awake.

"Leonard," he said quietly, "tell me what happened after I fell."

Shaw's face turned grey. He walked to a steel cabinet at the back of the vault, unlocked it with a small key and took out a red folder stamped with the seal of the Ministry of War.

"Sir," he said, holding it out with both hands, "before you read this, you may want to sit down." His voice shook. "They didn't just tell the nation you died. They told ten million soldiers that you sold Frostgate Pass to the enemy."