SUPREME WAR GOD The Despised Son-in-Law Returns

Chapter 8: A Blanket in the Mud

When Damon walked through the gate of the Whitmore villa, his clothes were lying in the garden.

There wasn't much: two grey work shirts, one pair of trousers, a thin blanket and a toothbrush. Someone had thrown them across the wet grass and stamped on them, leaving muddy shoe prints all over the blanket.

Margaret stood on the front steps under the porch light with her arms folded. Derek leaned in the doorway beside her, his right wrist wrapped in a fresh white cast and his eyes full of poison.

"Pick them up," Margaret said. "That's everything you're taking with you."

Damon set down his herb parcels and began to gather his things, one by one, without hurrying at all.

"Lucas Grant's lawyer called this afternoon," she went on, her voice sweet and sharp at once. "Tomorrow night there's an engagement banquet at the Grand Imperial Hotel for Lucas and Vivian, and the whole city is invited. You'll sign the divorce papers there, in front of everyone, and then you'll disappear."

"Why at the banquet?"

"Because Lucas wants it that way. After what you did to him, he wants every family in Eastbay to watch you sign away your marriage like the dog you are." She smiled. "Don't you think that's fair?"

"And check his pockets before he leaves," Derek added. "He probably stole the silver."

Margaret nodded. "Tomorrow morning, you'll empty them in front of me. I won't have a thief walking out of my house with my spoons."

Damon folded the muddy blanket over his arm. "He'll get his wish. Everyone will be watching."

Derek pushed off the door frame. "Mom, he's laughing at us. Give me ten minutes and some of my gym guys, and..."

"With that wrist?" Damon didn't even look up. "You'd need one of your gym guys to hold your spoon."

Derek's face turned purple, but he didn't come down a single step.

A window flew open on the second floor. Lily leaned out in her hoodie, her face red and wet. "Mom, this is wrong! He protected Vivian from Lucas, and everybody saw it! How can you throw him out like garbage?"

"Shut that window, Lily," Margaret snapped. "Or you'll be sleeping out there with him."

"Then I will!"

"Lily." Damon said it softly, but she heard him. "Close the window. It's cold, and you have exams."

She stared down at him for a long moment, biting her lip, then slowly shut it.

On the balcony next door, behind dark glass, another figure stood very still, tall and slim, in a white suit. Vivian had watched the whole thing, and she hadn't said a word.

Margaret went inside and locked the front door with a loud click. Damon carried his things around the side of the house to the old gardener's shed under the magnolia tree, and he set everything down on a wooden bench.

Footsteps crossed the wet grass behind him.

Vivian stopped a few meters away with her arms crossed against the cold. Up close, her grey eyes looked tired, and there were dark shadows beneath them.

"I talked to the warehouse workers," she said. "Uncle Ben swears that last night, a man walked in and beat eight of Kane's thugs with his bare hands. He swears it was you, and the hospital took them all in without charging a cent."

"Uncle Ben hit his head pretty hard."

"I'm not stupid, Damon. You broke Derek's wrist with two fingers, and you walked out of this house yesterday a different man." She took a breath. "Did your memory come back?"

"Some of it."

"Then who are you?"

He looked at her for a long time. "If I asked you not to sign tomorrow, would you listen?"

"No," she said, without stopping to think.

"Then it doesn't matter who I am." He paused. "You're signing the papers tomorrow, either way."

Her jaw tightened. "Sign them quietly, Damon. Please don't make a scene. The company has nine days left, and if the Grant deal falls apart, three hundred workers lose their jobs; Uncle Ben loses his job." She turned to go, then stopped without looking back. "For once in five years, just be useful."

"My grandfather forced this marriage on me," she added quietly, "and the whole city laughed for five years. I'm tired, Damon. I just want it finished."

She walked back across the grass and into the house.

Damon sat down on the bench in the dark. For five years he had protected her without knowing why, and she had never once asked if he was hurt. He waited for anger, but none came. He only felt clear, like cold water after a long fever.

A side door creaked. Gerald Whitmore, Vivian's quiet father, crept across the grass in his slippers and pressed a small paper packet into Damon's hand without meeting his eyes.

"Painkillers," he mumbled. "For your head. Don't tell Margaret."

"You've been doing this for years," Damon said. "I remember now."

Gerald's thin shoulders sagged. "It was never enough, son. I know that." He hurried back inside before anyone could see him.

Damon set the packet aside. He opened one of his herb parcels instead, chewed a piece of fifty-year Red Root slowly and felt the Asura Core pull its warmth down into his belly like a fire pulling in air.

He took out his cheap phone and Elena Moore's card, and he dialed.

She picked up on the second ring. "Hello?"

"It's the man from the hospital lobby."

"Oh!" Her voice changed at once. "My grandfather has asked about you all day. We found the poison, by the way, exactly where you said, in his herbal tea. His personal assistant ran before the police arrived, and Pell has been suspended."

"I'm glad he's well. You said you owed me."

"And I meant every word."

"Saint Moore moved its supply contract to Kane Pharmaceuticals. Test Kane's herbs, and you'll find they're fake; Whitmore's are real." He paused. "Tomorrow night there's a banquet at the Grand Imperial Hotel. Will your grandfather be strong enough to walk by then?"

There was a short silence, then a soft laugh. "Mr. Nobody, for you, he'll run there." She hesitated. "Can I ask why you care so much about the Whitmores? From what I hear, they treat you terribly."

"They do," Damon said. "But the old man who brought me into that house saved my life, and I pay my debts."

He hung up and made a second call.

"Leonard. The Grant Group's debts to the Kane family; how much are they?"

"Eight hundred million, sir," Shaw said at once. "The Kanes would sell the debt happily. They want cash right now, a lot of it, for something big."

"Buy all of it tonight. Tomorrow evening, bring the papers to the Grand Imperial Hotel."

"Consider it done, sir."

"And Leonard, the Grant family vault. What's in it?"

"Paintings, gold and a famous five-hundred-year Blood Ginseng. If the debt is called in, the whole vault becomes ours."

"When it does, the ginseng comes to me. Nothing else in there matters."

"Of course, sir." Shaw hesitated, and his voice dropped. "Sir, there's one more thing, and I don't like it at all. This morning, someone from our head office in Ironcrest called me, a man I've never spoken to before." He paused. "He asked why our system recorded the deep vault door opening yesterday. The Black Dragon vault, sir, the one that's been sealed for five years."

Damon's grip tightened hard on the cheap little phone. "What did you tell him?"

"I said it was a fault in the system. But sir..." Shaw's voice was barely a whisper now. "Nobody in Eastbay can see that record except me. So how did someone in the capital know?"