THE DISCARDED SON-IN-LAWS GOD-LEVEL DOMINION SYSTEM

Chapter 12

The storeroom smelled of dust and cedar and old silk.

Mr. Marquis led Ethan down a narrow back hallway and unlocked a heavy wooden door. Inside, long rows of garment bags hung in the dark like sleeping ghosts. A single bulb glowed overhead. The old tailor walked to the very end of the room and pulled a long gray bag from the last hook.

"My father kept it for eleven years," he said quietly. "He said a man who pays for a suit has a right to come back for it. He never sold it."

He unzipped the bag.

The suit was deep midnight blue, nearly black. The cloth was heavy and fine, the kind that was no longer made anywhere. The buttons were polished bone. On the inside of the left lapel, stitched in tiny silver thread, was a small coiled dragon. It was the same dragon that hung around Ethan's neck.

Ethan reached out and touched the stitching with one finger. His hand was not quite steady.

"Whose measurements?" he asked.

"A tall man," Mr. Marquis said. "Broad in the shoulders. A little taller than you. My father wrote the name in his record book but the pages were burned in a small fire the year after. The only thing he remembered was the surname."

"Which was?"

"He said it was a short name. A common name. He said it did not suit the man."

Ethan looked at the stitched dragon for a long time. A cold, quiet feeling spread across his chest, as if a door he had never noticed was beginning to open.

"I will take this one too," he said.

"It was paid for long ago, Mr. Cross." Mr. Marquis bowed again, more slowly this time. "I believe it was always meant for the family."

Ethan carried the garment bag out of the shop with his own hands. Outside, the afternoon sun had turned golden. Daniel waited by the black car, and he rushed to take the bag, but Ethan shook his head. He laid it across the back seat himself.

"Where to, Mr. Cross?"

"The apartment Manager Liu mentioned. East district."

The car glided through the busy streets. Ethan rested his head against the cool glass and thought about the old man's trembling hand in the chairman's office. A fire. A gas leak. A suit that nobody collected. A dragon carved in jade. The pieces were not yet a picture, but he could feel the shape of one beginning to form in the dark.

The System screen opened softly beside him.

[Hidden mission progress: 3 percent.]

[Clue discovered: Dragon stitch.]

[Recommendation: Continue investigation. Avoid hasty confrontation.]

Ethan closed it. He would go slowly. He had waited ten years. He could wait a few more weeks to do this properly.

The apartment turned out to be on the sixtieth floor of a glass tower called Skyline One. Manager Liu was waiting in the lobby in a new suit, with a new haircut, bowing so many times that Ethan lost count. He gave Ethan three keys, a key card, and a long speech about fiber-optic internet. Ethan took them and said thank you once. Liu looked as if he might cry.

The apartment itself was enormous. Floor-to-ceiling windows covered one whole wall. The whole city lay below in the evening light, glittering and tiny. A white sofa the size of a small boat sat in the middle of the main room. The kitchen was larger than the whole room he had lived in at the Whitmore house. There was a bedroom with a bed so wide that he could not touch both edges with his arms.

Ethan walked through all of it slowly. He opened a window. The wind was cold and clean at this height. The noise of the city came up very faintly, like a distant sea.

For three years he had slept on a thin mattress in a storage room next to the laundry. Tonight he would sleep here. It did not feel like a reward. It felt like a costume he was not yet used to wearing.

He set the old suit on a hanger in the empty closet and stood looking at it. Then he took a shower. The water was hot and endless. When he came out, a plate of food had been left on the counter by the building staff, with a short note and a bottle of wine. He ate the food at the window and did not touch the wine.

At nine o'clock the front desk called.

"Mr. Cross, there is a woman here to see you. She does not have an appointment. She says her name is Vanessa Whitmore. She says it is urgent. Shall I send her away?"

Ethan did not answer at first. He stared at the city lights.

"Send her up," he said.

He had not expected her to find him this fast. Her car must have followed the black sedan. Or someone at the bank had talked. It made no difference. He put on a plain shirt, buttoned it to the throat, and waited by the window with his hands behind his back.

The doorbell rang once.

Vanessa stood in the hallway. She was not wearing her usual makeup. Her hair hung loose and a little wet from the evening mist. She wore a long gray coat that did not belong to her. It looked borrowed. The proud, sharp woman from the banquet hall was gone. In her place stood a tired young woman with red eyes who looked as if she had not slept in two days.

"Ethan." She said his name like it hurt. "May I come in?"

He stepped aside without speaking.

She walked into the huge room and stopped when she saw the window and the view. She stood there a long while, her hands wrapped around her elbows. When she turned back, her eyes were wet.

"So this is how it is," she said softly. "You really did it. You really have all of this."

"What do you want, Vanessa?"

"I came to warn you."

He raised one eyebrow slightly. "Warn me."

"Damien is not finished." She said it quickly, almost like she was afraid to be stopped. "He does not have money anymore. His father disowned him. The banks took everything. But last night he called me. He was drunk. He was shouting. He said he still had one card left. He said there was a man he knew, someone who owed his family a debt. He called him Black Tiger."

The name made the room feel colder.

Ethan did not move his face. "Go on."

"I do not know who it is. I only know that Damien laughed when he said it. He said you would not live to see the end of the week." Her voice cracked. "I thought you should know. I do not want..." She stopped and pressed her lips together. "I do not want you to die."

"You wanted me dead two nights ago."

"No." The word came out fast and sharp. She wiped her eyes angrily with the back of her hand. "I wanted you gone. I wanted you out of my sight. That is different."

"Is it?"

She looked at him. For a long moment neither of them spoke. The wind pushed softly against the glass.

"I made a mistake," Vanessa said in a low voice. "I will not say it was not my fault. It was. I listened to Damien. I listened to my brother. I thought you were weak. I thought if I stayed with you, my life would be small. I did not know..." She shook her head. "I did not know who you were."

"I did not know either," Ethan said. "Not until two nights ago."

She laughed once, a short sad sound. "You were always the one who made the tea when I was sick. You were the one who stayed up when my father had his heart attack. And I called you a dog in front of three hundred people." Her hand covered her mouth. "I do not expect forgiveness. I only wanted to say it."

Ethan studied her face. Three days ago, a speech like this would have broken him. He would have rushed across the room to hold her. Tonight, he felt something much more quiet. A tired kind of understanding with no anger left in it, and no love either.

"Thank you for the warning," he said.

She nodded slowly. She had expected more. She had wanted more. He could see it in the way her shoulders dropped.

"Be careful," she whispered.

She turned and walked toward the door. At the threshold, she paused as if she might say something else, but she only shook her head. The door closed behind her with a soft click.

The apartment was silent.

Ethan stood at the window and watched the street far below. After a minute, a small white car pulled away from the curb in front of the tower. It was Vanessa's car. He watched its tail lights move down the long avenue and turn left at the corner, past the bright shops, toward the dark road along the river.

He turned away from the glass. He picked up the phone and began to call Mrs. Tan to ask about the old Whitmore files.

The System screen flashed bright red across the whole room.

[Alert!]

[Black Tiger Gang has been detected near your former spouse's vehicle.]

[Four vehicles. Twelve armed men.]

[Optional mission: Rescue Vanessa Whitmore.]

[Reward: Black Tiger intelligence file.]

[Failure: Vanessa Whitmore dies.]

Ethan stared at the words. The phone slipped in his hand.

For a single breath, he stood very still. A cold voice in his head said, let it happen. She chose this road. She stood on that stage and watched them kick you in front of everyone. She does not matter anymore.

Then he thought of her tired face in the doorway. He thought of the quiet way she had said, I do not want you to die.

He dropped the phone on the white sofa.

The War God Template woke in his blood like a roaring fire. His eyes turned sharp and black in the glass of the window. The pain of the last three days, and every insult, and every cold look, burned bright inside his chest and then settled into a single clear line of purpose.

He grabbed his coat and ran for the elevator.

"Daniel," he said into the phone as the doors closed. "Bring the car around. Fast."

The elevator dropped sixty floors in the dark. Numbers flashed on the screen. His face in the mirrored wall looked like a stranger's. Calm. Cold. Ready.

Somewhere along the river road, headlights were closing in around a small white car.

Ethan Cross was coming.