2026-02-03 17:17:57Dominic moved, his fist caught the nearest bodyguard in the throat, a surgical strike that dropped him instantly. Before the man hit the ground, Dominic's elbow shattered another's jaw. A third charged from behind; Dominic grabbed his arm, twisted, and the snap of breaking bone echoed through the cemetery.
Four seconds. Three men down.
The remaining thugs hesitated, exchanging uncertain glances.
Gregory's smirk faltered, but his confidence held. "Not bad for prison trash," he admitted, rolling his massive shoulders. "But you haven't fought ME yet."
He lunged forward with professional speed, a combination that had ended underground fights. His fist grazed Dominic's shoulder, then a body shot connected solidly with his ribs.
Gregory grinned savagely. "There it is! Five years in a cell made you soft!" He pressed forward, throwing another combination that forced Dominic back two steps. "What's wrong? Can't keep up with a real fighter?"
His next punch came harder, a straight right that had knocked out heavyweights.
Dominic caught it mid-strike, his hand closed around Gregory's fist, stopping it cold.
The grin died on Gregory's face.
"My turn," Dominic said softly.
He twisted Gregory's arm and drove him face-first into the muddy pit where his parents' graves had been. The impact was brutal and wet.
"Do you remember?" Dominic's voice was eerily calm as he hauled Gregory's head up by the hair. "Five years ago. The west wing of Kane Manor. You held my right hand down while they broke each finger."
He slammed Gregory's face down again. And again.
Two bodyguards charged. Dominic's boot caught one's knee—it bent backward with a sickening crunch. His free hand grabbed the second by the throat, squeezing until the man's struggles weakened, then threw him into a headstone.
All the while, he kept Gregory pinned.
"I'm not crying now." Dominic dragged Gregory's hand flat against broken concrete and raised his boot. "Let me show you what I learned."
He pressed down on Gregory's thumb slowly. The bone snapped with a crisp crack.
Gregory's scream was muffled by mud and blood.
"That's one."
Three more bodyguards rushed in desperately. Dominic moved with surgical efficiency, no wasted motion. An elbow shattered, a jaw broke. A knife clattered away. Fifteen seconds and they were down.
He returned to Gregory, methodically breaking each remaining finger. By the eighth, Gregory was sobbing, all arrogance gone.
The last bodyguards didn't move. They'd seen enough.
When all ten fingers were broken, Dominic grabbed Gregory by the hair and dragged him to the edge of his parents' destroyed graves.
"Kowtow," he commanded.
"Please—" Gregory's voice cracked.
"Kowtow to my parents, apologize."
Gregory's forehead hit the earth. Once. Twice, then twenty times. Blood streaked the mud with each impact until finally, he lost consciousness and collapsed.
Dominic stared down at him.
The man who had smiled and snapped his fingers five years ago now lay motionless in the dirt. Dominic crouched, gripping Gregory’s hair and forcing his head back. There was a sharp, unmistakable sound.
When Dominic let go, the body no longer moved.
For a long moment, Dominic simply stood there, breathing slowly, letting the rage recede. Around him, fifteen men lay broken. Some unconscious, some crying. All wishing they'd never come.
Then, with infinite gentleness, Dominic knelt and began collecting the fragments of the urns, placing each piece carefully in his coat pockets.
The sound of helicopter rotors cut through the night like a declaration of war.
A military Black Hawk descended into the cemetery, its spotlight illuminating the scene of carnage below. Before it even touched down, a figure jumped from the side door and strode forward with the bearing of a man who'd commanded armies.
General Marcus Webb.
Not Lieutenant Colonel. Not some mid-level officer. Three stars general. Commander of the Northern Strike Force—the most elite military division in the nation. The man who'd orchestrated the legendary Siege of Blackwater Ridge, where five thousand soldiers under his command had held off an enemy force of fifty thousand for three brutal weeks, turning the tide of the entire war. He'd been awarded the Nation's Valor Cross twice—the highest military honor, given only to those who'd performed acts of extraordinary heroism under fire. They said the President consulted him personally on matters of national security. They said enemy nations had tried to assassinate him seventeen times and failed every time.
Marcus Webb was a living legend.
And he dropped to one knee in the mud before Dominic Kane without hesitation, his head bowed, his fist pressed to his chest in a salute of absolute respect.
"My Lord," Webb said, his voice tight with barely controlled fury at the scene before him—the destroyed graves, the scattered urn fragments, the broken men lying in their own blood.
One of the conscious bodyguards—a man with a shattered arm—stared at Webb with dawning horror. "That's... that's General Webb," he whispered. "The Butcher of Blackwater Ridge... what the fuck... what the fuck did we just do..."
Gregory, barely conscious, managed to turn his head enough to see the three stars on Webb's shoulder, visible even in civilian clothes. His remaining eye widened with the terrible understanding of just how catastrophically he'd miscalculated. This wasn't just some ex-con. This was someone who commanded the loyalty of living legends.
Webb ignored them all. His entire focus was on Dominic.
"My Lord, I've arranged for your parents to be moved to Memorial Heights—the nation's most prestigious military cemetery. Full honors. A honor guard of the Obsidian Corps will stand watch. The finest marble monuments. The preparations are already underway, and I've personally overseen every detail. They'll be laid to rest with the dignity befitting the parents of our War God."
Webb glanced at Gregory's body lying in the mud. "And this one, my Lord? What do you want me to do with him?"
Dominic didn't look up. "Put him in a coffin. I have a use for him."
Dominic nodded silently, still gathering the broken pieces, treating each fragment as if it were sacred.
"Sir, I also need to inform you..." Webb hesitated, his jaw tightening. "Every major family in Thornfield has submitted formal invitations, requesting the honor of your presence at their banquets. The mayor, the governor, corporate heads, old money families—everyone wants to host the War God. They're offering everything—business partnerships, political alliances, their daughters' hands in marriage."
"Decline them all," Dominic said without looking up.
"Yes, sir. However..." Another pause. "There's one invitation I thought you should know about specifically. The Kane family. Your family, sir. They've invited you to a grand celebration at Kane Manor tomorrow night."
The air froze again.
Dominic's hands stilled on the urn fragments. Slowly, he rose to his feet and turned to face Webb. The lieutenant colonel had served under Dominic for four years, had seen him face down entire battalions without flinching, but even he took an involuntary step back at the expression on his commander's face.
It wasn't rage. It was something far more terrifying—cold, calculated anticipation. The look of a predator that had finally found its prey.
A smile curved Dominic's lips, sharp as a blade's edge.
"Tell them," he said softly, each word precisely enunciated, "that I will attend. I wouldn't miss it for the world."
Behind him, the wind howled through the ruined graves, carrying his promise into the night.
The War God had come home, and he had come for blood.
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Chapter 149
The Obsidian Corps medical facility sat behind three fences and a hill, and its corridors smelled of disinfectant and floor polish.Dominic had never been so glad of a smell in his life. Nothing here was sweet.A field medic had stitched his palm in the helicopter. Eleven stitches. Someone had found him a set of black fatigues and a pair of boots that didn't quite fit. He walked the corridor with Webb half a pace behind him, and every soldier and nurse they passed stopped dead and pressed themselves against the wall.Eleanor had been taken straight to a private room on the third floor. When Dominic looked in through the door, she was asleep under a thin white blanket with a drip in her arm, her short grey hair dark against the pillow.The duty doctor was a colonel with tired eyes and steady hands."She's badly malnourished," he said quietly. "And there's something in her blood we've never seen before. Long-term exposure, years of it. Her liver's struggling. Her memory..." He spread hi
Chapter 148
The rear door of Webb's vehicle was open. The dome light was on.She was curled in the corner of the back seat with Webb's jacket pulled around her shoulders, her bare feet tucked up under her. She was shaking, though the heater was running. Her eyes moved constantly, from the window to the door to the dark trees, like a bird watching for hawks.Then they found Dominic.She shrank back against the far door.He understood why. He stood in the headlights in torn white linen, barefoot, soaked to the elbows in his own blood, his face streaked black with smoke. He looked like something that had crawled out of a fire. To a frightened woman who didn't know her own name, he looked like every nightmare she had ever forgotten.Dominic stopped where he was."Webb," he said, without turning. "Water. And a cloth."Webb put a canteen and a field towel into his hands. Dominic wet the towel and wiped his face slowly, then his neck, then as much of his hands as he could. The water ran pink onto the gr
Chapter 147
Dominic went back in alone.The sergeant offered him a rifle and two men. He took a torch and nothing else."If she comes out any door but mine," he said, "you stop her. Alive.""Yes, my Lord."The chamber was cold now. Wind came down through the broken canopy and stirred the dead filaments of the formation, which swung slowly on its last cable and creaked like a ship at anchor. Glass crunched under his bare feet. He didn't feel it.He crossed to the side passage.The door to the quiet room stood half open. No light showed inside. He switched off the torch, waited until his eyes found the faint grey shape of the doorway, and listened.Somewhere inside, metal scraped softly against metal.Dominic stepped through.* * *The quiet room was as he remembered it. The low table. The two cushions. The warming stone, cold now. The clay pot had been knocked over and lay in two pieces on the floor.The shelf on the far wall had been swung out from the stone on hidden hinges.Behind it was a stee
Chapter 146
Four minutes.Dominic took the stairs three at a time, up out of the smoke and the dying fire, and came out into the alcove at the foot of the spiral stair.The way into the chamber was gone.Where there had always been an open stone arch, a steel shutter now filled the gap from floor to ceiling, painted the same pale colour as the walls. It must have dropped when the lights went out. He hit it with his shoulder. It didn't even rattle.Through it, faintly, he could hear coughing. Someone was crying.He pressed the radio. "Daniel. Who's in there with you?""Yuna, Priya, Reva, Soo-Jin, Lila." Daniel's voice was ragged. "That's all, sir. Marcus and Emma went out through the quiet room. Just before the lights went. Emma said she was taking him to rest."Of course they did. Root wouldn't gas her own people."Every door is steel, sir. I've tried them all."Dominic looked up the spiral stair, into the dark.The chamber's walls were stone and its doors were steel. But its roof was glass, and
Chapter 145
Dominic didn't answer her.He pushed the iron door open another few centimeters, slid through the gap and pulled it almost closed behind him. Beyond it was a narrow stone stair leading down into a darkness so complete he couldn't see his own hand."There's no need to hide," the voice said. A second speaker crackled somewhere below him, so that she seemed to follow him down. "The lenses see heat, dear. You're a very bright shape on my screen. Rather beautiful, actually."He went down the stairs by touch, one hand on the wall."Fifty-one days," the woman went on, comfortably. "Do you know what you cost me? A War God doesn't come cheaply. Three conversations with three different people, spread across two months, each one dropping a single crumb. You followed them so well." A soft laugh. "You told my people you were a man who notices when three data points converge. You never asked who placed them."At the bottom of the stair, he stopped."Who are you?" he said quietly."Someone who gave
Chapter 144
Webb was already running."Hale, Brandt, Okafor, with me," he snapped, sliding down the slope toward the vehicle hidden in the trees below. "Sergeant, you hold the gate. If that window flashes again, or if you hear a single shot, you go in. You don't wait for me.""Sir, who's in the van?"Webb didn't answer. He didn't know.He only knew that for four years Dominic Kane had never asked him for anything twice, and tonight, for the first time, the War God's signal had come with blood on the window sill.The engine caught on the first turn. Webb drove without headlights, down a logging track he had walked on foot two days ago, the trees flashing past in shades of black and darker black. Far below, through the branches, two red taillights crawled toward the outer road.He put his foot down.* * *The door of the east room was oak, five centimeters thick, with an iron lock older than Dominic.He didn't waste time on it.He tore the bandage from his hand, wound it twice around his palm again
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