The CEO's Disgraced Husband Is the Sea God's Commander

8

The taillights of Ginevra's sports car disappeared around the corner and the street went dark again. Dante stood in the doorway, the rain soaking through what was left of his ruined shirt, and he laughed.

Not the bitter, hollow laugh from before. This one was different. Quieter. Aimed entirely at himself.

"Six months of overtime." He shook his head slowly, rainwater dripping from his jaw. "Six months of skipped meals and double shifts to charter a yacht for a woman who left me to drown and then fell asleep in another man's bedroom."

He walked back inside and went straight to the study. He pulled open the drawer, took out a clean sheet of paper, and sat down. The pen moved fast. He did not hesitate on a single line.

Divorce agreement. Division of assets. Signature lines for both parties. Clean, simple, final.

He placed it in the center of the dining table where Ginevra would see it the moment she walked in. He adjusted it once, making sure the edge lined up perfectly with the grain of the wood. Then he stepped back and looked at it.

"Should have done this a year ago." The words came out flat and calm, like he was commenting on the weather.

He did not pack a bag. He did not take a change of clothes. He did not even glance at the bedroom they had shared. He simply walked out the front door, pulled it shut behind him, and started walking through the rain.

The city looked different at three in the morning. Empty streets. Dead traffic lights blinking yellow at nobody. Rain turning the pavement into black mirrors. 

Dante found a motel six blocks from the waterfront, the kind with a flickering neon sign and a clerk who did not ask questions. 

He paid for one night with the crumpled bills left in his back pocket and climbed the stairs to a room that smelled like bleach and stale cigarettes.

He sat on the edge of the thin mattress, staring at the golden ring on his finger.

"Mars, God of War." He turned his hand slowly, watching the ring catch the dim light from the window. "What exactly did you turn me into?"

He did not have an answer yet. But his body felt different. Every sense had sharpened to a degree that made the old version of himself feel blind and deaf by comparison. He could hear the clerk downstairs flipping magazine pages. He could hear a couple arguing three rooms over, every word crisp and clear through the walls.

He could hear the rain hitting every individual surface outside like a thousand tiny drums playing different rhythms all at once.

And then, cutting through all of it, something else. Something wrong.

A scuffle. Rapid footsteps. The sound of a woman gasping for breath between panicked, uneven strides. And behind her, heavier boots. Three sets. Moving fast and moving with purpose.

Dante was off the bed and out the door before the thought fully formed in his head.

The alley was narrow and dark, squeezed between the back of a shuttered restaurant and a brick warehouse. 

A woman was running through it at full speed, her heels abandoned somewhere behind her, bare feet slapping the wet concrete. 

She was beautiful, even in panic, dark hair whipping behind her, a torn evening dress clinging to her frame.

Behind her, three men closed the gap with ugly grins splitting their faces. Each one carried a blade that glinted under the single working streetlight at the mouth of the alley.

"Where do you think you are going, sweetheart?" The one in front, the tallest, with a scar running through his left eyebrow, called out in a voice dripping with amusement. "The boss wants you alive, so stop making this harder than it needs to be."

"Stay away from me!" The woman's voice cracked with raw terror. She stumbled over a pile of wet cardboard and her ankle twisted beneath her. She went down hard, palms and knees slamming against the pavement.

The three men surrounded her in seconds. The scarred leader crouched down, grabbing a fistful of her hair and yanking her head up.

"There we go. Nice and still now. You really thought you could outrun us in a dress like that?"

Then his eyes caught movement at the mouth of the alley. Dante stood there, hands loose at his sides, watching.

The leader straightened up and squinted through the rain. "Who the hell is this guy?"

One of the lackeys, a stocky man with a shaved head, took a step toward Dante and twirled his blade lazily between his fingers. "Just some idiot walking by. Wrong place, wrong time."

"We do not leave witnesses." The leader jerked his chin toward Dante without taking his eyes off the woman. "Both of you, go gut that fool and dump him in the drain. I will handle her."

The two lackeys grinned at each other and moved toward Dante with the casual confidence of men who had done this many times before.

"Hey buddy, you should have just kept walking." The shaved one pointed the blade at Dante's chest. "Now you get to bleed out in a gutter over someone else's problem. Tough luck."

"Real tough luck." The second one, thinner, with a gold chain bouncing against his neck, flanked Dante's left side. "Any last words, hero?"

Dante looked at them both. His expression did not change. His breathing did not quicken. The golden ring on his finger pulsed once with a warmth only he could feel.

Behind them, the leader grabbed the woman's arm and started dragging her upright. "Come on, princess. Your ride is waiting."

Dante moved.

His right foot connected with the shaved man's ribs before either lackey registered what was happening. The impact was not human. The man launched off his feet like he had been hit by a moving vehicle, his body spinning through the air in a violent arc. He slammed into the leader's chest at full velocity, and the two of them crashed backward into the warehouse wall with a sound like a car wreck.

The thin one barely had time to flinch. Dante's second kick caught him square in the sternum and sent him hurtling through the air in the same direction. He collided with the tangled heap of the other two men, and all three of them crumpled to the wet ground in a groaning, broken pile.

Two blood curdling screams echoed through the alley and died into the rain.

The woman stared up at Dante from the ground, her mouth open, her eyes wide with a fear that was rapidly turning into something else entirely.

Dante looked down at his own leg, then back at the three motionless men on the ground.

"Huh." He flexed his fist once. "So that is what it does."