The Charismatic Student Heir

003

Marcus stumbled backward, chest heaving, blood pounding so loud he could barely hear the jeering around him. The thugs circled him with lazy confidence, like hunters toying with a wounded animal.

Their faces twisted with evil amusement. Their grins stretched wide as they tapped metal pipes against their palms, eager, hungry for violence.

Marcus tried to steady his breath, but his mind kept dragging him somewhere else—home. To his sister. The small girl who depended on him for everything. The only family he had left.

He saw her standing at the doorway, waiting for him.

He heard her tiny voice saying, “Marcus, don’t leave me. Come home early… please. It's already late."

His throat tightened.

His eyes burned.

“I can’t die here,” he muttered. “She… she still needs me.”

One thug snorted sharply. “Hear that? The mutt thinks he has a future.”

Another thug stepped closer and tapped Marcus’s cheek lightly with the cold pipe, mocking him. “Say the prayer again, dog. Maybe your imaginary God will save you.”

“Come on, finish him,” a bigger thug growled. “Fred wants his skull cracked, not comforted.”

Marcus tried to run left, but a thug slammed a shoe into his side. He went right, another thug blocked him, laughing in his face. They shoved him around like a toy, each push heavier than the last, until he felt the hopelessness squeezing his lungs.

The tallest thug hissed in annoyance. “Stop wasting time. Break him already. We have other tasks ahead of us!" He growled.

He raised the pipe over his head, and suddenly a loud engine peirced into the night. The sleek sound from the engine causing their heads to turn at the interruptor.

A black car surged toward them, headlights blazing white. It didn’t slow until the very last second, tires screeching sharply against the asphalt. The thugs staggered back in surprise, cursing as the car’s front bumper halted inches from smashing their legs.

Then the door opened.

A grey-haired man stepped out slowly, like someone who knew nothing in this world could shake him.

His coat drifted behind him in the cold wind. He didn’t look rushed. He didn’t look scared. His steps were steady, controlled, almost royal.

His eyes remained cold sharp, and commanding as it swept across the scene and pinned every thug in place.

Behind him came a mountain of a man, a bouncer with shoulders wide enough to block the moonlight, veins thick across his forearms, jaw set like stone.

"Who are you!" The leader of the gang finally spoke after recovering his posture.

"And how dare you interrupt us?" He added again, this time, his words were more grave.

"I expected better question. But I will spare you and tell you what you should find relevant.

Step away from the young man or be the ones dying instead!" He proclaimed with so much confidence that even nature drifted.

The thugs blinked, confused for a moment, then laughed with full arrogance.

“Oh look,” one thug mocked loudly, “a grandpa decided to go for night stroll.”

Another thug spat on the ground and glared. “You must be lost, old man. Leave before we turn you and your overgrown bodyguard into hospital entertainers.”

The leader stepped forward with a cruel grin. “You’re outnumbered, grandpa. Ten of us. Two of you. Get the hell out.”

Duke didn’t even blink.

His voice came out deep, calm, but sharp enough to cut bone.

“If any one of you touches that boy again,” he said, “you will not leave this street alive.”

His words hit the air with the weight of a command, not a threat.

Power radiated from him, like a calm and controlled storm that could swallow just anything.

The thugs burst into another wave of laughter.

“Wow! Old man has a mouth.”

“You trying to scare us?”

“This is our street, grandpa!”

“Fred pays us to break people like him. We’ll break you too!”

Duke tilted his head slightly, a gesture so small yet so authoritative it made the laughter falter for a second.

“I’ll say it once more,” Duke murmured. “Touch him… and die.”

The leader snarled and his face twisted seeing that the old man looked serious“You’re not serious, are you? You think one old man and a muscle puppet can stop us?”

He turned to his boys. “Finish this idiot and then break the scholarship rat.”

He rushed first, pipe swinging straight toward Marcus’s skull.

But the bouncer moved.

Lightning-fast.

His hand shot out and caught the thug’s wrist mid-air. The thug’s face froze in confusion as the bouncer’s grip tightened.

Then came the crack.

A loud, sickening, violent crack that echoed off the buildings.

The thug screamed, collapsing instantly as the bouncer twisted his arm in a direction no human bone should ever go. The pipe flew out of his hand and clattered across the road.

The other thugs stared, shocked and horrified.

Even Marcus heart fastened and his eyes widened.

Marcus stared too, breathless, stunned, his life world spinning from fear, pain… and the sudden, terrifying presence of the man who had just saved him.

And the question kept spiraling in his heart.

"Who's he! Why is he saving me!"