The God of war They Burned Is Back

No One’s Ever Beaten Him

Silas’s fist came at Callum’s throat with killing speed, a strike designed to crush the windpipe, perfected over decades of eliminating threats.

Callum caught it with one hand, effortlessly.

His expression didn’t change. His feet didn’t shift. He simply closed his fingers around Silas’s fist and stopped the attack as if catching a thrown ball.

The ballroom gasped collectively.

Silas’s eyes widened—the first genuine shock Callum had seen on the enforcer’s face. He tried to pull back, but Callum’s grip was iron.

Then Callum moved.

With surgical precision, he twisted Silas’s arm, rotating the wrist and elbow at angles joints weren’t meant to bend. Silas grunted in pain. Before he could recover, Callum’s other hand shot forward—a single palm strike to the solar plexus.

The crack was sickening.

Ribs shattered. Silas’s body lifted off the ground from the impact and flew backward. He crashed into a marble column with enough force to spiderweb the stone. Chunks of marble fell as Silas slid down and collapsed onto the floor.

He coughed. Blood spattered the white marble. His hands pressed against his chest, feeling the broken ribs shifting beneath his skin.

The crowd stood paralyzed. No one moved. No one spoke.

Silas Grave—Octavia Mercer’s invincible enforcer, the ghost who’d eliminated dozens of threats over two decades, had been broken in seconds.

Callum stepped forward slowly. His footsteps were the only sound in the silent ballroom.

“There was a corner in our music room,” he said quietly. “East wall, near the windows. My mother kept a shelf there.”

Silas looked up, gasping, blood on his lips.

“On that shelf was my sister’s jewelry box. White porcelain with hand-painted violets. It played a lullaby when you opened it.” Callum stopped a few feet away. “Next to it was Matthias’s first violin. Quarter-size. He got it when he was seven.”

“What… what are you…” Silas’s voice was weak, pained.

“I’m asking you a question.” Callum’s voice remained soft. Conversational. “When you burned our estate to the ground, did you destroy those things personally? Or did you just watch them burn with everything else?”

Silas tried to push himself upright, but failed. Slumped back against the cracked column.

“Who… who are you?”

“You already know.”

“The Reed boy. Julian’s son.” Silas coughed again. More blood. “You were twelve. Just a child.”

“I was.”

“How did you—” Silas gestured weakly at the carnage around them. “This isn’t possible. No training could—”

“Answer my question.” Callum crouched down, bringing himself level with Silas’s face. “The jewelry box, the violin. Did you destroy them?”

Silas stared at him, confusion mixing with pain. “I serve Octavia Mercer. The city’s greatest musical patron. Wife to Lucian Mercer. She’s built an empire of—”

Callum’s hand shot out and gripped Silas’s throat, just enough to make a point.

“I didn’t ask about Octavia.” His voice was ice. “I asked about my sister’s jewelry box.”

Silas’s eyes flashed with something—anger, desperation. “You should kneel before the Mercer family. They own this city. They own everything. Your pathetic revenge will—”

“Wrong answer.”

Callum released Silas’s throat and stood. Somewhere in the city, Dex was sitting in a secondary vehicle wondering why he’d been separated from the others. Let him wonder. Renn would hold him there until Callum was ready to ask the right questions. He raised his hand, palm out, fingers spread.

Warren, still pressed against the marble column across the room, whispered: “What’s he doing?”

The air rippled.

Callum’s hand pulsed with invisible force—a concussive blast of focused energy that erupted from his palm like a cannon shot.

It caught Silas square in the chest and launched him backward. He flew through the air, crashed through a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, and disappeared in an explosion of crystal shards.

Glass rained down on the observation deck beyond. Silas’s body hit the far railing and went limp.

Complete silence.

Then, from somewhere in the crowd of traumatized guests, a guard’s voice—barely a whisper:

“No one’s ever beaten Silas Grave…”

The words carried through the stunned ballroom.

Callum straightened his jacket, adjusted his collar. Walked calmly back to his table, past scattered guards, past pools of blood, past Desmond’s unconscious form, and picked up his wine glass.

He took a slow sip.

The wine had gone slightly warm, but it didn’t matter.

He turned to where Warren still stood frozen against the column. Lady Cordelia had collapsed into a nearby chair, her face buried in her hands, sobbing quietly.

Callum walked toward Warren.

Warren’s knees buckled. He slid down the column until he was half-sitting, half-kneeling on the floor. His expensive suit was rumpled, his face pale and slick with sweat.

The room remained in stunned silence as Callum stood calmly, asking Warren: “Where is my sister’s jewelry box?”