The Richest God of War

"Look at that wretch. They say a live-in son-in-law ranks below a servant. This one ranks below a dog."

"A useless coward. What could Rosetta possibly see in him? That pretty face?"

"Pretty trash. If not for him, Rosetta would be a top star by now. He deserves every bit of this."

Men in guard uniforms circled Richard. Blood already slicked his face. Fists and boots kept coming, without pause and without mercy.

A few bystanders edged forward. Then they heard who was giving the orders, and who was lying in the dirt. Their eyes went flat, and they turned away. Nobody wanted to bleed for *that* man.

He was the Williams family's famous good-for-nothing son-in-law.

***

A year ago, a wedding had rocked all of Albany.

Rosetta Williams, eldest daughter of the Williams family, was a rising star and the dream of every rich bachelor in the city. And she had married a nobody. A homeless man the family had picked up off the street and put to work as a servant.

Albany never forgave it.

For a year, Richard had lived inside a storm of laughter and spit. Jealous young masters sent men to find him, corner him, and break him, just to feel a little better about their own failures.

***

Today was no different.

On an empty road outside the city, a luxury car idled in the cold. Charles Taylor hung out of the window, eyes bright with hunger. "Harder! Are you all dead? Kill him if you have to. I'll answer for it!"

Watching wasn't enough. He kicked the door open, snatched a golf club from the back seat, and strode forward grinning.

He raised it high and brought it down on Richard's skull.

Blood sprayed across the road. The guards leapt back as if burned.

"Boss, that's too far!"

"Boss, he'll die!"

"Then let him die." Charles wiped a speck of red from his cheek and smiled. "I said I'd take responsibility."

His men knew what a body looks like when it stops fighting back. They hauled Charles into the car, flung a stack of cash at the guards, and snapped, "Get him to a hospital. Now." Then the engine roared and the taillights vanished.

Richard lay on the asphalt. The world smeared and dimmed. He watched his own blood crawl away from him, slow and black.

Then something inside him broke open.

A lock, rusted shut for three long years, shattered.

Memory flooded back, ten thousand years of it, hitting him like a tidal wave. His legs jerked once. Then there was only darkness.

***

That night, Richard opened his eyes in a hospital bed.

Anyone who knew him would have felt a chill at the sight. The man who bowed his head to everyone was gone. In his place sat something quiet and ancient, and very awake.

He rose and let out a long, slow breath.

"Three years," he whispered. "Three years in the mud. And it took a golf club to wake me."

The past came back, all of it.

No one in Albany knew the truth. Richard was the founder of the Obsidian Circle, the darkest and most secret underground network on earth. Nine directors served beneath him. Presidents and kings welcomed them as honored guests. People whispered that the wealth under the Circle's control might equal half the world's fortune.

That was not the deepest secret.

Richard was more than ten thousand years old.

Long ago, by pure chance, he had been given the power to live forever by a divine system. He had watched empires rise and rot. And with all that time, he had built the Obsidian Circle alone.

Then, three years ago, an accident erased him. He woke on the streets with no name and no past. The Circle never noticed. Its leader often vanished for decades, and they had learned not to ask.

So the master of the Obsidian Circle had nearly starved in a gutter.

Now he could walk away from this small city and everyone in it. He could burn it to the ground, and no one would stop him.

But then he thought of her face.

Two years ago, he had been a ghost in the snow, hungry and half-dead. Rosetta had seen him. She asked her father to give him work as a gardener. One small kindness, and it had pulled him back from the edge.

For ten thousand years, Richard had lived by a single law: a kindness must be repaid.

So he made his choice. He would stay as Rosetta's husband until the day she herself asked for a divorce.

And something else gnawed at him. That accident. The more he turned it over, the less it felt like an accident at all.

Someone had done this to him.

And he would find out who.

He changed his clothes and walked out of the ward. The man who once flinched at every glance now moved with a calm, crushing weight. The nurses felt it without knowing why. Not one of them noticed their patient was gone.

In the corridor, Richard paused at a window. Reporters swarmed the hospital entrance below, cameras up, like vultures. Someone important was inside.

He didn't care. Then a faint scent drifted to him.

Tobacco.

His eyes narrowed. A slow smile touched his lips. "That smell. I didn't expect to find it here."

The old Richard had never smoked. Now the craving rose in him like a long-buried hunger, and he followed the scent.

It led him to an emergency exit. A nurse in enormous glasses stood in the shadows, smoke curling from her fingers. When she saw him, panic flickered behind the thick lenses.

"Excuse me, miss," Richard said softly. "May I have one of those?"

"You like this cigarette?" Her voice was low and rough.

"I do. Tobacco from the Sierra Madre, southern Mexico. Clean, fresh, faintly sweet. Almost none of it grows there, so these are very rare."

The nurse gave a startled laugh. Most of her face was hidden, but the lips beneath the glasses were striking. "I never thought anyone in a small city like Albany would know that. Most people only know Cuban cigars. Here."

She handed him a cigarette, then a match.

Richard lit it and drew in his first smoke in three years. He smoked slowly, calmly, as if time itself were waiting for him to finish. The nurse caught herself staring.

"Are the reporters outside here for you?" he asked, tapping ash onto the floor.

She stiffened. "Me? You've got the wrong person. I'm just a nurse."

"Hm. Since when can a nurse afford cigarettes like these?"

"They're a gift. From a relative."

Richard let the smoke drift from his lips. His eyes were calm, certain, and cold.

"You're not a nurse here. Three reasons. One: your uniform doesn't fit. Two: a real nurse knows smoking is forbidden in a hospital, even at an emergency exit. Three: your cap is on backwards. This is your first time wearing one."

The woman froze.

"Those reporters are entertainment press. They wouldn't wait this late unless a celebrity was inside. And here you are, sneaking through the halls in a disguise, wearing glasses with almost no prescription. You're hiding something, and it isn't well hidden."

She stopped denying it. She crossed her arms and tilted her head. "You notice a lot."

"I've lived a long time," Richard said with a shrug. "You learn to look."

She burst out laughing. "You look twenty-something. A long time, sure. Fine, genius. If you've worked out the reporters are here for me, then who am I?"

She was proud of her disguise. Even her own manager had failed to recognize her. There was no way a stranger could name her from one cigarette.

But Richard only looked at her again. His gaze was steady, and it felt like being read, page by page, by someone who had already finished the book.

"There are calluses on your fingertips, and a mark on your chin. The spacing says violin. Only a handful of female stars in this country play it well, and only one is famous for it. Only she could afford Sierra Madre cigarettes."

He smiled, slow and sharp.

"Am I wrong, Miss Sandra Jones?"