The Understated General Returns

Chapter 2 - Another Failed Plan

At that moment, about fifteen soldiers stormed in, assault rifles raised, boots hammering the marble in perfect rhythm as they spread out and sealed every exit.

Guests screamed and dropped to the floor.

Behind the soldiers walked a giant of a man, silver stars gleaming on his shoulders, his presence alone enough to make the soldiers straighten their spines.

Admiral Cody!

"What a pathetic loser," Sean called out, his confidence surging back the second he saw the uniformed man. "Stealing a phone and thinking he could get away with it.”

"He doesn't have any escape route; Admiral Cody is going to make him pay for not only stealing his phone but ruining his friend's wedding."

“This man is going down! Admiral Cody doesn't have mercy on anyone.”

“He should just give up, get on his knees, and apologise to Sean Blackwell.”

The murmurs continued, as everyone couldn't wait to know what would happen and how Dennis would be dealt with.

Doris looked down, her face burning in shame and disappointment that Dennis wouldn't be living there alive. Her hope of seeing her son escape had been shattered.

Sean squared his shoulders and lifted his chin as he basked in his sudden reversal of fortune. "I knew it. You actually thought you could steal from Admiral Cody and walk out of here alive?" He turned to Cody with a satisfied grin. "This man stole your phone, old friend. Arrest him. Throw him in a hole and lose the key."

Cody's eyes moved slowly from Sean to Dennis.

Nobody in that hall noticed what passed between them, a flicker, barely a breath long. Because the truth was the opposite of everything the guests believed. Cody had handed Dennis that phone himself; every second of this had already been planned between them, down to the last detail.

Cody's hands were shaking, not from fear of Dennis, but from the effort of not falling to his knees and begging forgiveness right there in front of four hundred witnesses. Doing that would ruin everything. It would blow six years of cover in a single second.

Sean, mistaking Cody's stillness for hesitation, pressed harder. "Best friend, why are you just standing there? Arrest him! Shoot him if you have to; I'll take full responsibility.”

Cody's eyes finally settled on Sean. Something behind them went cold and flat; Sean felt a chill crawling down his spine like ice water when their gaze met.

Cody's hand moved before Sean could react. It cracked across his face with such force that blood sprayed from his mouth, and a tooth clattered against the marble floor.

The hall gasped as one, as guests exchanged worried glances.

"You don't give me orders," Cody said, voice low and lethal. "I decide what happens to this man. Back off before you regret opening your mouth again.”

Sean staggered backward, hand pressed to his bleeding jaw, utterly stunned. His mind scrambled for an explanation that made sense and found none.

“What did I just do to deserve that?” He thought.

"Arrest him, and take him away. " Admiral commanded.

Despite his words, he still looked at Dennis to be sure the man hadn't changed the plan.

"Don't take my daddy!" Liam's voice rang out, small and furious. "He didn't do anything wrong! That man hurt my mommy; he's the bad one!"

Dennis dropped to one knee in front of his son, and for just a moment, the deadliest man in that hall looked like nothing more than a father.

"Daddy's coming back. I promise." He rubbed Liam's head gently, then rose and held out his wrists to the soldiers without being asked. "You don't need to cuff me in front of my son. I'll come quietly.”

Doris's lips parted, but no words could describe how she felt seeing her husband being taken away and her son standing there.

Liam fell to the floor in tears while his mother watched him with a broken heart. She wanted to move, but Sean stopped her and winked at one of his guards to take him to the mansion.

As Liam left with the Guard, Sean went to the stage.

"My apologies for what you all just witnessed. I said something to Admiral Cody I shouldn't have; he's a dear friend of my family, but there are certain ways to speak to a man like him, certain lines you don't cross." He offered the crowd a practised smile. "As for that pathetic intruder, this is the end of him. Let's put it behind us and enjoy the rest of the evening."

The guests, cowards to the last one, applauded politely, as though nothing had happened at all

Meanwhile, outside, Dennis was loaded into a van with blacked-out privacy glass, the driver invisible behind a partition.

The second the door sealed shut, Cody's composure shattered. He slid off the bench and dropped to his knees on the floor of the van.

"General, I'm sorry. Please, punish me if you must. I hated every second of that.”

Dennis didn't even look at him; his attention was fixed on the other man seated across from them, Admiral Gregory, a man who outranked Cody, his face unreadable in the dim light.

Dennis exhaled slowly; his voice was sharp enough to cut steel. "Gregory, your turn! Wait until they've all moved to the reception hall. Then I want Sean Blackwell handled." His eyes narrowed. "If you fail me, that failure is yours to carry and not mine."

He hadn't given the job to Cody because Cody's friendship with Sean's family made him too soft, too likely to hold back. But Gregory had no such weakness, and Gregory had his own reason to want this. Sean had humiliated him publicly two months earlier, in front of his men, and Gregory had been waiting for permission ever since.

Gregory's mouth curled with a cold and satisfied grin. He lifted his phone to his ear. "Get ready, boys. We're moving in.”

~~~

Inside the Cortland Hotel, the music blared. Sean Blackwell felt like he was over the moon; his family had the money, and he was sure Admiral Cody had taken care of Dennis; he wouldn't be coming back.

Doris stood beside him. "Please," she whispered, unable to stop herself. "What are they going to do to Dennis? Let him go; I'll do anything you want. Just let him go.”

"Shut your mouth." Sean's hand cracked across her face before she could flinch away. "You don't get to speak his name in front of me. You're my wife now. You obey me."

Doris pressed a trembling hand to her burning cheek, swallowing the pain in silence, the way she'd learned to swallow everything else.

Suddenly, the front doors exploded inward as Glass rained down over screaming guests as canisters rolled across the dance floor, hissing white smoke into the air. Soldiers poured through the wreckage of the entrance, gas masks on, weapons raised.

Within seconds, the ballroom was swallowed in a thick white fog. Guests choked and stumbled, diving under tables, designer gowns forgotten, dignity abandoned.

Sean's eyes burned red from the gas, tears streaming, his grip on Doris finally slipping.

She dropped to her knees, crawling blindly through the smoke, desperate to get away, but his hand closed around her ankle before she got three feet.

"Where do you think you're going?" he snarled, dragging her back. "You don't run from me."

"Everyone on the ground!" a soldier's voice boomed through the chaos. "Hands behind your head, now!”

Sean squinted through streaming eyes and recognised the face cutting through the smoke toward him.

"Admiral Gregory," he said, looking confused, and dread washed over him in equal measure. "This is my wedding reception. What is the meaning of this? Do you even have a warrant?"

Gregory said nothing.

What he did next left every witness in that ballroom in horror.

He struck Sean across the face twice, then swung his baton in a full arc, smashing it into Sean's knee with everything he had.

Sean's scream tore through the smoke.

"I've been waiting two months for this," Gregory said, voice shaking with barely restrained fury. "You remember humiliating my cousin and me at that birthday party? Calling me a low-ranked nobody because your father happened to be standing there?" He raised the baton again, bringing it down across the same arm Sean had used to slap Doris. "Let's see how your father will save you now.”

Another strike landed against his knee, harder than the first. Sean collapsed, sobbing, blood soaking through his trousers, crawling across the floor and begging for mercy that wasn't coming.

"Get this civilian out of my sight," Gregory ordered his men. "Put him in the Trunk of the car. He's going to learn what pain actually feels like.”

Sean tried to protest, but the men were too powerful for him. They grabbed him away.

Doris scrambled to her feet and bolted through the smoke toward the room where Liam had been locked away.

It was empty.

No sign of him anywhere. Her heart slammed against her ribs as she searched every corner, every closet, panic clawing up her throat.

She found Gregory in the chaos outside and grabbed his arm, voice shaking apart. "Sir, please, I can't find my son.”

She went ahead to describe her son. As she finished, Admiral Gregory replied.

"I saw a boy matching that description outside. He was with a young man."

Doris didn't wait to hear anything else. She ran

Outside, past the wreckage of soldiers and smoke, the moment she got outside, her eyes scanning every area until she found an ambulance parked at the curb, and there, sitting inside it with a blanket around his shoulders, was Liam.

Beside him sat Dennis.

Her knees nearly gave out. She rushed forward and pulled her son into her arms, sobbing into his hair, before turning to Dennis with a hundred questions crowding her mind at once,

“Dennis,” Doris called. “How did you get out? General Cody arrested you for taking his phone.”

Dennis looked at her, already having something to say. “That!” He shrugged his hand off. “Admiral Gregory saved me. He owed me a favour and came through the moment I called. About the phone, I didn't steal it. I saw it on my way to the church; after realising the truth, they had dropped me off.”

Doris looked at him, perplexed; something wasn't adding up to his story, but she exhaled deeply.

Dennis looked at his son. “Come on, I can see you are hungry. Let's go grab something to eat.”