Touch My Daughter, and You Die

Chapter 006

The man who walked in was, of course, Wyatt.

He had never left. He'd known all along that the Calloway family would come looking for trouble.

"Dad, it's him!"

The moment Julian spotted him, he jolted upright on the stretcher, his face twisting with fury. Pain tore through his wounds and dropped him back down.

Wyatt didn't so much as glance at him. In a blink he was already beside his daughter.

Before anyone could register it, the two men who'd been manhandling her were sent flying backward, slamming into the ground hard enough to knock them out cold.

"Daddy!"

Nora threw herself into his arms.

"Don't be scared, Nora. Daddy's here."

Wyatt held her close, his voice gentle, one hand smoothing her hair with a tenderness that seemed out of place in a man who had just dropped two grown men.

Elena felt something loosen in her chest, a sense of safety she hadn't expected to feel again tonight.

"What are you all standing around for? Get him!"

Augustus barked the order. Seeing the man who had crippled his son standing there, he wanted nothing more than to tear Wyatt apart with his bare hands.

A wall of men surged forward.

The Whitlock family shrank back into the corners, none of them wanting to be the one to die here tonight.

The crowd swallowed him whole, and he vanished under a pile of bodies.

"Hit him!"

"Beat him till he can't stand!"

Augustus and his son screamed from the edge of the scrum, blind to what was happening inside.

Just as everyone assumed he had been pounded into pulp, a roar erupted from the center of the crowd, sudden and violent as a thunderclap splitting the sky.

The men around him scattered as if a bomb had gone off in their midst, crashing to the floor one after another like discarded dogs, whether unconscious or dead, no one could tell.

Wyatt stood alone in the space they had left, hands clasped behind his back, chin lifted, surveying the wreckage like a god of war given flesh.

It was terrifying. It was merciless.

The few men still conscious stared open-mouthed. None had imagined one man could unleash that much power.

Augustus and his son were the most shaken, their bravado curdling into panic.

But Victor hadn't clawed his way to the top of Harborcrest's underworld by folding at the first sign of trouble. He'd seen plenty, and his instincts kicked in fast.

"Bring them out!" he snapped.

Moments later, several men dragged in two cages, one containing a middle-aged man and the other a young man who looked barely out of his teens. Both were painfully thin, their bodies covered in a mixture of old scars and fresh wounds.

"Father! That's my brother Caleb!"

A chill shot down Wyatt's spine as a surge of emotion coursed through him. He couldn't possibly mistake them for anyone else. They were his father and younger brother, the two family members he hadn't seen in years.

The moment the men in the cages heard his voice, they turned toward him, their faces lighting up with disbelief and desperate hope.

"Wyatt! Is that really you? We thought we'd never see you again!"

"Wyatt, you actually came to save us!"

Overwhelmed by the sight of the family they had feared they would never see again, both men desperately grabbed the bars and shook their cages.

"You bastards! How dare you treat my family like this!"

Rage climbed past anything he had felt before at the sight of his own blood treated like livestock.

"Boy, kneel down and surrender, or I slit both their throats!" Victor had produced a knife from somewhere and stepped up beside the cages.

"You're digging your own grave." The fury in his chest had burned past reason. He walked forward, one measured step at a time, eyes locked on Victor.

"You... stay where you are!" Victor's voice cracked, startled that Wyatt would keep advancing. "Do you really think I won't kill them?"

The memory of what Wyatt had just done to his men flashed through his mind, and his confidence wavered despite the knife in his hand.

"Touch a hair on either of them, and every single person in the Calloway family dies today." Wyatt didn't slow down.

"Don't think for a second I won't do it!" Victor snarled, and as Wyatt closed in, the blade came to rest against his father's throat.

"Get your filthy hand off him!"

Wyatt roared the words, and with a flick of his fingers, a thin sliver of metal spun through the air too fast to track.

Victor's scream tore through the room. The hand holding the knife had been severed at the wrist and dropped to the floor with the blade.

The metal landed beside the severed hand, its mark unmistakable: the dragon's head, with a single word beneath it, the Champion.

Wyatt's Champion's Medal.

No one recognized it. But they had just watched a scrap of metal take a man's hand clean off, and the sight left them afraid to breathe.

"Dad! Caleb!"

Wyatt crossed to the cages and tore the steel mesh open with his bare hands.

"Wyatt, you're really here." Edmund Hale, his father, wept openly, tears cutting through the grime on his face. "I thought you might already be..."

Seeing his son return, alive and stronger than he could have imagined, brought him a measure of comfort after years he had never expected to survive.

"Wyatt!" Caleb Hale gripped his hand with both of his own, unable to speak through the emotion choking his throat.

Wyatt checked them over. Nothing looked permanently damaged, just exhaustion and old cruelty written into their bones. Satisfied, he turned to Augustus.

"Tell me who put you up to this."

"I..." Augustus trembled the instant Wyatt's eyes landed on him, the words dying in his throat.

"Not talking?" His voice went flat and cold. "Fine, then I'll take his life instead."

He moved, and in a heartbeat he was standing over Julian, one foot planted against the side of his head where he lay helpless on the stretcher.

Anyone could make a threat. The difference was that everyone in the room believed this one.

"No, don't!" Augustus's heart leapt into his throat.

He had seen what Wyatt was capable of. One good stomp and his son would have no head left to speak with. He had no skill like Wyatt's, no way to turn the tables.

"Three seconds." Wyatt began counting, pressure building under his foot with each number. "Three. Two..."

Julian felt his skull splitting, certain it would be crushed before the count ended.

"I'll talk!" he blurted, cutting off his father. "I'll tell you everything. It was Ash..."

He never got the name out. A man burst through the door and cut him off.

"Wyatt! You're finally back!"

The man hurried toward him, his face lit up with something like genuine relief.

It was Gideon. Wyatt's hands curled into fists the moment he recognized him.

This was the man who had framed him and stripped him of everything, who had done something unforgivable to Elena, and who in the years since had swallowed everything the Hale family once owned.

He was the root of every injustice Wyatt had suffered.

"Wyatt, I've missed you so much these past years," Gideon said, his voice thick with practiced sincerity. "I only just heard the Calloways were disrespecting your father and brother, and I was already on my way to deal with them myself. I had no idea you were back. Don't worry, I'll make sure the Calloway family disappears from Harborcrest entirely."

The Calloways had alerted him as soon as Wyatt returned, and Gideon had seen everything unfold. He was badly outnumbered, and he knew better than to confront Wyatt head-on. Not yet. Gideon had always been a snake in the grass, all charm and false smiles. He preferred to strike from the shadows rather than risk a direct fight.

"Mr. Ashford? You..." The Calloway men stared at him, caught completely off guard.

It was Gideon who had ordered the torture of Wyatt's father and brother. Now he was condemning the very thing he had arranged.

"Anyone who disrespects Wyatt's family makes an enemy of the Ashford family," Gideon bellowed. "I'm giving your family one week to clear out of Harborcrest, or don't blame me for what comes next."

"But..." The injustice of it burned in the Calloway men's throats, yet the gap between the two families was too wide to argue across. They swallowed their protests.

"Gideon," Wyatt said, his eyes flat, "don't bother putting on a show for me. You think I don't know exactly what you did to me back then?"

"Starting now, you've got seven days left to breathe. Return every last piece of property that belongs to the Hale family, and then pay for what you did with your life."

Something lethal flickered behind Wyatt's eyes.

The room went dead silent. Did Wyatt have any idea how powerful the Ashford family had become? Threatening a man like Gideon to his face seemed almost suicidal.

Even the battered Calloway men felt a flicker of dark satisfaction. Let the fool mouth off. The Ashfords would tear him apart soon enough, and that would be payback enough for tonight.