Chapter 3

"Good... you're back, that's all that matters. Now get up!" William tossed aside his cane and reached out with trembling hands to help Erik to his feet.

He studied his grandson's face closely, eyes red with tears. "Saint Paul's Mountain... you've had it rough these past few years, haven't you?"

"I'm fine, Grandpa." Erik shook his head and gently took his grandfather's hands in return. Quietly, he channeled a thread of pure, warm vital energy into the old man, steadying the fragile flicker of life that remained in him.

Isabella stood to the side watching. The cold, calculating look in her eyes softened, just slightly.

The man who five years ago had been nothing but trouble — seeing him now, kneeling before his grandfather, carrying himself with such responsibility and devotion — he put the Williams family's opportunistic distant relatives to shame.

"Well, well. Look who it is. Isn't that Erik Williams, the Williams family punching bag who took the fall for someone else? Finally out of prison?"

David stubbed out his cigar and sprawled back on the sofa, laughing without a care. "What's the matter? Five years in a women's prison and now you come in here playing the poor suffering grandson?"

Erik settled his grandfather and slowly turned around.

The warmth drained from his face the instant he looked at David. What replaced it was something raw and cold — pure killing intent.

"I don't want to kill anyone today." Erik's voice was flat. "Get on your knees, bow to my grandfather, and apologize. Then get out of the Williams house. Otherwise, you die."

The study erupted in sharp, grating laughter.

David and his bodyguards doubled over like they'd just heard the funniest thing in the world.

"Die? Who do you think you're threatening?" David wiped the grin off his face and walked up to Erik, his eyes hard and vicious. "Erik, open your damn eyes and take a good look. Your three war hero brothers are dead and gone. The company's in ruins, your connections are dust, and you're nothing but a convicted rapist fresh out of jail. What gives you the right to stand here talking big?"

Smack.

David flung the contract down at Erik's feet and ground it under his shoe. "Since you're back, perfect timing. Sign this thing for the old man. Sign it and take ten million and get lost."

Erik stared at the contract on the floor, then bent down and picked it up.

David's smirk widened. He tilted his head and sneered, "Smart move. As long as you sign like a good boy, I'm feeling generous — might even throw in a little extra to get you back on your feet, so you don't end up begging on the street..."

Riiip.

A sharp, clean tear cut him off mid-sentence.

The thick asset transfer agreement shredded in Erik's hands like tissue paper, exploding into a shower of confetti.

Scraps of paper drifted down and settled onto David's stunned, slack face.

"You son of a—! You want to die?" David's face flushed a deep, ugly red.

The bodyguards dropped their smiles in an instant, eyes turning hard.

"Erik! What are you doing? Don't be stupid!" Isabella stamped her foot and rushed forward to grab him.

She knew Erik had picked up some street-fighting skills inside, but these loan sharks were another level entirely — men who lived and died by the blade.

He'd barely walked out of prison. If someone ended up dead, it was all over for him.

But before she could reach him, a dull, heavy impact cut through the air.

Thud.

No warning, no wind-up — Erik's fist drove straight into David's gut, clean and brutal.

"Uugh—"

David's feet left the ground. His eyes nearly popped out of his skull. He didn't even get a scream out before he crashed to his knees, bile pouring from his mouth.

"Which finger did you just point at my grandfather?"

Erik's expression didn't change. He whipped his hand back and cracked David across the face.

Smack.

The blow spun David's two-hundred-plus-pound body halfway around on the spot.

Smack. Smack.

Two more, each one heavier than the last.

Blood and a handful of broken teeth flew from David's mouth. His face swelled into something unrecognizable — his own mother wouldn't have known him. He collapsed to the floor twitching, limp as a dead dog.

"Mr. David!"

"Get this punk!"

The bodyguards saw red. They yanked out knives and extendable batons and came at Erik in a rush, weapons slicing through the air.

"Watch out!" William and Isabella cried at the same time, faces drained white.

Erik didn't even blink. His feet stayed planted, but his body seemed to blur inside that cramped space, moving like a ghost.

Two knives sliced past the edge of his clothes and hit nothing.

"Too slow."

Erik let out a cold breath, and something terrifying erupted from inside him — not the strength of an ordinary man, but five years of forged, battle-hardened vital energy, fed by blood and bone on the killing grounds of Saint Paul's Mountain.

Boom.

Nobody could even track the movement. There was a flash, a blur, and then a rapid-fire series of sharp cracks — the sound of bones breaking.

"Ahh—"

All five of the powerfully built bodyguards launched off their feet at the same time, like kites with their strings cut.

When they hit the floor, their arms were bent at wrong angles. They lay there moaning, not one of them able to get back up.

The entire study went dead silent.

Isabella stood with her hand over her mouth, staring at the young man standing with his hands clasped behind his back, her eyes wide with disbelief.

Was this... was this really the same man everyone had written off as a useless layabout who only existed to take the blame for others?

She couldn't stop staring. The shock wouldn't leave her.

In just a few seconds, a man who had just walked out of a women's prison had put four or five trained professional bodyguards flat on the ground.

In her memory, the Erik from five years ago had been a complete playboy — living in clubs and bars, his body hollowed out by drink and excess.

"What happened to him in there over these five years?" Isabella drew a slow breath. Her palms were damp with sweat.

Five years and he hadn't mellowed at all — if anything he was more dangerous, more brutal. The Williams family wasn't the powerhouse it used to be. Coming out swinging like this on his first day out was going to drive them straight off a cliff.

While Isabella sat with her worries, David had simply fallen apart.

He lay crumpled on the floor. These men he'd brought today were the best he could buy — hand-picked, hardened, two of them ex-special forces. In Washington's underworld, they walked wherever they wanted.

And this kid had swept them aside without giving them a single opening to fight back.

"What... what are you?" David pressed himself backward across the floor, unable to stop shaking.