Saintess's Worthless Husband Turned Dragon Commander novel Chapter 142

CHAPTER 123 PART 1

The name landed differently on Nicholas Lancaster than it had on anyone else in the corridor.

Ives Abbott watched his face with satisfaction, reading the shift the way predators read stillness in prey – the slight tightening around his eyes, the almost imperceptible pause before his next breath. She had seen that reaction hundreds of times. It never got old.

“Abbott Family,” Nicholas repeated carefully, his cane steadying against the marble. “From Five-River Province.”

“Is there another one?” Ives tilted her chin.

Nicholas’s jaw worked. His mind was running the arithmetic she could practically see him doing. There was only one Abbott Family worth fearing in Five-River Province. Miguel Abbott had built his empire across three industries and two decades, and his reach extended well beyond provincial borders. Nicholas had spent enough time at the top of Grayson City’s power structure to know exactly where the Abbott Family sat on the hierarchy.

“Your father is Miguel Abbott,” he said. Not a question.

“Gold star.” Ives inspected her nails. “And my uncle Benjamin owns more square footage in this city than you ever dreamed of. So I’ll give you one more chance before this becomes something you really don’t want it to become.” She looked up. “Walk away, Nicholas. Take your little escort service with you.”

The silence that followed lasted exactly four seconds.

Then Nicholas Lancaster straightened his collar, exhaled once through his nose, and turned to his men.

“Don’t let either of them leave,” he said quietly.

Ives blinked.

The surprise lasted only a moment before fury replaced it. “You’re serious.” A short, disbelieving laugh escaped her. “You are actually serious right now. You’re choosing – what, exactly? These people?” She gestured broadly at Quinn and the others. “Over the Abbott Family?”

Nicholas said nothing. His expression had gone very still, and anyone who had seen him kneel on a restaurant floor before Marcus Steel would have recognized that particular stillness for what it was.

Ives turned to her bodyguards. “Riggs. Jett. Remind him what a mistake looks like.”

The two men moved with the fluid efficiency of fighters who had never once doubted the outcome of a confrontation. Riggs went for Nicholas’s men on the left flank while Jett took the right, and within seconds the pattern was clear – these were not hired muscle pulled from a bouncer roster.

They were professionals, Jett caught the first of Nicholas’s men by the wrist and redirected his momentum into the wall with clinical precision. Riggs dismantled the second with three strikes so economical they barely looked like effort.

Nicholas’s remaining escorts fell back, regrouping, already outmatched,

Quinn watched from three feet away, her expression carved from ice, her arms loose at her sides. Lance had gone quiet for once, reading the room. Anna stood slightly behind them both, phone pressed to her chest.

Wesley Hartford, hovering at the corridor’s edge, was smiling,

Marcus Steel had not moved from his position. He stood with his back barely angled from the wall, hands in his jacket pockets, watching the scene with the detached patience of a man reviewing something mildly interesting.

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His dragon aura was perfectly contained – not suppressed, merely withheld, coiled beneath his composure like a tide waiting for the tide’s own reasons.

He glanced once at Cosmo.

She was already looking at him.

He said nothing. He didn’t need to.

Cosmo rolled her neck once, slowly, and walked forward.

Jett saw her coming and adjusted to intercept, already dismissing her on instinct – wrong build for a real threat, wrong gender for a real fighter. He reached for her collar with one hand.

She wasn’t there.

She had moved laterally before his grip closed, slipping inside his reach with speed that belonged to a different category of human being entirely, and drove the heel of her palm into his ribs with force taught by the Dragon King himself. The crack was audible three stores away. Jett folded sideways, one leg buckling, the other scrambling for purchase it couldn’t find. A second strike – precise, almost gentle-looking- and he was on the floor with the specific stillness of someone whose body had stopped accepting instructions.

Riggs reacted immediately, dropping pretense. The iron rod came out of his jacket in a single practiced motion and he swung it in a tight arc aimed at Cosmo’s temple.

She ducked under it without breaking stride, let the momentum carry him slightly past center, and drove her fist into his shoulder at an angle that had nothing to do with muscle and everything to do with the exact knowledge of how a joint fails under compression. Something gave way with a grinding pop. The rod clattered against the marble. Riggs dropped to his knees, his right arm hanging at a wrong angle, his face gray.

The entire exchange had taken eleven seconds.

Ives Abbott stood very still.

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