Saintess's Worthless Husband Turned Dragon Commander novel Chapter 149

CHAPTER 126 PART 1

The word hung in the air above Crystal Plaza’s third floor like smoke after a detonation.

Elder brother.

It had come through the phone speaker clearly enough for everyone in the corridor to hear – Aaron Jackson’s voice, stripped of its earlier casualness, carrying the particular weight of someone who had just oriented himself by a fixed star. Benjamin Abbott heard it, and the first thing that moved across his face was pride.

He straightened slightly. Lifted his chin. The assumption settled into place with the comfortable speed of a man who had spent decades being deferred to – Aaron Jackson was calling him elder brother. Of course he was. The Abbott Family’s relationship with Grayson City’s underworld authority was long-established, mutually profitable, carefully maintained. It made complete sense.

He turned toward Marcus Steel with a new quality in his expression. Something close to pity.

Marcus was looking at the phone with mild amusement.

“Aaron,” he said into the speaker, “Benjamin Abbott is trying to use you to clean up a mess he made.”

A beat of silence.

Then Aaron Jackson’s voice came back, and every trace of its previous register had been replaced by something flat and absolute.

“Is that right.”

It wasn’t a question.

Benjamin’s chin came back down.

“Let me be clear,” Aaron said. “Marcus Steel is my big brother. Not a business contact. Not a courtesy title. My brother.” Another pause, shorter than the first. “Anyone who raises a hand toward him in my city needs to think very carefully about what city they’re currently standing in.”

Benjamin Abbott’s jaw tightened. “Jackson-”

“I’m not finished.” Aaron’s tone didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. “I’ve respected your family’s operations here, Benjamin. Stayed out of your distribution corridors, kept my people off your commercial territory. That’s been good for both of us.” A brief silence that carried more weight than most speeches. “Don’t make me restructure the arrangement.”

“You’d burn a six-year relationship,” Benjamin said, his voice dropping into something that wanted to be cold but arrived slightly short, “over this? Over some nobody in a shopping mall?”

“I’d burn it over my brother. Yes. Without a second thought.”

Benjamin exhaled through his nose. The sound of a man recalibrating against his will. Across the corridor, Nicholas Lancaster had developed a sudden interest in the middle distance – not watching Benjamin, not watching Marcus, simply existing carefully in a space between the two forces and hoping not to be referenced.

“You’re declaring war on the Abbott Family,” Benjamin said. “That’s what you’re doing right now. You understand that?”

“I’m declaring that my brother walks out of that mall undisturbed.” Aaron’s voice carried the specific patience of someone who had already decided the outcome and was simply waiting for the other party to arrive at the same

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conclusion, “What you do with that information is your business. But if I have to come down there personally, Benjamin, the conversation we have afterward will be considerably less comfortable than this one.”

The line held for three more seconds.

Marcus ended the call.

He turned the phone over once in his hand with the unhurried motion of someone setting down a finished cup of coffee, then held it out toward Benjamin. Benjamin took it. His fingers closed around it too tightly.

“Call someone else,” Marcus said pleasantly. He settled back against the column, arms folding, the posture of a man who had nowhere he needed to be and nothing he needed to prove. “Go ahead. Work through the list. I’ll wait.

Benjamin Abbott stared at him.

Marcus looked back with the particular quality of patience that wasn’t patience at all but something much older – the absolute absence of urgency that only existed in things that had never once needed to hurry. His dragon aura pressed quietly outward, not aggressive, simply present, filling the corridor’s atmosphere with a weight that the Red Star Group fighters were registering in their posture without being able to articulate why.

“Or,” Marcus continued, “since you’re all here anyway – Ives stays. You stay. We settle this properly.”

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