Saintess's Worthless Husband Turned Dragon Commander novel Chapter 160

CHAPTER 131 PART 2

Calvin moved toward Elize.

Marcus put down his fork.

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He stood up from his chair and stepped between Calvin and the table in the same motion- not fast in any theatrical sense, simply present where he hadn’t been a moment before- and the first of Calvin’s reach was redirected by a forearm block that sent the larger man’s momenturn sideways. Marcus’s free hand came up and caught the second man’s collar, and the specific application of force that followed used the man’s own forward movement to deposit him into the partition on the left with a sound that the entire dining room heard.

The third man came from the right with a bottle.

Marcus didn’t look at him. His elbow came back at the precise height and angle required, connected with the man’s forearm, and the bottle went sideways onto the carpet without breaking.

Silence.

Three of Dalton’s men were repositioning themselves on the floor or against the walls with the specific expressions of people revising their professional self-assessment. The other seven in the vicinity had not moved, but the quality of their stillness had changed – from readiness to something closer to reconsideration.

Dalton stared.

“He’s one person,” he said, loudly enough that it was clearly directed at his men rather than at Marcus. “One. There are fifteen of you. Do something.”

“Dalton.” Marcus looked at him with the patient, slightly tired expression of someone who had already done this version of this conversation today and found it no more interesting the second time. “Call your uncle.”

Dalton blinked. “What?”

“Call Miguel Abbott,” Marcus said. “Right now. Tell him where you are and what you’ve been doing.” A pause. See what he says.”

Something moved across Dalton’s face — the ghost of an uncertainty he hadn’t expected to feel.

“Why would I-”

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“Because you’re about to make a decision in the next thirty seconds that you’ll spend the rest of the year explaining,” Marcus said. “And I’m giving you the option of getting information before you make it.” He sat back down. “Or don’t. It’s a fast evening either way.”

Dalton looked at his men. He looked at the three currently reassembling themselves from the floor. He looked at Marcus eating his fish with the composure of a man who had already decided how this resolved.

“You think I’m scared of-“}

“I think you should call a waiter,” Marcus said. “I’d like to pay the check.”

Dalton opened his mouth.

Marcus raised one hand, and a waiter – to his own evident surprise – was beside the table in approximately four

seconds.

“Check please,” Marcus said.

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The waiter produced the tablet. The total appeared. Marcus reached into his jacket and set a card on the table.

It was gold. Matte, warm, the particular weight of something made to a standard. The Moonlight Group insignia ran across the center in a typeface that the waiter recognized immediately, because everyone who worked for Miguel Abbott’s hospitality group recognized the supreme card, and recognizing it was part of their training because it came with specific instructions about how to behave when you saw it.

The waiter’s posture changed. Subtly, but immediately.

Dalton Martin’s gaze had dropped to the card.

It stayed there.

The color left his face in the deliberate, sequential way of someone experiencing a realization in stages — the first stage being that can’t be right, the second being that is right, and the third being the full inventory of everything he had done in the last twenty minutes to a man carrying his uncle’s personal supreme card.

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