Saintess's Worthless Husband Turned Dragon Commander novel Chapter 162

CHAPTER 132 PART 2

She stood up, walked to the bar, took a bottle, and brought it down on Dalton’s head with a force that surprised everyone including herself. The impact was emphatic enough that glass fragments flew sideways and landed on the table immediately to the right, where a man in a gray suit was eating a ribeye with the complete composure of someone who had decided, approximately fifteen minutes ago, that his best strategy for the evening was to simply continue eating his steak regardless of developments.

A shard of glass landed on his plate.

He looked at it. Looked at his steak. Picked up his knife and continued.

Simeon sat back down. Her hands were shaking slightly, but her expression had the specific quality of someone who had done something they hadn’t known they needed to do.

“Better?” Elize asked.

“Yes,” Simeon said, with some surprise.

The man in the gray suit appeared at the edge of the table. He was holding the remaining two beers from his table in one hand and his glass in the other, and he set them in front of Marcus with the matter-of-fact manner of someone completing a transaction.

“Big brother,” he said simply. “These are yours. And I’ll cover anything else at the table tonight.” He nodded once, turned around, and went back to his ribeye.

Elize watched him go. “Did he just-”

“Yes,” Marcus said.

“He doesn’t know you.”

“No.”

Then why-”

“Some people have good instincts,” Marcus said. He looked at the beers, then at Dalton, still on the floor and looking increasingly like a man who wanted formal permission to leave. “Go,” Marcus said.

Dalton began to stand.

“Crawl,” Elize said.

Dalton looked at her. At Marcus. Marcus said nothing, which was permission enough. Dalton Martin, nephew of Miguel Abbott, crawled on his hands and knees toward the service corridor while the restaurant watched and nobody said anything, and the sound of his exit was the sound of a man recalibrating his entire understanding of his own position in Five-River Province.

At the corner table, a group of four young men had been providing each other with an ongoing commentary on the evening’s events with the energetic investment of people watching something they hadn’t paid for and were getting for free.

“Atlas,” the one on the left said. “That’s your girl over there.”

Atlas Lancaster looked up from his phone.

“She’s been sitting with that guy for forty minutes,” the second one said. “Dalton just crawled out of there. Crawled. And you’re over here reading your messages.”

1/3

+25 Bonus

“I was waiting for the right moment,” Atlas said.

“The right moment was when Dalton showed up,” the third said. “Now it’s past the right moment.”

“The right moment,” Atlas said, setting down his phone with the unhurried confidence of someone who had never once failed to be the most interesting person in a room when he decided to try, “is when I decide it is.”

He stood up, straightened his jacket, and walked across the restaurant with the smooth, purposeful stride of a man who had calculated every step in advance and was now executing on schedule. He was twenty-eight, lean, dressed in the kind of understated way that announced serious money without attempting to, and he moved through the crowded dining room with the ease of someone who ate here every other week and was recognized by

the staff.

He stopped at table fourteen.

“Elize.” He looked at her with the specific expression of cultivated concern – warm, measured, the right amount of urgency. “Are you alright? I saw what happened. I should have come over sooner, I apologize.”

Elize looked at him with the expression of someone who had been having a very strange evening and was not entirely certain which direction strange was going to come from next.

“Atlas,” she said. Flat. No warmth, no hostility – the particular neutrality of someone who had not yet decided how to arrange their face.

Atlas turned toward where Dalton had been kneeling. He looked at the floor, then at the nearest waiter, then performed a small, decisive frown.

“Where is he,” he said.

“He left,” Simeon said.

“He-” Atlas’s jaw tightened with what appeared to be genuine displeasure. He turned toward the service corridor, raised his voice to the room at a level calculated to carry without seeming to try, and said: “Dalton.”

A pause.

Dalton Martin appeared at the corridor entrance. He saw Atlas Lancaster and went visibly pale.

“Come here,” Atlas said.

Dalton crossed the restaurant floor. He stopped in front of Atlas and stood with the posture of a man who had already been on his knees twice tonight and was calculating the odds of a third time.

Atlas looked at him for a long moment.

“Elize Yarrow,” Atlas said, gesturing at her without looking away from Dalton, “is my fiancée. Not a target. Not entertainment.” He kept his voice level and clear, performing measured authority for an audience he was aware of. “Miguel Abbott’s name covers a lot of things in Five-River Province. It does not cover offending the Lancaster family’s future.” He reached sideways and picked up the last beer bottle from the table, “You understand that.”

It wasn’t a question.

He brought the bottle down on Dalton’s head.

–

Dalton hit his knees immediately, hands over his skull, blood running fresh over the dried residue of the previous two impacts. He started slapping his own face before Atlas had even set the broken bottle down — rapid, rhythmic self-flagellation, the desperate physical apology of a man trying to get ahead of consequences.

2/3

+25 Bonus

“Get out,” Atlas said. “Don’t come back.”

Dalton scrambled toward the exit and did not look back.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify