Saintess's Worthless Husband Turned Dragon Commander novel Chapter 178

CHAPTER 141 PART 2

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“You had a cut on your left hand that went from the base of your thumb to your wrist,” Marcus said. “You were wearing a gray training uniform that had a number on the left shoulder. You were unconscious but breathing. The man who carried you out told the other two girls something before he left.” He looked at her. “Do you remember what he said?”

Her jaw had tightened. Her hand had moved – barely, a shift of weight, the body’s automatic preparation for something it hadn’t decided on yet.

“Be kind,” Marcus said. “That was it. Two words. Because he’d just shown them the worst version of what human beings could build, and the only antidote he knew how to offer in thirty seconds was two words.”

Red Widow looked at Marcus Steel on a harbor street in Five-River Province at midnight and the expression that moved across her face was not something she would have allowed in any room with witnesses. It was the expression of something that had been locked in a specific configuration for a very long time suddenly encountering the key.

“You,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You’re-” She stopped. Reset. “You came to Five-River Province with a kill order on your head and you’re standing on a street at midnight—”

“The kill order is why I’m standing on a street at midnight,” Marcus said. “Harder to find a moving target in an open space than a stationary one in a building.” He turned and continued walking. “You were sent for me.”

She fell into step beside him.

“Atlas Lancaster,” she said. “The contract came through the standard circuit. I took it because the province rate was favorable and I wasn’t told the target’s identity in advance.” A pause. “I was told the target was connected to the Abbott family, which suggested someone with resources but not significant combat capability.”

“And the backup instruction,” Marcus said.

She was quiet.

“There was a secondary instruction,” Marcus said. “If the contract wasn’t completed within the window, the backup asset could be eliminated as a loose end.”

More silence.

“He put you on the disposable list,” Marcus said. “Before you’d finished the job. As a precaution.”

“Yes,” Red Widow said. The word came out stripped of everything except the fact itself.

“Atlas Lancaster,” Marcus said, “is the kind of man who treats people as inventory. Assets when useful, liabilities when not.” He looked forward. “How many people are deployed tonight?”

“Six teams. Different entry points. I was the distraction approach – designed to occupy the target while the primary teams positioned.” She paused. “They’ll have adjusted when I didn’t signal position confirmation.”

“Where’s the primary team now?”

She looked at the roofline of the warehouse to their left. Marcus had already looked there twenty seconds ago and registered the two shapes that didn’t belong.

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Then he registered the one behind them.

“Down,” he said.

He moved left. The shot – not a gun, something quieter, a compressed air delivery system, the kind that the shadow circuits had been using for fifteen years – passed through the space where his head had been and embedded itself in the warehouse wall.

Red Widow was already moving in the opposite direction.

She went up the fire escape on the warehouse’s south face with the speed of someone for whom vertical surfaces were familiar terrain, and the brief sounds that followed – two impacts, one heavier than the other, and then nothing – confirmed her arrival at the roofline.

Marcus dealt with the one behind them.

The attacker came out of the doorway alcove with a blade and the specific confidence of someone who had been told the target was a soft civilian, and Marcus’s forearm redirected the knife arm in the same motion as turning around, and the dragon-enhanced response that followed deposited the attacker against the warehouse door with the specific stillness of someone who had been efficiently removed from the conversation.

He was breathing.

Red Widow dropped from the fire escape. She was holding the collar of the second rooftop attacker – the first was still up there- and she brought him to the ground in front of Marcus with the matter-of-fact efficiency of someone delivering a package.

“Tell me the full roster,” she said to him. “Teams, positions, backup signal.”

The man told her. People told Red Widow things when she asked in that particular register. It took four minutes.

Then she looked at Marcus, and Marcus nodded once, and she ended the conversation with the clinical precision of someone performing a necessary task.

She straightened.

“Four teams repositioning,” she said. “Two already at the hotel as backup. Miguel Abbott’s security will encounter them within the hour.” She processed the information with the speed of long training. “I can take the eastern approach. That leaves the harbor flank.”

“I have the harbor flank,” Marcus said.

She looked at him. The red jacket. The midnight harbor. The specific quality of a man who had just been ambushed twice in three minutes and had the composure of someone who had been somewhere considerably worse.

“You said be kind,” she said, finally, Not as an accusation. Not as gratitude. Simply as a fact she was releasing into the air between them, acknowledging its weight and setting it down.

“Yes,” Marcus said.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “Not intentionally. Not as a mission. But when the name came up – in certain circles, attached to certain events I registered it. Filed it.” She looked at the harbor. “I never thought he

was still active.”

“He is,” Marcus said.

“I can see that.” She turned, and the red jacket caught the harbor light. “The Lancaster family. Atlas specifically.

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I’ll make sure the conversation happens tonight rather than tomorrow.”

“Don’t kill him,” Marcus said.

She stopped.

“Yet,” Marcus added.

Something moved in her expression that might have been the beginning of a smile. “You have a use for him.”

“I came to Five-River Province for a reason. Atlas Lancaster is part of it. A dead Atlas is less useful than a frightened one.” He looked at her. “Can you frighten him without finishing him?”

“Yes,” she said, with the quiet confidence of someone for whom this was a professional distinction rather than a moral one.

“Then do that.”

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