Saintess's Worthless Husband Turned Dragon Commander novel Chapter 60

CHAPTER 60

Bridger Davis’s calculated expression cracked slightly, fury bleeding through his professional mask. “You’re ignoring me,” he said, his voice tight with controlled rage. “Do you understand who I am? What I represent?”

“A man who hasn’t answered my question,” Marcus replied calmly. “Did you bring the four hundred million or not?”

“The Three Blade Group doesn’t pay ransoms!” Bridger’s voice rose. “We don’t negotiate with kidnappers! You’ve crossed a line, Jackson-you and your… friend… have severely miscalculated!”

Aaron leaned against a support pillar, checking his fingernails with theatrical boredom. “Bridger, we’ve known each other what, five years? You’re smarter than this. You know exactly why we’re here and what happens if you refuse to pay.”

“What happens,” Gerrard Cooper interjected, his scarred face twisted with anger, “is we paint this warehouse with your blood. You think you can just grab a Three Blade deputy manager and extort us? We have fifty men surrounding this building! Another hundred on standby! You’re trapped!”

Marcus’s dragon senses had already detected the hidden presences-on the warehouse roof, behind stacked crates, in the shadows near the broken windows. At least thirty additional soldiers beyond the twenty visible ones. This wasn’t a negotiation. It was a trap.

“Interesting strategy,” Marcus said conversationally. “Bring overwhelming force, pretend to negotiate, then kill us when we lower our guard. Very Three Blade Group.”

Bridger’s eyes narrowed. “You’re perceptive. Too perceptive for someone we’ve never heard of before tonight.” He turned to Aaron. “Who is this man, Jackson? Your new enforcer? Your secret weapon?”

“My friend,” Aaron said simply. “And someone you should have brought money for instead of an army.”

“Friends don’t last long in our business,” Gerrard said with ugly certainty. “Especially friends stupid enough to kidnap Three Blade members.”

Marcus walked toward Sonny Ridge, who’d been whimpering since his knees were shattered. “Here’s what’s going to happen. Either you pay the ransom right now, or I kill Sonny. Then I kill everyone you brought. Then I find Maurice Yarrow and explain to him personally why stealing from me was a fatal mistake.”

“You can’t kill us all!” Bridger laughed, though it sounded forced. “You’re outnumbered three to one! Even with Jackson’s men, you’re facing=”

“Facing nothing I can’t handle,” Marcus interrupted. “But let’s try a different approach. Manager Cooper?”

Gerrard looked surprised at being directly addressed. “What?”

“You seem more reasonable than your colleague,” Marcus said, though his dragon eyes suggested he saw through any facade. “What if we let bygones be bygones? Release Sonny, shake hands, everyone walks away alive?”

Gerrard exchanged glances with Bridger, calculation visible in both faces.

“You’d release Deputy Manager Ridge?” Gerrard asked cautiously. “Without payment? Just… let him go?”

“With a sincere apology from him,” Marcus added. “Public acknowledgment that he cheated, lost fairly, and accepts the consequences. That, and an assurance that the Three Blade Group won’t retaliate.”

“That’s… surprisingly reasonable,” Gerrard said slowly. He made a show of considering it, then nodded. “Alright. For the sake of peace and future cooperation with Mr. Jackson’s organization, we can accept those terms.”

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He signaled his men to lower their weapons. The visible soldiers complied, though their fingers remained near triggers. “We value partnership over petty revenge. Grayson City is big enough for all of us to profit. No need for bloodshed.”

Aaron’s expression suggested he didn’t believe a word of it, but he remained silent.

Marcus’s attention drifted to an unassuming figure standing near the entrance-an older man in a simple black suit who’d been introduced as Gerrard Cooper’s “driver.” He stood with perfect stillness, his posture that of a servant, his face forgettable.

But Marcus’s dragon senses screamed warnings. The aura of death surrounding this man was unmistakable- decades of killing, hundreds of bodies, violence so ingrained it had become his fundamental nature.

This was no driver.

“Interesting companion you brought,” Marcus said casually, nodding toward the old man. “Your driver is quite… accomplished.”

Gerrard’s face went carefully blank. “Just my driver. Noah Miller. Nothing special.”

“Noah Miller,” Marcus repeated thoughtfully. His dragon memories stirred-fragments of information about the Three Blade Group’s legendary enforcers. “The Miller who disappeared from the underground circuit fifteen years ago after that incident in Five-River Province?”

Noah Miller’s eyes flickered briefly to Marcus, assessment replacing servility for just a moment before the mask returned.

“I think you’re mistaken,” Gerrard said too quickly. “Just a driver. Now, shall we proceed with the exchange?”

Marcus walked to Sonny Ridge, grabbing the broken deputy manager by his collar. Sonny whimpered, his ruined legs dangling uselessly.

“Apologize,” Marcus ordered. “To everyone here. For cheating, for trying to welch on debts, for bringing dishonor to the Three Blade Group.”

“I’m sorry!” Sonny gasped. “So sorry! I cheated! I lost! I accept everything! Please just let me go home!”

Marcus nodded, seemingly satisfied. He shoved Sonny toward Gerrard Cooper-but in that motion, his hand moved with dragon-enhanced speed, delivering a precise strike to Sonny’s neck. Not enough to kill, but enough to damage crucial nerves, leaving the deputy manager incapacitated beyond his already-destroyed knees.

Gerrard caught Sonny, not noticing the additional injury in his relief at getting his man back.

“There,” Marcus said pleasantly. “Exchange complete. We all walk away friends.”

He turned toward the exit, Aaron falling into step beside him.

They’d made it perhaps ten feet when Bridger Davis’s voice cut through the warehouse.

“NOW! OLD MILLER, KILL THEM!”

The trap sprung.

Noah Miller exploded forward with speed that defied his apparent age. His cultivation technique flared visibly- Dark Iron Palm, a killing method that concentrated death energy into strikes capable of shattering internal organs through clothing and flesh.

Simultaneously, the hidden soldiers emerged from concealment-from the roof, from behind crates, from

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shadowed corners. Fifty guns aimed at Marcus and Aaron from every angle.

“Did you really think,” Bridger laughed, stepping back behind the wall of soldiers, “that we’d let you walk away? That the Three Blade Group would tolerate this humiliation? You’re DEAD! Both of you!”

Gerrard was already moving to safety, dragging Sonny with him, clearing the kill zone.

Marcus turned slowly, his dragon eyes beginning to glow with ancient power. “You dare ambush the husband of a Sacred Saintess?”

His voice carried authority that made several soldiers hesitate, some primal instinct screaming warnings their conscious minds couldn’t articulate.

“You’re all courting death,” Marcus continued, dragon aura beginning to manifest visibly now-a shimmer of power that made the air itself seem to distort.

Aaron’s men-positioned strategically throughout the warehouse-emerged from their own concealment, weapons raised. Aaron himself smiled with anticipation rather than fear.

“We knew,” Aaron said conversationally to Bridger. “Obviously we knew you’d try this. Did you really think we’d walk into a Three Blade trap unprepared?”

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