The Almighty Dominance (by Sunshine) novel Chapter 689

Alex's hand crossed the counter.

The slap wasn't hard. That was the frightening part — the economy of it, one crisp crack of palm against cheek and then Alex's hand was simply back at his side, relaxed, as if it had never moved.

The loupe clattered to the floor. Somewhere in the back room, something stopped rustling and listened.

The broker touched his own face like he was checking it was still attached. Then his shock caught fire.

"You dare — you dare hit me?" He shot up from his chair, knocking it over, and his voice cracked into a roar. "Guards! Guards, throw this man out!"

The back room emptied.

Five of them came through the curtain — big men, the kind bought by the pound, shoulders filling the doorway one after another. Iron bars in their fists. Faces arranged to make ordinary people apologize for existing. They spread across the shop floor with the lazy confidence of men who had done this before and never once lost.

Alex exhaled through his nose. Almost a sigh.

Then he moved.

If the broker was asked later to describe it, he wouldn't be able to.

There was a blur, and a sound — five sounds, actually, crisp and quick as a deck of cards being cut. Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack.

By the time the broker's eyes caught up, the room had rearranged itself: five large men on the floor, cheeks blooming red, weapons scattered like dropped cutlery. Not one of them had finished raising an arm.

The shop went very, very quiet. One of the guards groaned, thought better of it, and pretended to be unconscious.

"Do good business," Alex said. His voice hadn't risen. It hadn't needed to.

The broker looked at his five men on the floor. Then at the necklace. Then at the man in front of him, and something in his brain finally performed the correct arithmetic.

"Let me..." He righted his chair with hands that wouldn't quite steady. "Let me look at it again. Under better light."

The broker picked up the necklace again. This time his hands told the truth.

He turned it under the lamp slowly, reverently, the loupe trembling just slightly against his eye. "Old work," he murmured, and it came out like a confession. "Very old. This clasp — I haven't seen this kind of clasp since..." He trailed off, licked his lips, and wrote a number on a slip of paper.

He slid it across the counter face-down, the way men fold when the cards have already beaten them.

Alex glanced at it. Nodded once.

The broker let out a breath he'd been holding since the guards hit the floor.

Then Alex reached into his coat and set a ring on the counter.

The broker stared at it. Looked up at Alex. Looked back down. Picked it up with two fingers, weighed it, and this time there was no sighing, no squinting, no theater — just the scratch of his pen and another number, higher, written quickly, like getting it right the first time might keep his remaining teeth where they were.

Alex reached into his coat again.

A second ring. A third. By the fourth, the broker had stopped looking up between appraisals; his pen just hovered, waiting, and behind his eyes a war was visibly being lost — the merchant in him screaming that things this old, this heavy, shouldn't come out of one man's pocket like loose change, and the survivor in him drowning that voice with both hands.

On the floor by the curtain, one of the guards cracked an eye open, saw the fifth ring land on the counter, and closed it again.

“Give me your tile,” the broker demanded.

Without a word, Alex set his tile on the counter. The broker touched it with his own, and twenty thousand moved between the two tiles in an instant. He shoved the tile back across the counter, his eyes flicking nervously toward the door.

“A pleasure doing… honest business,” he muttered.

"See," Alex said, folding the bills flat against his chest. "That wasn't hard."

The bell jingled harshly as the door spat Alex back onto the street. Through the dirty glass, the broker remained seated, motionless, his eyes fixed on the spot where the young man had been long after he disappeared into the crowd.

Only then did he turn his gaze downward to the five battered men scattered across the floor.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify