She Used Me for a Dare… Now I Own Her Mother

Chapter 562: My Most Loyal Subordinate

”Tear that fucking tongue out of his mouth!” the young man roared, the veins in his neck bulging with hysterical fury. ”I want him on his knees, begging for his life before he goes over that railing!”

The air on the terrace instantly turned suffocating.

Two men broke from either side of the semicircle. They lowered their weapons, drawing heavy combat knives from their belts as they closed the distance with disciplined, synchronized strides, intending to pin the old man against the balustrade and carve him apart.

”Oh, come on now, young man,” Cole sighed, raising his empty hands in mock defense. ”There’s no need to get so offended. I was only telling the truth...”

The two hitmen didn’t care about his excuses. They lunged together... one driving low to sweep Cole’s knees, the other thrusting a blade straight toward his collarbone to pin him down.

Seeing them lunge, the easy amusement vanished from Cole’s face, replaced by a sudden, icy stillness.

Before anyone could register the shift, Cole stepped straight into the teeth of the attack. His hands shot out like iron clamps, catching both men by the collars of their windbreakers before their knives could even graze his coat. With an effortless pivot of his hips, he redirected their forward momentum and violently hurled them back the way they came.

Both attackers flew through the air like discarded trash, crashing hard against the wet slate right at the feet of their squad, their knives clattering uselessly into the dark.

Cole casually smoothed the lapel of his suit jacket. ”Did you really think I was just a frail weakling? These old bones still work pretty well, you know.”

Dozens of yards away, hidden in the dense ornamental trellises, Naomi and Alex watched through the dim amber light. Naomi’s breath caught in her throat, her fingers digging into the stone pillar beside her.

Alex’s eyes narrowed into sharp slits, a cold, predatory gleam surfacing in his gaze.

’Are you finally about to show your real face, old man?’ Alex thought, certain that Raymond had finally abandoned his facade.

Yet beside the balustrade, Karl’s stomach dropped through the floor.

Watching Cole swat those two men away didn’t bring him an ounce of relief. It only made the panic clawing at his throat ten times worse.

’Fuck... you crazy old bastard, you’re going to get us killed for real.’

Karl was a fifteen-year veteran of the trade; he could read a squad’s hierarchy in a glance.

Those two attackers were just front-line muscle... the expendable scouts. The real danger hadn’t even twitched. Flanking the young man stood two silent, broad-shouldered operators who hadn’t drawn steel, hadn’t flinched when their comrades were tossed, and hadn’t altered their breathing by a fraction.

The heavy, suffocating pressure rolling off those two made Karl’s skin prickle. They were far stronger than normal killers... lethal enough that even an old monster sitting at the Peak of the Enhanced Realm might not walk away alive.

Karl’s survival instincts screamed at full volume. Loyalty was for fools, and money was completely useless to a corpse.

He had to flip sides right now.

He prepared to take a step forward, raise his empty hands, and yell that he was just a hired legal consultant... an ordinary lawyer with no dog in this fight. He would tell them he had nothing to do with Cole’s insolence, surrender every document he had, and make himself useful to the young man if it meant walking off this cliff alive.

Karl took a breath, ready to scream his innocence, but before he could move an inch, an iron grip clamped down on his shoulder.

A cold dread seized him. He turned his head, his eyes widening as he saw Raymond Cole staring back with a relaxed, playful grin.

”Don’t worry,” Cole murmured smoothly. ”I’ll handle it.”

’Handle it?!’ Karl screamed in his mind, his eyes bulging. ’How the fuck are you going to handle it? By getting me butchered with you?!’

Cole didn’t wait for an answer. Completely ignoring the sheer panic on Karl’s face, the old man turned squarely toward the armed semicircle, puffing out his chest with loud, theatrical pride.

”What? You thought I was weak and alone out here?” Cole announced, gesturing grandly toward Karl. ”Open your eyes. Look at this man beside me! He is my most loyal subordinate—and he’s more than strong enough to handle all of you by himself!”

The terrace went completely dead.

Every drop of blood drained from Karl’s face. His jaw went slack, his brain completely flatlining as eight pairs of cold, murderous eyes instantly swiveled away from Cole and locked directly onto him. The gun barrels tracked across the slate, centering straight between Karl’s eyes.

The young man stared at Karl for a second, then threw his head back, a loud, derisive laugh barking out of his throat.

”This man?” The young man sneered, pointing the muzzle of his pistol straight at Karl’s trembling frame. ”Look at him! The bastard looks like he’s about to piss his damn pants!”

His laughter vanished in an instant, his expression twisting back into savage cruelty.

”Fuck this guy up first! Break his limbs and let’s see how much confidence the old man has left!”

Before Karl could even take a step back, two hitmen surged forward.

”Wait! Hold on! Stop!” Karl yelled, stumbling back against the edge of the stone table, his hands thrown up in front of his chest. ”I’m just his lawyer! I’m a legal consultant! I don’t work for him, I swear to God! He’s lying to you!”

Nobody listened.

The first man closed the gap in a blur, his heavy combat boot slamming straight into Karl’s ribs. The impact knocked the wind out of his lungs with a sickening crack. Before Karl could recover, the second man’s fist caught him across the jaw, snapping his head sideways and sending him crashing down onto the wet slate.

Pain exploded behind Karl’s eyes. Warm blood filled his mouth, dripping down his chin and staining his white collar.

”I’m just the lawyer!” Karl choked out through the blood, coughing as he scrambled backward on his hands and knees. ”Check my briefcase! I have nothing to do with him!”

The two men didn’t even pause. They stepped in for the kill, one raising a steel-toed boot to crush his face, the other swinging a heavy collapsible baton aimed right at his collarbone.

They didn’t care who he was. To them, he was just meat on the ground.

Lying in the dirt, staring at the descending steel, something inside Karl snapped.

Pleading was useless. Explaining was useless. If he kept groveling like a dog, he was going to die right here on this terrace while Raymond Cole simply stood by and watched.

The fear drained from Karl’s eyes, replaced by a cold, predatory stillness. In a fraction of a second, the desperate lawyer was gone; in his place stood an operator forged in fifteen years of gutter wars.

Karl rolled hard to the left, letting the heavy baton smash uselessly into the stone where his head had been a second earlier.

Using the momentum of the roll, he drove his elbow upward with explosive force, catching the first attacker right under the kneecap. A sharp crack echoed over the cliff as the joint buckled backward.

The man grunted in agony, but Karl was already on his feet.

He slipped past a wild punch from the second man, grabbed the operative’s wrist, and twisted it with violent precision, driving the palm of his other hand straight into the man’s throat. The hitman gagged, staggering back, but these men were professionals... they didn’t go down easy.

The injured man drew a combat blade with his left hand, slashing across Karl’s chest, while the other lunged forward to tackle him to the ground.

Karl ducked under the blade, feeling the cold steel slice clean through his jacket fabric, and hammered two brutal, piston-like punches into the man’s exposed ribs. He spun, blocking a heavy hook with his forearm, and delivered a vicious front kick that pushed the second man back into the garden hedge.

Moving with tight, lethal discipline, Karl stood his ground between the two men, breathing steady, blood dripping from his split lip. He blocked, parried, and struck back with textbook precision, completely holding his own against two hardened killers at the same time.

A loud whistle broke the sound of the fight.

The young man was watching with wide, entertained eyes, a cruel smirk spreading across his face. He shook his head and looked past Karl, shouting over the scuffle at Raymond Cole.

”Well, damn, old man!” the young man laughed, pointing his gun loosely toward the brawl. ”I thought you were just talking shit, but your dog really does have some bite! Tenacious bastard, isn’t he?”

His smirk widened into a cold, vicious grin as he signaled the remaining men standing behind him.

”Too bad for him... tenacity doesn’t keep a man alive for very long.”

He gestured lazily with his pistol, nodding to a third man on the perimeter.

”Put an end to this sideshow.”