CHAPTER 101: THE WIFE

Miles smiled, the kind of slow, patient smile that made the room feel colder. Bluff you say, he murmured, as if testing the sound of the word on the air. Your busted factory is only three hundred meters from here. Did you think that was a bluff?

The Old Master’s laugh cracked and turned brittle. You were the one who did that, he snarled. How the hell did you know it was mine?

Cool down a bit, Miles said, amusement soft around his words. It is not good for your heart. I do not want you to die from surprises tonight.

Rage flared raw and animal in the Old Master’s face. You wait and see, he spat. You think I am the kind of man to be taken unprepared? I have men everywhere. Assassins surround your villa right now, boys ready to tear your little family apart.

Miles only chuckled, an easy, confident sound that did not belong to the man currently tied to a chair. You still do not understand, he said. Do you really believe the people you hired could perform a precision strike on my family?

Lets see what they are doing right now, Miles takes Old Master’s Phone in hand.

At that exact moment the door opened and a group of men moved in. They filled the frame like shadows folding into the light—broad-shouldered, wrapped in plain jackets, faces set in the neutral, efficient masks of professionals.

For a heartbeat the Old Master’s face flickered. Confidence faltered. He recovered, shouting toward the doorway. You fools, he barked, why are you standing there? Catch him.

Miles sighed and let the words hang in the fluorescent air. "Unfortunately no one ever told you that I hate interruptions."

The Old Master’s men moved like a single organism at first—trained, confident, the kind of muscle that assumed numbers would finish a problem. They fanned out, weapons up, eyes hard. The Old Master leaned forward on the chair, smug, certain his men would make short work of a bound man. For one heartbeat the room smelled of oil and cheap cologne and fear; then Miles unclipped the last knot and rose.

He did not rush. He moved with the slow, patient calm of someone who had already counted the steps in his head. The first man lunged with a straight punch aimed for the face; Miles stepped off the line, wrist snapping in a textbook joint-control that folded the attacker’s arm behind him. The man didn’t even have time to shout before Miles used the captive arm as a lever and sent him crumpling into the concrete with his own momentum. The sound of the body hitting tile was a punctuation mark.

Chaos erupted, but Miles kept the rhythm. He absorbed movement and redirected it. A second guard came at him with a baton. Miles met it with forearms arranged like a shield, slapped the baton aside, caught the man’s wrist and twisted—an old, efficient submission that left the attacker gasping on his knees, clutching a useless hand. No flourishes, just precision.

Another pair tried the classic flanking maneuver. Miles pivoted, turned his weight, and used a low sweeping kick to erase the base from under the nearer man, then planted elbow to the ribs of the other as he doubled over. People who had expected violence to look like brute force now watched as it resembled choreography—economy of motion, angles exploited, every movement saving energy for the next. When a short knife glinted for a heartbeat, it was not the weapon but the angle that mattered: Miles closed the distance so fast the blade couldn’t gain leverage, his hand on the wrist, then on the wrist and elbow, and the attacker went down, disarmed, empty-eyed.

The Old Master’s initial smirk froze into a flicker of panic. His jaw twitched. How can this be, his face asked without words. The man who’d bragged about assassins and island allegiances found his throat tight.

Even when outnumbered, Miles used the room as a partner. A metal shelving unit became a pivot for a hip throw that sent one henchman into another; a hanging chain provided a momentary trip; a discarded chair became a blocking shield, then a tool to unbalance a man who thought brute force would do the trick. The men had training, but their training was linear—they expected a sequence they could plan for. Miles was not linear. He read micro-gestures and capitalized on them, turning aggression back onto itself.

A grunt, a flash of panic, then silence as one of the men tried to radio for backup and found the device jerked from his hand and snapped under Miles’s heel. Hands went up instinctively; a few turned and fled for the doorway. Miles unhurriedly moved through the room like a tide, catching runs and folding them back. Where someone flailed, he applied a mindful counter. Where someone struck hard, Miles redirected the force, sending attackers stumbling into each other with an almost cruel economy.

Up close, the Old Master watched the expression on his own men change—shock, then a dawning respect that bordered on fear. Their faces said what the Old Master would not: this man fights like he has been a killer and a teacher both.

A tall man with scarred knuckles tried to corner Miles against a wall, thinking weight and reach would dominate. Miles let himself be pressed, smiled without humor, and then shifted his hips, snuck a foot between the man’s legs and used the wall to amplify a throw. The man’s back hit the plaster with a sick thud and stayed there. No one moved to help him for a beat; training had failed them where improvisation and timing had succeeded.

The Old Master’s confident posture crumpled as his inner circle was dismantled one by one. He mouthed a curse, tried to lunge for a fallen gun, and Miles, always three moves ahead, intercepted. The gun clattered out of reach. Miles’s fingers closed around the Old Master’s collar, hauled him upright, and the room narrowed to the two of them. The other men were breathing heavily on the floor, eyes wide and calculating how fast they could get to a phone.

"How can you fight like this?" the Old Master asked, less a question than an accusation, sweat slicking his temples now.

Miles’s smile was small and flat. "I learned from people who never stopped needing to survive," he said. "And I practiced until my hands remembered more than my head."

There was something in the Old Master’s expression now that looked like the slow extinguishing of a candle—first disbelief, then outrage,

Miles eased the Old Master back into the chair and let the zip ties hold him like a slow-moving noose. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, then picked up the Old Master’s phone from the table and tapped the screen.

"So where were we," Miles said, voice calm and almost conversational. "Right. Assassins."

He set the phone to video call and scrolled, fingers steady. The name he wanted came up: Merlin. He hit a call.

The screen flared and a face filled it — the owner of Blackfield, the man the underworld both feared and paid heed to. Merlin’s expression softened into a half-smile when he recognized the caller.

"Hey Merlin," Miles said. "What’s up?"

Merlin leaned forward, hands folded, a room of muted daylight behind him. He sounded amused, not hurried. "I am busy keeping your family secure," he replied.

The Old Master stared at the screen as if Merlin’s words were knives. His mouth worked, speech failed for a second, then fury reclaimed him. "You bastard," he spat, voice raw. "I paid you for this. Do you know what I’ll do to you? I will kill you."

Merlin’s smile didn’t change. He shrugged one shoulder like the insult was a joke. "Kill me, hun?" he said. "You chose badly."

The Old Master’s hands tightened against the chair, knuckles whitening. He tried to speak again, but Miles cut him off.

"Hold on," Miles said. "There is a man sitting at the window. Show his face."

Merlin adjusted his camera, fingers precise. The image blurred for a heartbeat, then focused. A narrow slice of the Pearl Villa came into view. At the window, framed by glass and the manicured green beyond, stood a man. Daniel Keller looked out at the city.

Miles held the phone up so the Old Master could see. The man in the chair went very still. His lips parted into something that tried to form denial and collapsed into disbelief.

"Did you call my mom a widow?" Miles asked softly. He let the question hang, a slow, deliberate weight.

The Old Master’s voice was tiny, almost broken. "He... he’s alive?" he managed. The incredulity had the shape of a confession.

Miles let out a dry laugh. "Blackfield never killed him," he said. "You were told lies so you would sleep well. You were fed half-truths until you believed them."

On the screen Merlin’s amusement remained, but now there was steel beneath it. The Old Master scrambled for bearings, for threats he could still command. "You think this is over," he croaked, throat dry. "If you kill me tonight, you will die with me. My wife will take care of you. Her background surpasses all the backgrounds you know."

From behind the Old Master, a voice answered him — quiet at first, then with the cool clarity of a hand that already held cards. Miles’ head turned slightly toward the shadowed doorway, senses sharpening. The voice was female, low and composed, and it carried through the room like a new threat.

"Wife, you say," she said.

Miles watched the Old Master flinch as if the room had doubled in size. Merlin’s grin on the screen narrowed but did not break. The Old Master’s bravado was suddenly paper-thin, torn at the edges.

The camera caught the Old Master’s face up close: sweat, a tremor of rage and fear, the sudden realization that the chessboard had shifted under his feet.

Miles lowered the phone and let the silence stretch. Behind him in the dimness the female voice

settled like a promise.

To be continued..