Chapter 236 | The Thug, Kreg!
Dexter blinked.
He hadn’t expected this.
He had almost forgotten about Kreg and the money and what he had said about his wives.
But here he was, standing at the gate with his four minions behind him and with the same arrogance too!
And Dexter was surprised.
Dexter was surprised by his own reaction.
Dexter had been planning to go find Kreg eventually when he had time.
But Kreg had come to him.
’Is this what they call a blessing in disguise?’
"Kreg," he said.
Kreg smiled confidently as the gold tooth glinted in his mouth.
"Oh, now you remember me," Kreg said. "Nice. I assume you haven’t forgotten about my protection fee."
Dexter blinked and was about to say signing when Kreg moved.
He didn’t wait for Dexter to speak as he pushed past Dexter. Kreg’s shoulder caught Dexter’s chest, shoving him sideways, intending to Knick him down but Dexter didn’t move a single inch.
Kreg was a bit stunned but he didn’t put that to his mind as he entered the compound.
His eyes moved across the property as he scanned the place.
The four lackeys followed him as they also pushed past Dexter with the same casual, dismissive physical contact.
They all swaggered into the compound like they owned it.
Dexter registered their cultivation levels as they passed.
Kreg. Eighth Stage Awakened.
The others. Seventh. Sixth. Sixth.
Dexter’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Three weeks ago, Kreg had been at Third Stage Awakened. The others at First and Second. Now they were Awakned. All of them. Advanced by multiple levels in less than a month.
That kind of advancement was not natural.That kind of jump required either an extraordinary external resource or an extraordinary external intervention.
’Someone is boosting them.’
That was the only reason.
But Dexter didn’t say anything as he didn’t care about this.
As Kreg entered, he didn’t pause as he spoke.
"Oh," Kreg said. "I see you’ve renovated. This is nice."
The words were casual. Appreciative in the particular, proprietary way that a landlord appreciates improvements to a property he intends to seize. The tone of a man who looked at someone else’s work and saw his own future.
He didn’t wait for a response. He opened the front door. Stepped inside.
Dexter’s front door. Dexter’s house. Opened and entered by a man who had not been invited and had not asked.
The four lackeys followed. They entered the living room with the same swaggering, take-ownership gait that their leader had used. Looking around. Evaluating. Claiming.
Dexter stood at the gate.
He watched them go.
His face was expressionless. Completely, absolutely, perfectly blank. The mask he had spent nineteen years perfecting in the Ashford estate. The mask that revealed nothing. Not anger. Not fear. Not the particular, cold, focused calculation that was running behind his eyes like a computer processing a targeting solution.
But a smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
Not a warm smile. Not a friendly smile. The particular, barely perceptible, almost invisible upward curve of a mouth that was anticipating something.
He walked through the gate. Closed it behind him. The latch clicked.
He walked up the path. Into his house. Through the front door.
Kreg was in the living room. Standing. Looking around. His eyes moving across the space with the slow, evaluating scan of a man who was mentally cataloguing everything he could take.
Then his eyes found Mira.
She was in her wheelchair by the window. Crimson hair. Pale skin. Closed eyes. Cultivating. Her Spectral Arms were folded behind her back, motionless. She was wearing the white cropped top and black skirt that Dexter had dressed her in that morning. She looked, despite the wheelchair and the paralysis and the three years of suffering, like what she was. A noblewoman. A warrior. A woman whose beauty had not been diminished by her condition but had been refined by it, sharpened to a point that was almost painful to look at.
Kreg’s smile widened.
The widening was specific. Targeted. The particular, predatory expansion of lips over teeth that occurred when a man saw something he wanted and had no intention of asking permission.
"Oh," Kreg said. His voice had dropped. Softened. The particular, intimate tone that bullies used when they were transitioning from general intimidation to specific acquisition.
The lackey who had whistled at Dexter’s wives three weeks ago, the same one, the one with the sharp eyes and the loose mouth, spoke.
"Ooh, boss. The girls are even prettier than before."
He walked toward the living room. His eyes were on Mira. Then on Lyra, who was on the couch with the Primordial Beast Egg, her AI glasses on, her dark eyes open, watching the men enter with an expression that was, through the barrier of her deafness, taking longer to process than it would for someone who could hear their words.
"Boss, the girls are even prettier than before," the lackey repeated. "If we wait any longer, other gangs might beat us to the chase."
He whistled. The sound was sharp. Loud. The particular, aggressive, proprietary whistle of a man who was making a claim and wanted everyone in the room to know it.
He walked toward the living room. Toward Mira. Toward Lyra. His eyes moving between them with the casual, evaluating hunger of someone browsing a display case.
Dexter watched.
He stood near the front door as a small smile tugged at his face.
He had closed the front door and locked it. Be had also don’t the same for the gate too.
He snapped his fingers and above the house, in the sky that had been blue and clear and ordinary, the air rippled. As the Type-5 House Protection Talisman, buried beneath the living room rug, responded to Dexter’s command.
The formation’s primary function was defense but it had several secondary function.
One of which was a ilencing.
Every sound within the dome, every voice, every scream, every impact, every crash, every cry, was contained, sealed within the boundary of the formation and prevented from traveling beyond it.
What happened inside would not be heard outside.