The days bled into weeks. Weeks into months.
Damian followed Luis like a shadow.
Protected him from threats.
Handled hits.
Met the leaders of other allied gangs:
Rico, the arms dealer with gold teeth and a snake tattoo across his skull.
Velasquez, who ran human trafficking rings with the grace of a CEO.
Mama Zhu, elderly but cruel, who operated the East docks with a fleet of child soldiers.
Damian learned everything.
How product moved.
Where money flowed.
Who could be broken and who needed breaking.
He smiled. Nodded. Played his role.
But at night, he was a phantom.
Rico returned late from a meeting, only to find his mansion eerily silent. No guards. No lights. Just the hum of the refrigerator.
His wife was hanging upside down in the living room—safely tied, gagged, terrified. From the ceiling fan, slowly rotating.
Damian sat in the shadows, tapping a kitchen knife on his knee.
"Say a word," Damian whispered, "and she falls."
He didn't need to raise his voice. The floating knives in the air spoke for him—dozens of them, levitating in a perfect spiral, twirling lazily as if waiting for permission.
Rico nodded, too afraid to speak.
---
Velasquez's apartment:
Damian appeared in his baby's room. The child was unharmed, asleep, peacefully dreaming.
But the crib floated two meters in the air, with invisible hands holding it aloft. Damian sat on the dresser, watching Velasquez enter and freeze.
"You scream, your baby drops. Simple physics."
On the mirror behind them, a message burned in with a heat-drawn finger: "You'll obey. Or you'll bury your legacy."
---
Mama Zhu's Dockside Manor:
Damian sat at the dinner table, calmly sipping tea while her grandchildren stood behind him—frozen in place, unable to move.
Forks. Knives. Spoons. Hairpins. Dozens of household objects hovered just above their heads like a ritual.
"You can keep breathing," Damian said. "As long as you nod."
Mama Zhu's wrinkled hands trembled.
She nodded.
---
...
The internal council gathered a week later.
All bosses. All elders. Luis at the head.
He was mid-toast, laughing with a half-empty glass in hand.
Damian stood just behind him, unmoving.
"…And to those who serve—"
SHK!
Damian's hand blurred.
Fingers stiff, palm slicing through the air like a blade. A perfect psychic enhancement.
His hand punched through flesh and bone—right through Luis neck.
Blood geysered.
The head slid off slowly, mouth still trying to finish the sentence.
Gasps. Screams. Chairs scraped back.
But Damian wasn't done.
He stepped forward, holding Luis head in one
hand.
The door slammed shut behind them—without anyone touching it.
A fork twitched.
Just one.
But it was enough.
Damian's gaze swept the table. All the gathered bosses sat frozen—Rico, Velasquez, Mama Zhu—none dared breathe wrong.
"I said," Damian whispered, voice like broken glass scraping porcelain, "sit."
They were already seated, but his words made their spines straighten like pulled marionettes.
Damian gently placed Luis's head on a silver platter, resting it between a bottle of champagne and a half-eaten steak.
Blood still dripped from his fingertips.
"From this moment forward," Damian said, "I am the only voice that matters."
He didn't shout.
He didn't need to.
Every word carried weight, like a guillotine lowering one click at a time.
The knives and forks in front of each man twitched.
Hovered. Tilted slightly toward their owners' throats.
"I know your crimes. I know your sins. But I don't care," he continued, walking slowly along the edge of the table.
"You'll move product when I say. You'll spill blood where I point. And you'll keep your mouths shut unless I ask you to scream."
He stopped behind Velasquez.
The silverware on the table in front of him floated, swirling mid-air—forming the outline of a cage.
"You think you're untouchable?" Damian asked.
"Your baby still dreams of you. Don't make me change that."
He moved on.
Behind Rico, he paused.
"You," Damian said, "need to hire better guards. I walked through your mansion like it was an open park."
Rico stared forward.
Silent.
His gold teeth chattered behind closed lips.
Damian finally reached Mama Zhu.
Her hands, though wrinkled and ancient, squeezed each other tight beneath the table.
"Your grandchildren are delightful," Damian said softly. "Smart, obedient. Let's keep them that way."
He returned to the head of the table, where the blood-soaked chair of Luis still sat vacant.
Damian didn't sit.
He simply floated—an inch above the seat, hovering effortlessly, blood still dripping down his bare forearm.
With both hands on the table, he leaned forward and whispered:
"You have one king now. You live. You obey. Or you vanish."
The silverware dropped.
The door unlocked.
But no one moved.
Because fear didn't end when the threat was over.
"I am your new leader. You will follow. Or you'll watch your own teeth chew through your hearts."
Damian had left something behind in that room—a silence that screamed.
He smiled—not kind, not triumphant.
Just empty.
The fear in the room was so thick it clung to the walls.
No one moved.
Not even the air.
---
Damian Mercer had arrived.
And the underworld would never know peace again.
....
After two years …
The world hadn't just changed.
It had learned to kneel.
Damian Mercer wasn't whispered about anymore.
He was spoken of in fear-drenched reverence—like a legend that had crawled out of Hell wearing a tailored three-piece.
He was now the most powerful man no one could photograph.
And he loved every second of it.
His suits were always tailored—dark silks, Italian cuts, cufflinks of black diamond.
His fingers smelled of spiced tobacco and Cuban smoke.
He drank $10,000 whiskey like water and collected watches older than most cities.
He lived in a private villa buried in the hills—a fortress of marble, steel, and paranoia.
From the outside, it looked like a monarch's retreat.
Inside, it was something darker.
His mother lived with him now.
Clean.
Well-dressed.
Sitting in velvet chairs she couldn't pronounce the names of.
She didn't ask where the money came from.
And he never told her.
Beneath the villa, Damian had built his true throne: a hidden compound carved from stone and steel.
A war room humming with encrypted servers, reinforced walls, and digital blackmail folders for every politician within five hundred miles.
And Damian moved through it like a king in his castle.
His hair was longer now—reaching his shoulders, but always pulled into a tight, neat man bun.
His jaw was clean-shaven, his eyes colder than they had ever been.
He still didn't speak much.
He didn't need to.
People moved when he lifted a glass.
And tonight, he was savoring an aged GlenDronach single malt by the fireplace in his underground lounge—cigar burning slow between two fingers, ash tray full of ruined brands that had tried and failed to assassinate him.
Then—
The lights dimmed.
A camera feed glitched.
One screen. Then two. Then five.
And then the sound hit:
chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff
A low, rhythmic thunder.
Damian turned slowly, swirling the glass in his hand.
He walked toward the narrow window carved high above the chamber's ceiling.
Blue and red lights blinked in the distance.
Helicopters.
SWAT trucks.
Armored vans.
Coming.
They'd found him.
Damian didn't panic.
He took a deep puff of his cigar, let the smoke curl past his lips like a dragon's yawn, and placed the glass down gently.
With a click, he opened a control panel under the whiskey cabinet.
The compound sealed itself.
Alarms went silent. The temperature dropped by three degrees.
He stood there, staring out the window, the lights from above dancing across his black silk vest.
Behind him, a wall of weapons revealed itself—hovering briefly before locking into place.
But Damian didn't reach for any of them.
He just smiled.
Not with joy. Not with hate.
With certainty.
The kind of smile you wear when you already know how it ends.
And as the choppers closed in and shadows circled his fortress, the voices in Damian's head talked to him once again.
Louder than ever.
He quickly gave his mother his wallet and a tiny piece of paper.
" Take a car and go away. They're after me so they'll let you go. If they stop you just tell them I'm waiting here."
Even though he was supposed to run away so he won't get caught, he decided to trust the voices in his head and flew on top of the mansion.
He had the perfect view of incoming enemies.
He stood relaxed on the villa and loosened up his red tie.
He took out a cigarette and light it up.
Damian was excited to kill all of them.