Infinite Rebate: I Get Richer Every Time I Spend

Lucas’s hand stopped in the air.

The slap he had been about to drive into Tharok’s face never landed. The name had caught him cleanly enough to freeze the motion halfway.

"What did you just say?"

Tharok, still braced for another hit, squeezed his eyes shut and shouted the answer like it might be the only thing keeping his remaining teeth in place.

"Yes! Yes! Durnik! It’s Durnik! Durnik sent us!"

He kept repeating the name, voice cracking, eyes still closed, as if saying it enough times would stop the next blow from coming. After a few seconds he risked opening one eye, flinching hard~

Nothing came.

Lucas had already let go of him.

The sudden absence of violence was almost worse than the slap. Tharok stayed on his knees, breathing hard, confused and shaking, while Lucas stood there in silence with a far more serious look on his face than before.

From under the table, Gracie had heard every word.

The name hit her just as hard. Durnik.

The shock sat cold in her chest as she stayed hidden, watching everything unfold through the narrow gap beneath the tabletop.

Lucas, meanwhile, was turning the name over in his mind.

He had misjudged him.

From the clips Gracie had shown ~ the desperate videos, the pathetic little performance for attention ~ Durnik had looked like nothing more than a lust-driven fool. Easy to read. Easy to dismiss. But a man who could still organize a clean extraction team after that kind of public damage was not completely useless. Obsessed, maybe. Reckless, yes. But not empty-headed.

That made him more annoying.

Lucas turned back to Tharok, who was still kneeling in the middle of the wreckage like a man replaying every bad decision that had brought him to this floor.

He crouched down slowly until their faces were level. Close enough that he didn’t need to raise his voice over the ringing quiet of the ruined lounge.

He let the silence sit first.

Long enough for Tharok’s breathing to turn uneven just from waiting.

"You’re not going to die today," Lucas said at last. His tone was low, almost calm. "Not because I’m generous. Not because you deserve it."

He studied the open fear on Tharok’s face.

"I’m letting you walk out of here because a dead man can’t deliver a message."

Tharok’s throat moved, but no sound came out. He didn’t dare speak. He didn’t dare shift his weight.

"So you’re going to get up," Lucas continued, "and you’re going to walk out that door on your own legs. Then you’re going to find Durnik."

Almost casually, he reached out and straightened the collar of Tharok’s shirt where it had been twisted in his fist earlier. The small, deliberate adjustment somehow felt colder than the violence that came before it.

"And you’re going to tell him exactly what happened here. Every detail. Don’t clean it up. Don’t make it easier to hear."

His eyes stayed locked on Tharok’s.

"Tell him his men came for a woman under my protection, and they left this place broken on the floor because of it. Tell him you came second, thinking you’d finish what they couldn’t, and you ended up in the exact same position."

A short pause.

"Tell him I said hello."

Tharok flinched at that, as if the words themselves carried weight.

Lucas rose to his feet and looked down at him one last time ~ small, bloodied, and shaking against the ruined tile.

"You have until you reach him to decide how you want to say all that."

Then he turned and walked away, voice drifting back over his shoulder without a single glance behind him.

"Don’t waste my patience twice in one day."

Tharok scrambled to his feet so fast he nearly lost his balance again.

"Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir~"

The words spilled out of him in a rushed, broken loop, head slightly bowed, as if saying them enough times might keep Lucas from changing his mind. He didn’t look back at the man who had just ruined him. He didn’t dare.

The moment he had enough air in his lungs, he turned on his own men.

"What the fuck are you still standing there for?!" he exploded, voice cracking with leftover fear and fresh humiliation. "Put the damn weapons down! Are you all brain-dead?! Move!"

A couple of them flinched hard, still half-raised in combat stance like they were waiting for an order that was never going to come. The confusion on their faces only fed Tharok’s rage.

"I said move, you useless bastards! Drag him!" He jabbed a shaking finger toward the crippled leader still crumpled on the floor. "Get that idiot up and into the bus! Now!"

Two men rushed forward at once, hooking their arms under the injured leader’s shoulders. The man let out a raw, broken sound as his ruined knee dragged across the tile, but no one slowed down for him. Tharok kept shouting over everything, face flushed, spit flying with every order.

"Clean this shit up! One minute! I don’t want to see a single one of you still standing around like statues!"

They moved in a frantic blur after that ~ hauling bodies, grabbing dropped weapons, kicking broken glass aside just enough to clear a path. There was nothing organized about it. Just panic dressed up as urgency. One of the men nearly slipped in a smear of blood. Another got barked at so hard for hesitating that he dropped the mask in his hand and left it.

Tharok shoved the last of them toward the exit himself.

"Out! All of you! Get in the fucking buses!"

The two vehicles outside roared to life almost at the same time. Doors slammed. Engines revved hard. Within moments both buses tore away from the curb with a violent lurch, leaving only tire marks, scattered debris, and the heavy silence of a lounge that no longer looked anything like the expensive place it had been an hour earlier.

Only then did Lucas turn.

Gracie was still on the floor near the table, watching him with a pale, shaken expression, the earlier shock not fully gone from her face.

Lucas’s voice was calm when he finally spoke.

"Looks like Durnik is smarter than I thought."

He glanced once toward the entrance the buses had disappeared through.

"We need to move soon."

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