Chapter 246: So It Was Him

Chapter 246

"Good," Alex said, crouching down slightly to meet the leader’s terrified gaze directly. "Now, I want to know who exactly sent you."

The moment those unexpected words left Alex’s mouth the lanky leader’s eyes immediately flashed with something suspiciously close to either recognition or fear of a different kind, before smoothing back over into forced its previous expression so fast that it would have nearly been impossible for an ordinary person to catch.

But too bad for him, Alex was no ordinary person. With how astonishing all his senses had become, there was no damn way he could have missed that small flicker that briefly crossed the lanky dude’s eyes.

So they really were sent by someone after all, Alex thought to himself as his earlier casual suspicion began solidifying into sure certainty. At first, he honestly hadn’t put much thought into whether these four idiots had been acting entirely on their own or following someone else’s orders.

He had only asked the question on a small hunch, a nagging feeling that someone who held a grudge against him might have paid these losers to vandalize his car as some kind of petty, roundabout revenge. But now judging by that brief flash of panic in the leader’s eyes, it seemed his hunch had been dead on.

The leader let out a weak, almost nervous laugh, clearly trying to recover his composure.

"What are you even talking about, sir?" he stammered, forcing an unconvincing grin despite the cold sweat forming heavily across his forehead. "No one hired us. We just sprayed some graffiti on your car because, well, because we’ve never gotten the chance to tag something as expensive-looking as that before. I mean, who even pays someone money just to spray paint a car? That’s not even a thing."

Alex tilted his head slightly, studying the man’s increasingly desperate expression with an unreadable look.

"Is that so?" he murmured, almost thoughtfully. "Hmm."

Then without so much as a warning sign, he reached forward at lightning speed and grabbed the leader’s right hand. Then with a little bit of pressure, he twisted it brutally at a sickeningly unnatural angle.

The sound that came out from the man’s throat was so loud and heart wrenching that it straight up tore through the entire alley and even startled a few stray pigeons into flying away.

As for the other three who were all still sprawled across the pavement nursing their own injuries, the sight made them flinch violently and their already pale faces drained of all remaining colors it had left.

The terror really gripped them so hard that all of them couldn’t help wetting themselves right there on the filthy alley floor.

And why wouldn’t they? When none of them had ever witnessed someone casually destroy another person’s hand with such brutality that seemed almost effortlessly, all while maintaining an expression so calm and unbothered it was almost more terrifying than if he’d been screaming with rage.

Alex’s voice dropped even colder as he addressed the whimpering leader directly, with his grip still remaining firmly locked around the man’s mangled wrist.

"I really don’t like being lied to," he said calmly, each word carrying a chilling weight that sank into all their hearts. "Answer me with another lie, and the next thing I might just break next will be your other arm. Got it?"

The leader, whose tears and snot were now practically streaming freely down his face, nodded frantically, as his entire body continued to shake uncontrollably from both pain and bone-deep fear he had never once felt for anyone.

"Good," Alex said, finally releasing the mangled wrist and allowing the man to cradle it weakly against his chest. "Now, I’ll ask you again. Who sent you?"

This time, there was no hesitation whatsoever, because the idiot clearly knew better than to lie to him. The words practically spilled out of the guy’s mouth a broken dam full of water.

"Okay, okay, I’ll tell you everything, just please, please don’t hurt me anymore! There was this guy, some tall young man, pretty good-looking I guess, had these honey-colored eyes and this really gloomy, kind of face the whole time. He showed up out of nowhere looking for us, said he needed our help doing, you know, what we’re good at, on someone’s car specifically. We didn’t even want to do it at first, I swear to god, but he offered us two thousand bucks right there on the spot, and promised an extra thousand more if everything went smoothly without any problems."

He gasped for breath, before continuing. "I swear, I’m telling you the complete truth this time, for real! Please, just forgive us and let us go, I promise, I swear we’ll never bother you or your car again, ever!"

Alex straightened up slowly, releasing the man’s wrist entirely as his mind began sifting through everyone he knew who might fit that particular description. Tall. Honey-colored eyes. Reasonably good-looking. Someone who’d recently been offended or embarrassed by him in some way.

A single name surfaced almost immediately in his thoughts, and a slow, almost dangerous smile began spreading across his face as the pieces finally clicked neatly into place.

"A young man, huh?" he said aloud, his tone deceptively casual. "Did he happen to go by the name Henry Michigan, by any chance?"

The leader’s eyes went wide and he hurriedly answered. "Yes! Yes, that’s him! I remember one of his friends who came along with him calling him that exact name!"

Alex nodded slowly, and what looked like satisfaction began settling over his face.

So it really was that bastard after all. He should have figured as much from the start, honestly, given how thoroughly he’d humiliated the guy not too long ago. Henry clearly hadn’t taken that lesson to heart nearly as well as he should have.

He’ll get exactly what’s coming to him soon enough, Alex thought darkly, already mentally filing away plans for how he intended to handle that particular situation. But that could wait for now.

Turning his attention back to the four battered, whimpering delinquents still sprawled across the alley floor, Alex crossed his arms over his chest, and his expression shifted back into irritation.

"Alright, now that we’ve got that sorted out," he said, "there’s still the small matter of my car’s paint job to address. I expect compensation for what you guys did."

The four of them exchanged nervous, panicked glances, each one patting frantically at their own pockets, clearly scrambling to find whatever cash they had on hand.

In the end, all they managed to scrape together collectively was a single, crumpled five-hundred-dollar bill, which the green-haired one held out with trembling hands, looking like he half expected Alex to please let them go since they were dirt broke.

Alex stared down at the pathetic offering for a long moment, and a muscle twitched in his jaw. Five hundred dollars. For a full repaint job on a car like his. The sheer audacity of it almost made him want to break something else entirely.

With a resigned, and very irritated sigh, he snatched the crumpled bill out of the man’s shaking hand anyway, and stuffed it into his pocket. It wasn’t nearly enough to cover the actual damage, not even close, but considering these idiots clearly had nothing else worth taking, it would have to do for now. Besides, the real target of his anger wasn’t really these four pathetic lackeys anyway.

Still, that didn’t mean he was feeling particularly merciful.

"You know," he said while cracking his knuckles as he took a slow step toward the nearest whimpering punk, "I think you all still need a bit more convincing to really drill this lesson in properly."

What followed was a brief one-sided continuation of the earlier beatdown with Alex making damn sure that each of them would be nursing considerably more bruises and aches by the time he was finally satisfied.

But luckily for them he was careful to stop well short of anything permanently debilitating or life-threatening. These idiots were only pawns, not the real target.

Still by the time he finished and stepped back, all four of them lay groaning weakly on the filthy alley pavement, thoroughly and completely broken in spirit if nothing else.

Satisfied at last, Alex dusted off his hands and turned to leave the alley without so much as a backward glance at the whimpering mess he was leaving behind.

"Oh, and one more thing," he called back over his shoulder, pausing briefly at the alley’s entrance. "If I ever catch any of you so much as looking at my car funny again, this little encounter today is going to feel like a pleasant memory compared to what happens next. Are we clear?"

A chorus of yes followed him as he finally strode out of the alley and back into the busy afternoon streets. Then his expression began to settle into something cold and calculating as his thoughts shifted toward his actual target now.

Henry Michigan!

Alex didn’t even know when a slow, humorless smile crept across his lips as he began mentally planning out exactly how he intended to repay that particular debt.

Oh, he was definitely going to teach that gloomy bastard a very thorough, very memorable lesson indeed, one that would make well sure that Henry would never consider pulling off a stunt like this ever again.

[Bwahahaha! Alex, did you see how scary you looked to those guys back there? Gosh, I almost died from laughing so hard!]