The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 830

The nightclub strip was all neon and noise. Men in paper masks with glitter on them spilled out of doorways, singing.

"Not those!" The Count was grey on the back seat, one hand under his ribs. "A white one. A doctor. Find me the doctor!"

A young man in a white party mask stumbled past the car. The Count threw the door open and caught him by the sleeve.

"You! Are you a doctor?"

The young man pushed up his mask. Under it he was about nineteen, and very drunk. "I'm an accountant, mister."

The Count let go and fell back on the seat.

The driver rang every number in the Count's phone. Barons. Bankers. The mayor, who answered with his mouth full. Nobody knew the mask's name. Nobody had ever seen his face.

At last a Morgan footman picked up, half asleep. "The mask, sir? He comes and goes with one woman. A Ms. Vale. From Halcyon."

"Halcyon." The Count opened his eyes. "Drive. Run every light."

They ran four.

---

At that hour the Harbour Exchange was asleep. One bright lamp burned in the empty hall, and beneath it stood the new guard on the night shift, in a Halcyon jacket two sizes too big.

"Good evening," he said, to a pot plant, because there was nobody else.

The glass doors banged open. The Count came through them like weather, bent over his own ribs, a bodyguard the size of a wardrobe half a step ahead.

"Good evening," said the new guard.

The bodyguard put one palm on his chest and moved him aside like a coat stand. "Out of the way, idiot."

The guard bumped gently into the pot plant.

---

Natasha Vale was waiting on the top floor. "Count Stone. He said you'd come tonight. He didn't say you'd run."

In a bare white room, gloved hands on his knees, sat the white mask.

The Count lurched in and grabbed the table. "What did you do to me? I was fine! Sixty years, I was fine! You looked at me, and two days later... You poisoned me!"

"You poured your own glass," said the mask. "Rebecca told you to."

"Fix it!"

"No. This is not the way of people asking for help."

The bodyguard leaned over the table. "Listen to me, you little masked rat. Fix him. Right now. Or you'll regret the day you were born."

"Whatever pity I have just gone by your arrogant," Alex said quietly. "Find someone else. Get out."

The bodyguard swung. A big flat open hand, straight at the side of the mask.

It never landed.

Because the big man suddenly flew backward and hit the wall.

Then the door flew open, and a hand came round from nowhere and struck him across the face so hard the sound cracked off the white walls. The bodyguard sat down on the carpet, legs out, like a toddler who has forgotten how standing works.

Rebecca Morgan stood over him in her black dinner dress, shaking out her fingers.

"Raise a hand to him again, and you raise it to the Morgans." She turned. "I knew you'd come here, Uncle Roger. I left my dessert for this. Was that it? Asking nicely?"

The pain turned under the Count's ribs, and he shut his mouth.

"Get him out," the mask said. “I will never heal this arrogant man.”

"I'll go to the hospitals!" the Count shouted as they took his arms. "Real doctors! And when they find what you've done to me, I'll have this building pulled down!"

"The hospitals are very good," said Alex. "Tell them where it hurts."

---

Three hospitals in one hour.

Calder Royal, Foster himself at the machines in his dinner suit: "There is nothing there, Roger. I've looked four times." Harbour General: "Your scans are perfect, sir. I wish mine were." The new hospital by the river, where a young doctor with tired eyes asked very politely, "Sir, are you sure the pain is in your body?"

The Count threw a water jug at the wall.

"Was that a yes, sir?"

By half past eleven he could not sit up in the car. He sent the bodyguard home. He sent Foster home, and Foster went without arguing. That was the worst sign of all.

Midnight struck from the harbour tower.

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