Michael screamed wildly as he felt the cigar burn his face, and Alex snatched the dagger he had thrown aside off the ground. With a blindingly fast jab, he stabbed it through Michael's hand resting on the table beside him, nailing his hand to the table.
Michael continued to howl in pain as blood seeped from his hand, and Louisa covered her mouth in shock.
With his cheek covered in faint burns and a gaping stab wound in his hand, Michael was a pathetic sight to behold.
He grimaced as he tried to pull out the dagger. I can't believe that bastard just stabbed me, he thought. I completely misread him. He wasn't afraid of me at all.
Suddenly, Alex's hand flashed so fast that no one could see what he was doing, and Michael let out a yelp as Alex nailed his other hand to the table with a dinner knife.
The partygoers gasped in fear, and some people almost fainted as the tablecloth under Michael's hands quickly turned red with blood.
As he looked at his hands, his face grew deathly pale and contorted with a mixture of pain and shock.
"What the hell are you doing?" Louisa shouted, trembling with anger. She pulled out a gun and aimed at Alex, pulling the trigger without hesitation.
She was fast, but Alex was much faster. She didn't even have a second to react as he knocked the cigarette out of her mouth, causing her to flinch in surprise and drop the gun.
The bullet hit the ceiling with a loud bang, and the crowd screamed and ran as the pistol fell onto the floor.
Michael's bodyguards and hotel security brandished their pistols and pointed them at Alex as he pulled the dagger from Michael's hand and held it against his neck.
"Let him go," Louisa cried. "You're completely surrounded. Don't do anything stupid."
Michael broke into a nervous sweat as he felt the cold metal of the dagger press against his neck, fully expecting Alex to slice his throat at any moment with no remorse.
If I live through this, I'll make him regret everything he did today, he thought.
"Do you ever think about the consequences of your actions?" Michael asked, gritting his teeth.
Alex's face went blank. "Are there any consequences for taking out the trash?" he replied with an icy cold gaze. "Tell me where Jonah is, or I'll have to cut the words out of you."
At that moment, the banquet hall door flew open, and a dozen police officers poured into the hall, each one holding a gun by their side.
"Who's threatening my nephew?" a middle-aged man asked, stepping toward Alex and Michael with an elegant woman and a man in uniform trailing behind him.
Louisa looked at the group of people, and her face lit up. "You got here just in time," she said, letting out a sigh of relief.
The middle-aged man was Louisa's uncle Steven, the woman was her sister Melanie, and the uniformed man was Deputy Director Randy Mills of Baltimore's Western District Police Bureau.
Seeing the group appear in the hall, Edwin and all of Michael's men were overwhelmed with excitement. Reinforcements had arrived, and they were all ready to finish Alex off once and for all.
Louisa walked over to Steven to explain what had happened, and his face darkened as he listened. His eyebrows twitched with anger, and everyone could see that he was ready to snap.
"You have some nerve messing with my family," Steven said as he approached Alex. "I have known Michael his whole life, and I have never seen him so shaken up before."
Randy also glared at Alex. That cocky kid really dug himself into a hole, and there's no one here to help him out of it, he thought. Time to teach him a lesson.
Alex laughed as he saw the men staring at him. "Are you here to give Michael a ride home?" he asked. "He looks like he's going to cry. I think he needs someone to kiss his boo-boos."
"You're going to regret being such an arrogant punk," Steven said. "You'll be repaying my nephew for the rest of your life after how badly you humiliated him today."
"Go ahead and try me," Alex said.
Even while watching Alex press the knife into Michael's throat, Steven remained strong and calm. He turned to Randy and said, "Go cuff him. If he tries to resist arrest, take him out before he gets a chance to hurt Michael again. And if he manages to kill Michael, I'll make sure that his family never sees the light of day again."
Steven hated when anyone threatened him, and he refused to let such an arrogant young man make a fool out of his family. He gestured to Randy to move in.
"Lock him up," Randy said to the group of officers behind him, and they quickly surrounded Alex.
Melanie also pulled out a gun and pointed it at Alex.
"Let my brother go," she said. "Don't you think you have already put him through enough?"
Alex looked at Steven and laughed. "I'm just looking for Jonah so I can have a nice chat with him, and Michael here won't help me find him," he said. "There's no need to make a scene over it."
"Don't play stupid with us," Melanie said. "We know what you're up to."
Steven sneered. "Why are you so obsessed with finding Jonah?" he asked. "We have a more important situation to address at the moment."
"I have to punish him properly," Alex replied calmly. "If you don't want to tell me where he is, then I can punish you instead."
Melanie's face flushed red with anger, and her finger trembled on the trigger of her gun.
"Do you have a death wish?" she asked.
Alex clutched the knife in his hand tightly and pressed it into Michael's neck just hard enough to draw a few drops of blood.
Although he couldn't show his true power at that moment, and he was in the worst shape he had been in since starting his martial arts practice, he could still easily handle a few thieves.
Michael shuddered as adrenaline coursed through his veins.
"I'm going to count to three," Alex said. "If you don't tell me where Jonah is before I'm done, it's over for you."
He paused for a moment and then shouted, "One."
Michael gulped, and his whole body tensed with fear.
"You win," he said. "Please don't hurt me. Jonah is in a waterside villa in Atlantic City, and he's going to leave the country tonight."
He was ashamed to reveal Jonah's whereabouts, but he knew that Alex would kill him if he didn't speak up.
He won't make it out of here alive anyway, he thought. There's no way he'll be able to get to Jonah and get his revenge.
Alex pulled his phone out of his pocket and had started to text Jonah's location out when Melanie pulled the trigger of her gun and shot at him. But he had read her like a book, and he shifted Michael in front of him to block the shot.
The bullet hit Michael's shoulder, and he winced as it pierced his flesh.
Suddenly, a voice echoed from the front door of the hall and said, "Stop this at once!"