The Almighty Dominance

Ten minutes slid past.

The street stayed empty except for the twenty men huddled by the curb, eyes fixed on the dark mouth of the road as if a friend might step out of the shadows.

Alex walked up to them with the calm of someone already decided.

"Ten minutes," he said. "No friends showed. Like I promised - every pinky gets broken. So bear the pain."

"Don't you dare!" Max bellowed, panic cutting through his bravado.

"We've called the Chicago Outfit — a thousand of our men are on their way. You'd better run while you can, or we'll turn you into mince."

"Really?" Alex stepped closer until Max could feel his breath. "I don't see your thousand."

Color drained from Max's face. He tried to force menace into his voice. "You'll regret this. You'll regret everything."

Alex didn't warn. He grabbed Max's other pinky and snapped it like a twig.

Max howled. The sound ripped into the night and seemed to pull the darkness apart.

Engines answered the cry: trucks, pickups, motorcycles roaring down the avenue, lights cutting through the fog.

Men poured out of beds and from behind doors, clutching iron pipes, nailed bats, chains — anything that could smash bone and split skin.

The number swelled fast - easily hundreds.

"Who the hell touched one of ours?" someone yelled. "Who wants to die tonight?"

Normal people fled. Couples, joggers, late commuters - they scattered like leaves.

The thugs surged into the road, swinging weapons in lazy, dangerous arcs.

Most were kids with too much venom and too little sense; manipulated, impatient, hungry for violence.

They'd grown up trusting numbers more than skill.

They'd never tasted defeat.

Park staff and security guards watched, faces gone ashen. These men were used

to chasing drunks and scooping up pickpockets, not facing a street army.

"Everyone inside the park — now! Close the gates. Keep the children safe. Say nothing to anyone," Alex ordered.

"Are you sure?" one of the guards stammered. "They're too many."

"Trust me," Alex called over the growing din. "I'm more than enough. Move!"

The guards exchanged looks, then ran. The gate slammed shut, bolts clanking as they locked them from the inside.

Alex stood alone in the center of a hundred raised faces and crude weapons. They spat at him, lungs full of threat.

"You're dead, asshole!" one screamed.

"You hear us? You're begging for death!"

"Hurting the Chicago Outfit? You'll pay!"

The mob tightened like a fist ready to close. Men lifted bats, chains glinted, and for a heartbeat the world held its breath.

Then twenty figures stepped from the darkness behind Alex, the sound of boots and quiet authority.

them, his expression

here,"

look back. "New

Just

He turned his head just enough to

will face twenty. Win,

group.

like they'd

past Alex with the calm of people who'd been waiting

No hesitation.

face hundreds?" Max roared, trying to reclaim the night. "Show no mercy. Kill

The Kingswell didn't answer.

eyes flat, then

a flame

also surged

cocky grins, swinging bats and chains like trophies,

another with curses and promises of

the kind born from always being the predators — from always having the numbers, from never

wild, clumsy, and loud, a Kingswell's strike was sharp,

elbow crushed a windpipe, a knee shattered a ribcage, a knife slid between bone and

screaming, clutching broken jaws

laughed at them

it was luck, a mistake, that their buddies had

next wave charged, they too dropped, gasping for breath with bones bent at unnatural

began to crack. The

pavement made the

in numbers. Numbers had always been their shield. Ten against one, twenty

against these twenty, numbers

bury their rising panic beneath violence, but each desperate attack was punished

— countered by a wrist

— caught, yanked, and turned into a noose against its

a roaring fire burned out into the cold stink

asphalt. Ragged breaths turned into screams. The ones who

handguns, their hands shaking, firing wild into the

split

flowed between the muzzle flashes,

terrifying calm.

blade

shooter's skull with a dull, sickening thunk.

eyes wide, mouth

breaking point. Panic spread

had always worked for them—we

- shattered.

shrinking, their friends dying, their confidence bleeding out

Tough guys who had strutted in with threats

to run, but

him by the hair, yanked him back, and smashed his skull into the pavement until bone gave way with

a nail-studded bat, missed, and took

collapsed his

blood bubbling from his mouth,

prey.

in the space of minutes, the Chicago Outfit learned

the sidewalks, citizens stood frozen at

them too.

streets had belonged to the

every passerby, every mother with a child had learned to