Rudy stepped out of the secondary master suite and let the door click shut behind him. He left Ruby completely incapacitated on the ruined mattress. He walked down the hallway naked, the neon lights from the city casting long shadows across his muscular fra.
Maria was waiting in the private lounge. She had followed his instructions perfectly. A half-eaten steak and a drained glass of water sat on the table next to the scattered poker chips. She was wearing her crimson backless dress again. Her legs were crossed, and she stared at the hallway with an expression of intense anticipation.
"Are you ready?" Rudy asked, stopping a few feet away from her.
Maria stood up, her heels clicking against the marble floor. "I have been waiting and hearing her moans. Of course I am ready."
She walked up to him and placed her hands flat against his bare chest. Her fingers traced the faint scars that had carried over from his previous life.
"I refuse to do it here," Maria stated.
Rudy raised an eyebrow. "Ruby's bed is occupied. The couch is free. The floor works fine too. I have zero preference."
"I do," Maria replied, looking up into his eyes. "I want to do it where we had our first ti in the previous world. I want the bedroom where we had our private wedding. I want the Ross Syndicate Mansion."
Rudy smirked, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her flush against his hard cock. "Nostalgic. Fine. Let's go."
He turned toward the balcony. Maria grabbed his wrist to stop him. Her expression darkened, a flash of genuine pain crossing her features.
"We cannot just walk in," Maria said, her voice dropping. "Soone else lives there."
"Who?" Rudy demanded.
The playful smirk vanished instantly.
Maria looked away, her grip on his wrist tightening. "When the Apocalypse happened, everything fell apart. Father died. Rusher died trying to protect the retreat routes. The Syndicate was on the brink of total collapse. I lost so many things, Rudy. I had to sell off assets just to keep my people fed. I lost the Ross Mansion in a rigged auction to a rival Awakened guild."
She looked back at him, her eyes burning with fierce determination. "Only recently was I able to rise up again and expand the Syndicate's influence to where it is now. I have the power, and the money, yet I haven't had the firepower to take back my family's ho."
Rudy remained silent. He looked at the woman who had carried the weight of an entire criminal empire on her shoulders while grieving a world she didn't even know she had forgotten.
He raised his hand. Strands of dark matter and kinetic energy coalesced around his body, weaving themselves into a sharp, perfectly tailored black suit in a matter of seconds.
He stepped forward and swept Maria off her feet, catching her bridal-style in his arms.
"Hold on," Rudy commanded.
He bypassed the elevator and kicked the reinforced glass doors of the balcony wide open, shattering the locks instantly. The howling wind of the ruined city whipped past them.
"Where are we going?" Maria asked, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck.
"We are going to evict so tenants," Rudy said.
He launched himself off the balcony, rocketing into the dark sky like a ballistic missile.
The ruined city blurred beneath them, a jagged landscape of crumbling skyscrapers, burning quarantine zones, and the neon scars of the Awakened districts. The wind howled like a dying beast, but inside the telekinetic slipstream Rudy had wrapped around them, it was dead silent and perfectly warm.
Maria rested her head against his chest, listening to the calm beat of his heart. She was a Warlord. A Don. She commanded thousands of n and ordered executions over morning coffee. But right now, held effortlessly in the arms of the man who had just shattered reality to get back to her, she felt entirely untouchable.
"Take a left past the financial ruins," Maria murmured, pointing a perfectly manicured finger toward the affluent northern hills. "It's the estate on the highest ridge. The one with the S-Rank hexagonal mana barrier."
Rudy shifted his trajectory, accelerating so fast the air behind them ignited into a brief sonic boom.
In the distance, the Ross Syndicate Mansion ca into view. It was less of a mansion now and more of a military fortress. The rival guild, a vicious rcenary faction known as the Goliath Vanguard, had turned her childhood ho into an ard citadel.
High-caliber mana turrets tracked the sky. Tad mutant hounds prowled the massive courtyards. Dozens of heavily armored Awakened guards patrolled the periter.
Over it all sat a massive, shimring blue energy do. It was a siege-grade barrier, designed to withstand a direct hit from a tactical nuke or an S-Class Dungeon Boss.
"They've upgraded the security," Maria noted, her eyes narrowing with disgust. "The Guild Master is an Earth-attribute Tank. He paid a fortune for that do. We'll need to drop near the southern gates and find the structural weak point to—"
"Maria," Rudy interrupted smoothly.
"Yes?"
"I don't do weak points."
Rudy didn't slow down or alter his course to land outside the gates. He tightened his grip around her waist and waist and aid his body directly at the apex of the impenetrable S-Rank barrier.
"Hold tight," Rudy smirked.
He didn't cast a spell. He just concentrated pure, unadulterated kinetic force around his body and accelerated to Mach 10.
They hit the barrier like a teor.
The S-Rank do, designed to absorb millions of tons of force, didn't even have ti to crack.
It simply shattered.
The sound of a catastrophic crack of thunder that echoed across the entire northern district as the fragnts of solid mana rained down like blue glass.
The resulting shockwave from Rudy's entry was apocalyptic. The mana turrets were instantly ripped from their moorings. The mutant hounds were vaporized into red mist before they could even bark.
Rudy slamd into the center of the mansion's grand courtyard, cracking the reinforced concrete foundation perfectly in two. Dust and debris exploded outward in a massive shockwave, flattening the first wave of guards who had rushed out to see what had just breached their impenetrable sky.
When the dust cleared, Rudy was standing perfectly straight in the center of the crater. His dark matter suit didn't have a speck of dirt on it.
He was still holding Maria bridal-style and hadn't even put her down.
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