The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 851

"Marissa," Gideon called. “Our safety…”

"I'm warning you, Gideon." She marched across the room and pointed one finger at his nose.

"If you make that boy give this house back, I will divorce you. I mean it. I'll pack my bags tonight. And you can go and live under the stairs with your box of books."

Gideon opened his mouth.

He looked at his wife's finger. He looked at the little reading room, and then at the holes in the floor, and he could not tell which one frightened him more.

He closed his mouth again, and went and sat down on the nearest sheeted chair, very slowly, like a man whose legs had stopped working.

Marissa turned to Alex.

The sour look melted off her face like butter off hot toast. She came across the room with both hands held out, took Alex's hands, and squeezed.

"You're a good son-in-law," she said warmly. "Didn't I always say so? A good son-in-law after all."

"You said I was good for nothing," said Alex. "About an hour ago."

"Did I? I don't remember that." She patted his cheek. "Now stand still. I need a picture of you in front of the window."

She did not take a picture of Alex in the end. She took one of herself. Then another. Then thirty more, in every room, with the sea behind her, while Preston and Patricia stood by the door with faces like wet weekends.

"There," she said at last, and pressed the screen. "Posted. For every friend I've got. Oh, they'll die. Half the coast will simply die jealously."

She had stood with her back to the bullet holes in every single picture.

---

A few minutes later, out on the terrace of the glass house, the wind came straight off the sea and smelled of salt. Serena shut the glass door behind them, so the others could not hear, and turned round with her back to the rail.

"Now tell me the truth," she said.

"About what?"

"Alex." She folded her arms. "Mr. Wolfe calls you his young friend. His granddaughter airs your rooms for you. My father is in there shaking. A house worth thirty million dollars, for what? Tell me the truth. All of it."

He looked at her standing there in the wind, with the nine little pearls on her wrist, and he could not tell her all of it.

Not yet. Not about Xia, or the power he had carried home from it, or what had really happened on the Hunt lawn last night.

So he gave her a story small enough to carry.

"Mr. Wolfe was ill," he said. "So I went down to the nearest market and bought some medicine for him. He took it. He got better, and he was grateful."

Serena stared at him.

"You bought medicine," she said slowly. "From the market."

"Yes."

"And you gave it to Mr. Wolfe."

Alex nodded. "Yes."

"The richest old man on the whole coast. A man who can pay for the best doctors in the whole country. And you gave him medicine from the market."

"Yes," said Alex.

"Alex, since when do you know anything about medicine? Where on earth did you learn it?"

"I didn't," said Alex. "I just asked the chat. The artificial intelligence one. Chat Gaia, the famous one. It's free."

For one second Serena's face did absolutely nothing.

Then it did everything at once.

"You're crazy!" She grabbed his jacket with both hands.

"You're completely crazy! You asked a chat on your phone, and you went to the market, and you gave Mr. Wolfe medicine, and he gave you his house? Alex! What if it had gone wrong? What if he had died? They would have said you poisoned him! The Wolfes would have destroyed you! They would have destroyed all of us!"

"It didn't go wrong."

"It could have!"

"It didn't," said Alex. "He walked to the pond this morning. You heard him."

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