The Quinn Retribution

Chapter 3

Quinn Thorne scrambled off the bed, crossed the room in two quick strides, and twisted the lock on the bedroom door until it clicked into place. Then he ducked into the en suite bathroom, peeled off his clothes, and stepped under the shower.

The hot water cascaded over his scalp and ran down his shoulders, and for the first time in three years he felt something close to peace. His chest expanded with a full, unhurried breath, and a grin spread slowly across his face.

The mysterious old man had not lied.

Not only could he speak again, but there was something else now, something coiled deep inside his core like a second heartbeat. A current of ethereal energy hummed beneath his skin, warm and responsive, as though it would obey any command he gave it. He flexed his fingers under the stream of water and felt the power answer, pulsing gently through his tendons. He could use this energy to do anything, he was sure of it.

Beyond that, an entire library of knowledge had materialized inside his mind, vast and intricate, as if someone had poured centuries of medical wisdom directly into his skull. Anatomy, diagnosis, herbal formulations, meridian pathways. It was all there, organized and accessible, waiting to be used.

He tilted his head back and let the water pound against his face, savoring the sensation of being fully, unmistakably alive.

Upstairs in the hallway, Eleanor Sterling had already climbed to the second floor. She found Chloe Sterling standing outside the bedroom door, her face drained of color and her hands trembling at her sides.

Eleanor's expression hardened immediately. "What happened? Did Quinn do something to you?"

"Mom, he... Quinn, he..." The memory of what she had just witnessed tangled Chloe's words into a stammer.

"What about him?" Eleanor pressed, her tone sharpening with impatience. Privately, a cold thought flickered through her mind: maybe the useless son-in-law had finally had some kind of episode and dropped dead.

"He's a freak!" Chloe blurted, settling on the only word that seemed to fit.

"A freak?" Eleanor blinked, momentarily wondering whether the girl was hallucinating. If that spineless live-in husband were truly some kind of freak, at least they could send him to a circus and earn back some of the money they had wasted feeding him.

She walked to Quinn's bedroom door and tried the handle. It did not budge.

He had locked it. Fury rose in Eleanor's chest like a hot tide, and she hammered her palm against the wood. "Quinn! What are you hiding in there? Open this door right now!"

"One moment. I'm taking a shower," came a voice from behind the door.

"Hmph, you're getting more and more insolent every..." The complaint died on her lips. Eleanor froze mid-sentence, her eyes going wide. "Quinn. Did you just speak?"

Silence from the bedroom.

Eleanor spun around and seized Chloe by the shoulders, her grip tight enough to whiten her knuckles. "Did you hear that? He talked! He actually talked!"

"Mom, let's just go back downstairs," Chloe said, still visibly shaken by the scene she had witnessed earlier. "We'll wait for him to come out on his own."

They descended the staircase together and returned to the living room. Spencer Vance rose from the sofa the moment he saw them, his handsome face arranged into an expression of concerned disapproval. "Everything alright? He wouldn't even come out for you? He doesn't even listen to you, and you still let him stay here? That's absurd."

Eleanor caught the implication beneath his words easily enough. She frowned but held her tongue, lowering herself into an armchair with stiff, barely contained irritation. They would wait for the mute to show his face.

Spencer's lip curled inwardly. What an absolute waste of space. A man like that didn't deserve to breathe the same air as Olivia Sterling, let alone share her last name.

Before long, footsteps sounded on the staircase, and Quinn descended into the living room. He wore a fresh set of clothes, plain but clean, and faint wisps of steam still rose from his damp hair. His posture was different. His spine was straight, his shoulders squared, and there was a quiet, contained energy in every step he took.

Chloe shot up from the sofa, pointing a trembling finger at him. "Quinn, your... your body..."

Quinn walked calmly to the opposite sofa, sat down, and poured himself a cup of tea as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

"Quinn, stand up!" Eleanor snapped, her voice carrying the brittle authority of a woman who expected immediate compliance.

He obeyed, rising from the cushion with an unhurried grace, and turned an innocent gaze on her.

That look of wide-eyed guilelessness, so infuriatingly calm, made Eleanor's blood boil. "Stop pretending. You've been faking it for three years. Aren't you tired of the act? Go on then, talk."

"Mother-in-law," Quinn said. A faint smile touched his lips as the words left his mouth, clear and perfectly articulated.

The color drained from Chloe's face. Spencer's jaw went slack.

The mute had spoken. Had he been faking it this entire time?

"You... you can talk?" Chloe's expression twisted into something between shock and disgust. "You liar! You've been pretending to be mute all along! You just didn't want to talk to us, is that it? Then you should have kept it up forever!"

Even as the angry words spilled from her mouth, Chloe noticed something else. The man who had always hunched his shoulders and shuffled through the house like a beaten dog was now standing perfectly upright. His frame, once frail and pitiful, somehow radiated a contained, physical power. It was as if he had gone from a frog to Prince Charming overnight, and the strangeness of it made her skin prickle.

Spencer, however, saw nothing but an act. He let out a derisive laugh and stepped forward. "So you're Quinn. Exactly what I imagined."

He turned toward Eleanor with practiced sincerity. "This kind of man will never make Olivia happy. His very existence is an insult to her. Don't you agree?"

Eleanor said nothing. She thought the same thing, but this was Sterling family business, and she did not appreciate an outsider passing judgment on it in her own living room.

The silence only emboldened Spencer. He closed the distance between himself and Quinn until they stood barely a foot apart, looking down at him with undisguised contempt. "Don't you think this is pathetic? Leeching off the Sterlings year after year? If you actually care about Olivia, you'll walk away."

Quinn's fist tightened at his side, but his face remained impassive, as though he were watching a clown perform an especially tiresome routine.

"I'll sweeten the deal," Spencer continued, his voice dripping with false generosity. "Leave Olivia, and I'll get you a respectable job. Plus two hundred thousand dollars in cash. How about it?"

As the last word left his mouth, Spencer subtly shifted his weight to his back foot, settling into a ready stance. He was counting on a reaction. Any man with a shred of pride would throw a punch after being goaded like that, and the moment Quinn swung, Spencer would teach this freeloading loser a lesson he would never forget. After all, Spencer held a black belt in martial arts.

But Quinn did not swing. He simply stood there, watching Spencer the way a man might observe an insect crawling across the pavement.

That gaze unsettled Spencer more than any punch could have. A chill crept up his spine, and irritation overrode his caution. He lunged forward, seized Quinn's collar with one hand, and snarled into his face. "What are you staring at, you freeloading loser?"

Quinn's expression did not change. He regarded Spencer with the same detached indifference one might spare for an ant, and the totality of that dismissal was more insulting than any words could have been.

Rage exploded through Spencer's chest. His free hand rocketed toward Quinn's cheek in a vicious hook.

Eleanor stood by and did not intervene, watching with the detached patience of a spectator who had already chosen a side.

The fist stopped in midair, less than eight inches from Quinn's face.

Quinn's hand had closed around Spencer's wrist with surgical precision. Spencer wrenched his arm back, then again, harder, and found he could not free himself. Pain lanced through the joint, sharp and immediate.

"Let go of me, you worthless piece of..." Spencer hissed through clenched teeth.

"Worthless," Quinn repeated, almost to himself, a dry and bitter amusement coloring the word.

Spencer released Quinn's collar and threw his other fist straight at Quinn's temple. Quinn was faster by a mile. His free hand shot up and closed around Spencer's throat.

The pressure was immediate and absolute. Spencer's lungs seized, his limbs went slack, and his eyes bulged with animal terror as his body recognized, on a primal level, that it was completely at this man's mercy.

"Let... let go..." The words scraped out of his compressed windpipe in a thin rasp.

Quinn regarded him with cold indifference. "Who exactly do you think you are, coming into this house and running your mouth?"

"Quinn, stop it right now!" Eleanor's voice cracked through the room, shrill with genuine alarm. She was afraid he had lost his mind and would actually kill the boy.

Quinn turned his head slowly and met her eyes, a cold smile curving his lips. When Spencer's fist was flying at his face a moment ago, she had not seemed so eager to call a stop to things.

He opened his hand and tossed Spencer away from him the way a man might toss a piece of garbage into a bin. Spencer hit the floor with a graceless thud, gasping and clutching his throat.

Before anyone could speak, Eleanor's phone erupted with a shrill ringtone. She glanced at the caller ID, then jabbed the answer button.

"What? Something happened at Olivia's company?" Her voice pitched high with panic, filling the sudden silence of the room.

Everyone in the living room went still.