Chapter 137: Strange's Shock and Concern
"So you're actually some kind of supervillain. The Lord of Hell's Kitchen."
"So you're the underground emperor who runs this whole place."
"So you're the reason the federal government just deployed a thousand soldiers outside."
Strange stared at him. Each sentence came out slower than the last, like he was testing each one for structural integrity.
Ethan nodded.
Strange sat back down. He was quiet for a moment — processing, recalibrating, reassembling his understanding of the last several years.
He'd spent those years grinding. Nights without sleep, impossible cases, a reputation built from nothing through sheer relentless competence. He had the car. He had the apartment. He had the career. He'd assumed — reasonably, he'd thought — that Ethan, who had gone back to a neighborhood like this, had made a different set of choices and arrived at a correspondingly different outcome.
He had been wrong.
There was a saying, apparently, that circulated in certain circles: When Hell's Kitchen speaks, the American underworld listens.
Strange had heard it and filed it away as colorful exaggeration. It had not occurred to him to connect it to his college roommate.
He sat with the image for a moment — Ethan at the center of all of it, loyal people around him, the kind of reach that made federal agencies nervous — and felt something uncomfortable stir in his chest.
I'm the one who fell behind?
I drove a Lamborghini through a military checkpoint to rescue him.
He didn't need rescuing.
He pushed the feeling aside. "How are you not leaving? That's the federal government out there. You can be as powerful as you want — you can't outlast a country. Are you trying to get yourself killed?"
He'd caught himself, briefly, when the confirmation landed. A reflex of alarm — this person is dangerous — followed almost immediately by the simple certainty that this was still Ethan. Same as he'd always been. Whatever else had changed, that hadn't.
Which meant Strange could go back to being furious on his behalf.
Ethan smiled. "Relax. Trust me. Trust Hell's Kitchen."
"That's not reassuring." Strange poured himself a glass of water without asking. "You, a regular person — well, former regular person — deciding you're actually the Lord of Hell's Kitchen and this is somehow a fight you're going to win." He shook his head. "Come with me. I'm serious. We leave, we figure something out, you don't have to die in a restaurant in Hell's Kitchen."
"So you drove here to take me away?"
"I drove here to collect your body," Strange said. "I'm updating my expectations in real time."
Before he could continue, something in a red-and-black suit appeared at his shoulder and threw an arm around him.
"Brother," Wade said, with genuine warmth. "I respect you. You and I are exactly the same kind of person — loyalty first, everything else second."
He leaned in conspiratorially. "Between you and me? If it weren't for Ethan, I would have been on a date with a very lovely woman right now instead of standing in Hell's Kitchen waiting for the apocalypse. Just saying."
Strange extracted himself from Wade's grip and pointed at him. Then at Ethan. "This is who you've been spending your time with? You've regressed. Significantly." He looked Wade up and down. "You dressed like that on purpose? That's not a costume, that's a cry for help. Red and black. No coherent aesthetic. Absolutely no taste."
Wade opened his mouth.
Ethan made a small gesture, and Chaos Magic sealed it shut.
"He's my friend," Ethan said, looking at Strange directly. "Same as you are. Don't talk about him like that."
Strange rolled his eyes. The words landed anyway. He didn't say anything else about it — but he noted, privately, that it had been a while since someone had told him to treat people better and he'd actually felt inclined to listen.
Ethan turned to Wade. "She doesn't mean anything by it. That's just how he is. Give him time — he's worth knowing."
She, Strange's brain registered, distantly. Interesting.
He filed it away.
He also noted that Ethan had defended both of them to each other, in the same breath, without raising his voice. It was such a specific thing to remember about someone after years apart — that he'd always been like that. Quietly, absolutely certain of the people he'd chosen.
He still hasn't changed, Strange thought. And didn't examine what that meant to him.
Though, Ethan thought, watching Strange's expression with the mild detachment of someone who had seen the ending of this particular story, the car accident really is going to fix a lot of this. He felt a little guilty about it. Not enough to intervene.
"I'm not leaving," Ethan said, and his voice had shifted — not louder, just settled. "Hell's Kitchen is my home. My family is here. My friends are here. The people who need me are here."
He paused.
"And honestly — " he nodded at the clock on the wall — "it's a little late to leave anyway."
Strange looked up.
Less than a minute on the clock.
Oh no.
My apartment. My car. My career. My Christine.
He turned back to Ethan with the expression of a man who had just realized he'd walked into something that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with him.
Ethan read it immediately. He reached over and put a hand on Strange's shoulder.
"Nothing in Hell's Kitchen will touch you. I promise."
He said it the way he said most things — quiet, without performance, like the outcome was simply already decided.
"Stay in the restaurant. Even if everything else goes wrong — and it won't — this building won't be touched." He didn't explain the Homestead system, the Space Stone, the Fortress. Strange didn't need the technical details. "Peter and Harry are staying too. They'll be here with you."
Strange looked at the two teenagers — one in a Spider-Man suit, one in green-and-black armor that looked like it had been assembled with great confidence and limited experience.
He remembered what Ethan had just said. He did not comment.
Peter and Harry looked at Ethan with the unmistakable expression of people who would very much rather be going with him.
"You're the last line of defense," Ethan told them. "This place matters to me. I'm trusting you with it."
It was the right thing to say. Their expressions changed.
Then Ethan turned, and he and Wade and Pietro walked toward the door.
"Where are you going?" Strange called after him. "If it's as safe here as you say, why are you leaving?"
Ethan paused at the threshold. He didn't turn around.
"We have a lot of guests showing up to Hell's Kitchen tonight," he said. "As the host, it would be rude not to welcome them properly."
The door swung shut behind him.
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you