My heel connected with the man’s groin.
He folded instantly, a strangled sound tearing from his throat as he collapsed to his knees.
The second man lunged.
I brought my knee up sharply—driving it into his jaw.
A sharp crack followed.
His teeth clacked together violently as he staggered backward, disoriented.
The rest surged forward.
Swarming. Closing in.
Hands reached for me from every direction.
I became nothing but motion.
Nothing but instinct.
Nothing but the part of me that refused to die quietly.
Elbow snapped upward into another person’s throat—hard, precise.
A wet choke followed as the man staggered back, clutching at his neck.
I didn’t pause. My body moved before my mind could catch up.
Knife-hand strike—sharp—into the side of another man’s neck.
His body jerked, his grip loosening just enough for me to twist free.
Instep kick driving into a knee joint.
Bone gave.
The man went down with a strangled cry.
Every movement was muscle memory.
Every strike something I had been trained to do long before this place, before Vincenzo, before everything.
One man charged again—too slow, too confident.
I pivoted.
Hooked my arm around his and used his momentum against him—hip throwing him cleanly over my shoulder.
His body slammed into the tiled floor with a sickening crack.
He didn’t get back up.
Another lunged.
I drove my palm into his nose with a sharp upward strike.
Blood burst immediately, spraying across the sterile white tile.
