I don’t move.
I just watch them.
Somewhere in the space between one breath and the next, it happens—that shift I know better than anything else, that slow, inevitable click as something inside me slides into place and everything unnecessary falls away.
My breathing evens out.
The noise in my head goes quiet.
The edges of the room sharpen until I can see every detail—the tension in their shoulders, the way the first guy favors his right leg, the slight hesitation in the second man’s grip.
Violent calm settles over me like a second skin, and I feel my body loosen into it, into instinct, into something that doesn’t think, doesn’t question, doesn’t hesitate.
The first man reaches for me.
I thought that Chace had everyone on the inside on our fucking side…
I move.
One step in, one clean pivot, and my fist connects with his jaw with a crack that snaps through the silence, the force of it traveling up my arm as his head whips to the side and his body follows a second later, collapsing to the floor in a dead drop before he even knows what hit him.
You still got it, Champ.
I huff out a laugh, rolling my shoulder once.
“Well…that was disappointing.”
The other two freeze for half a second, exchanging a glance that tells me everything I need to know.
They’re already unsure.
They’re already behind.
There is a very good chance that you are just beating up church boys and not hardened Russian gangsters…
Thank fuck for that.
I grin.
“If you fuck like you fight, I bet your wife does all the work,” I murmur, tilting my head. “Come on boys, at least meet me halfway.”
They move together this time, one coming in fast from the left while the other hangs back half a step, trying to flank me, trying to be smart about it.
Doesn’t matter.
The first swing comes wide—too wide—and I slip inside it, grabbing his arm and using his own momentum to yank him forward before driving my knee up hard into his ribs, feeling something give under the impact as the air punches out of him in a broken gasp, and I don’t give him time to recover, twisting and slamming him down onto the floor with enough force to make the ground shudder beneath us.
Oh, shit…he’s all fucked up.
The second one lunges the moment I turn, his fist aiming for my face, but I catch his wrist mid-swing, the impact jolting through my grip before I wrench it sideways and step into him, driving my elbow into his throat, not enough to kill him but enough to drop him, enough to make him choke on his own breath as I follow it up with a sharp sn?? to his temple that sends him crumpling beside his friend.
Crushed trachea…he is probably going to be fine… I didn’t do very well with high school biology.
Nah, fuck him, let him be with Jesus.
Silence crashes back in.
All three of them are down.
