I walk around the end of the table, into the open space between it and the wall. The floor here is scarred from old fights, the wood darker where blood has soaked in over the years. My heart is beating steady, my hands light. The egg on my shoulder has cooled to a tacky smear.
“Stop talking,” I say. “Come find out.”
He laughs and moves faster, closing the distance with big, confident strides. Someone whistles. Someone mutters a bet. My peripheral vision catches Isaiah materializing at the far doorway, hair a mess, eyes almost black as he realizes what he’s walked into.
Johnson comes in hot, like they always do. He swings wide, a meat-hook punch aimed at my face, meant to end things early and dramatically. The kind of hit that works in bar brawls, where everyone’s drunk and sloppy and the goal is more about sound than contact.
I’ve never fought for sound.
I duck under his arm, pivoting on the ball of my foot. The air rushes past my cheek where his fist would have been. My body slides into the pocket of his open side, and my elbow drives up into the soft spot under his ribs. He grunts, surprised, folding reflexively. Before he can regain his balance, I hook my boot around his ankle and sweep, yanking his leg out from under him. He hits the ground on one knee, one hand slamming down to catch himself.
The room erupts in a rough cheer, then quiets just as fast to see what happens next.
Johnson recovers quicker than an average barfly; I’ll give him that. He snarls, pushing up, and catches my thigh with a clumsy grab, fingers digging in. Pain shoots up my leg. I ride it, exploiting the contact—spin with the grip instead of against it, my hand threading through his hair and yanking his head down as my knee drives up hard into his face.
Cartilage crunches. The sound is wet and final.
He howls, hand flying to his nose, blood already pouring between his fingers. He staggers back, bumping into a chair. Someone’s plate crashes to the floor. I don’t give him time to think. I follow, a predator on a wounded animal, fist slamming into his exposed kidney. He doubles over again with a strangled noise.
“Get up, councilman,” I say, breathing only slightly harder than before. “You wanted everyone to see what a joke I am, right? Don’t go quiet on me now.”
He swings blind in my direction, a backhand fueled by pain and humiliation. It clips my cheek hard enough to snap my head to the side. The taste of copper floods my mouth as my teeth cut my inner lip. The room gives a collective “ooh,” like a schoolyard. Fine. He wanted to make it messy. We can do messy.
My vision edges white for a second, but the pain sharpens everything. I smile, slow and sharp, the expression stretching the cut on my lip. Johnson sees it through his watery, blood-blurred eyes and hesitates. That’s all I need.
I slam my palm into his chest, driving him back until his spine hits the table. Plates rattle. Coffee sloshes. I grab the front of hiscut with one hand, his wrist with the other, and use my leverage and his bulk against him, twisting and pulling. He topples sideways, crashing onto his back on the floor, air whooshing out of his lungs. I drop with him, a knee landing hard across his bicep to pin his arm. The other hand wrenches his captured wrist up and back.
His howl this time is high and choked.
“Stop!” someone barks from down the table, but nobody moves. They’re too enthralled. Or too afraid of getting between a councilman and the girl he just tried to humiliate.
“You really thought,” I murmur, pitching my voice low enough that the whole room has to lean in mentally to catch it, “that you could throw eggs at me and keep talking?”
He bucks under me, trying to dislodge my knee from his arm. I push my weight down harder until I feel the strain in his shoulder, the tremor where tendon protests. My free hand slams into his already-broken nose again, driving the bone back and sideways. Blood spurts, hot and slick, across my knuckles. He screams, chest arching, eyes rolling.
“Asher,” Cassandra whispers somewhere behind me. There’s a note of panic in her voice. “She broke his nose. She’s going to break his arm.”
“She warned him,” Asher replies, tone perfectly calm.
Johnson claws weakly at my thigh with his free hand. I catch that wrist too, grip like iron, and slam it down by his head. He’s not small, but pain levels the field. His breath wheezes in and out, wet and ragged.
“You want my seat?” I ask him, tone almost conversational
He tries to spit at me. It comes out as a spray of red that misses my face and hits my collarbone. My smile dies.
“I’ll take that as a no,” I say.
Then I shift my weight and jerk his arm just enough. Ligaments scream. A pop cracks loud enough to make a few onlookers flinch back. Johnson’s scream tears through the room, higher than any sound a man his size should make. His arm goes limp in my grip.
“Valentina,” Asher says again, this time with a thread of warning.
I look up at him without letting go. “Relax. If I wanted him dead, I would have snapped his neck two minutes ago.”
We hold eye contact for a moment. There’s a sliver of… not approval, exactly, but recognition in his gaze. He nods once.
I release Johnson’s wrists and stand. Blood streaks my hands, my shirt, the side of my neck. Egg and yolk and red mingle in tacky swirls. The councilman cradles his ruined arm against his chest, sobbing silent curses through his broken nose. Two men rush forward to drag him away from my boots.
I step back into the center of the space, breathing steady, and turn in a slow circle to address the room.
