Chapter 5 - STAY FLAT ON THE GROUND
The second attack came with anger in it.
That made him easier.
Marcus threw a heavy right hand, telegraphed from the shoulder. I moved inside it, checked the strike at the forearm, and drove my palm heel sharply into his chest—not enough to injure him, just enough to stop his forward line and make his feet reset. Before he could recover, I hooked behind his knee with my leg, rotated my grip, and dumped him onto the grass.
He hit hard, the air leaving him in a stunned grunt.
Gasps went through the crowd. Someone dropped a paper plate.
I stepped back once and gave him room to stay down.
He didn’t.
Humiliation does something ugly to men like Marcus. Instead of protecting them, it strips away the last thin layer of control. He surged up red-faced and furious, charging with both arms wide as if force alone could erase what had just happened. That was when I stopped being careful with his pride and started being careful only with the outcome.
I sidestepped, trapped one arm, turned under the other, and used his own momentum to send him face-first onto the lawn. My knee settled between his shoulders. My forearm controlled the trapped wrist. I had him pinned in less than two seconds.
He thrashed once.
I tightened the lock just enough for pain to replace denial.
“Easy,” I said quietly, close enough for only him to hear. “You threaten a mother in front of her child, you’d better finish the first move. You didn’t.”
He cursed and tried to rise again. I shifted pressure, and his body flattened.
Across the lawn, Lily had stopped trembling.
Warren shouted, “Get off my son!”
I didn’t even look at him. “Then come get him,” I said.
He didn’t move.
Marcus’s breath had turned ragged. He finally understood something the crowd had realized moments earlier: I was not improvising. I was not lucky. And I was not afraid.
“You said you’d snap my arm,” I told him in a calm voice that carried just far enough. “Now hear me clearly. If I wanted to break something, we would not still be negotiating.”
The lawn stayed dead quiet.
“Quit,” I said.
May you like
He stopped fighting.
Only then did I release him and stand.
