He didn’t raise his hands to guard his face. He didn’t widen his base. He just stood there, arms hanging loosely at his sides, shoulders relaxed. He looked entirely undefended. To a trained sport fighter, it looked like suicide.

To anyone who had survived close quarters combat, it looked like a trap. “You asked for it,” Thorne sneered. He bit down on his invisible mouthpiece, raised his hands into a tight guard, and advanced. Thorne moved with the fluid grace of youth. He darted in, testing the water with a lightning fast jab, aimed at Aby’s forehead.

Abby barely moved. He just shifted his head a fraction of an inch to the right. The glove slipped past his ear, rustling his gray hair. Thorne frowned, pulling the hand back, re-calibrating. “Lucky flinch,” he thought.

He stepped heavily on his lead foot and threw a crushing low kick, targeting the exact same spot on Aby’s thigh that had crippled the teenager moments before. But Abby wasn’t there. He didn’t check the kick by lifting his leg. That required balance he didn’t want to compromise. Instead, the moment Thorne’s hips committed to the rotation, Abby stepped forward.

He stepped inside the arc of the kick, completely jamming the strike. Thorne’s shin slammed harmlessly against Aby’s hipbone without any momentum to drive it. Before Thorne could retract his leg, Aby’s left hand shot out. It wasn’t a punch. His open palm crashed into the center of Thorne’s chest right over the sternum.

It wasn’t a strike designed to knock out. It was a push executed with the entire weight of Aby’s thick rooted body behind it. It disrupted Thorne’s center of gravity perfectly. Thorne stumbled backward, his arms flailing for a second as he tried to catch his balance. He caught himself, his face twisting into genuine anger.

Now the embarrassment stung worse than a punch. “Okay,” Thorne hissed. “Okay.” He rushed forward, abandoning the technical probing for raw aggression. He threw a one-two combination, followed by a looping right hook designed to take Aby’s head off. Aby’s eyes tracked the shoulders, not the hands.

Hands lie. Shoulders tell the truth. He caught the first jab on his forearm. He parried the cross with a slight flick of his wrist. As the looping hook came in, Abby ducked.

He didn’t bend at the waist. He dropped his elevation by bending his knees. A sharp, agonizing flare of pain shooting up his ruined left leg. He ignored it. Pain was just data.

Thorne’s hook sailed over Aby’s head, leaving the young fighter’s right side completely exposed. Abby stepped into the pocket. Close. Uncomfortably close. The smell of Thorne’s expensive cologne and sweat filled Aby’s nose.

Abby didn’t throw a hook of his own. He didn’t aim for the chin. He bypassed sport entirely. Aby’s right arm wrapped tightly around the back of Thorne’s neck, clamping down like an industrial vice. At the same exact moment, Abby drove the crown of his own forehead directly into the bridge of Thorne’s nose.

Crack! It was a sickening wet sound. Thorne screamed, his hands instinctively flying to his face as blood instantly erupted from his nostrils, painting his lips and chin bright crimson. His eyes watered, blinding him. The sudden, agonizing trauma shattered his fighting rhythm entirely.

But Abby wasn’t done. Combat wasn’t about scoring points. It was about ending the threat. While Thorne was blinded and reeling, Aby’s left hand snaked down, gripping the fabric of Thorne’s GI pants at the hip. Abby pivoted his hips violently, pressing his right thigh flush against Thorne’s lead leg.

With a sharp, synchronized heave, Abby threw him. It wasn’t a pretty judo throw. It was an ugly, brutal street sweep. Thorne’s feet left the canvas. He hung suspended in the air for a fraction of a second, his brain desperately trying to understand how the old man had bypassed his guard so effortlessly.

Then gravity reclaimed him. Thorne slammed into the mad back first with a concussive thud that shook the floorboards beneath the canvas. The breath left his lungs in a violent rush. Before Thorne could even register the impact, Abby was on him. Abby dropped his right knee directly onto Thorne’s solar plexus, pinning him to the floor with agonizing, focused pressure.

Thorne gasped, his eyes wide and terrified, staring up at the fluorescent lights, completely paralyzed by the lack of oxygen and the crushing weight on his chest. Abby grabbed Thorne’s right wrist. He didn’t manipulate it into a fancy submission hold. He simply pinned the boy’s arm flat against the mat, leaned his body weight over it, and positioned his free, calloused hand against the side of Thorne’s elbow joint. Abby held it there, just resting.

1 millm of pressure downward, and the joint would snap backward. The gym was a tomb. No heavy bag swung. No one breathed. The three sycopants by the cage stared in absolute slack jawed horror.

Thorne lay there choking on his own blood, his chest heaving uselessly against the anvil of Aby’s knee. He looked up into Aby’s eyes. Thorne expected to see triumph. He expected to see a man gloating over a victory, demanding respect. Instead, he saw nothing.

Just the calm, deadeyed stare of a man holding a tool he didn’t particularly want to use. You fight for applause, Abby said, his voice barely above a whisper meant only for the boy beneath him. You fight to feel big. That’s why you’ll always be a target. Abby tapped the side of Thorne’s elbow with his index finger.