“We are not done.” He told her. He never finished the sentence. Luis moved the moment Victor turned his back on him.
His left hand came up and locked around Victor’s wrist, the one still pressing Elena’s throat, and applied precise brutal pressure to the exact point where the bones sit closest to the skin.
The pain was immediate and total. Victor’s grip on Elena’s throat broke open with a sharp animal sound that came from somewhere deep in his chest.
Elena gasped. Air rushed back in. She pressed herself against the glass with both hands on her belly pulling one long shaking breath after another.
Luis stepped between her and Victor and then Victor made his second mistake of the day.
He swung. It was a wild swing, more reflex than intention, the swing of a man whose pride had just been wounded in front of a crowd and whose body reacted before his brain could calculate the consequences.
His fist came around in a wide arc aimed at the side of Luis’s head.
Luis leaned back and let it miss by 2 in. Then he hit Victor. Once in the body, a short compact strike just below the ribs that drove the air completely out of him and folded him forward at the waist like a man bowing to something he had no choice but to respect.
Victor grabbed at Luis’s shirt trying to use him to stay upright, his knees already starting to buckle.
Luis stepped aside, let him drop. Victor hit his knees on the hard mall floor.
Both hands went out in front of him catching himself. He was on all fours wheezing trying to drag air back into a body that had just been reminded in a very direct and physical way that there was a significant difference between a businessman who intimidated people with money and power and a military officer who had spent years being trained to neutralize threats under conditions that made this mall look like a quiet afternoon.
The crowd was absolutely silent. Victor looked up from the floor. His face was red.
His eyes were wide. His suit, that perfectly pressed perfectly fitted suit he had chosen so carefully that morning to look impressive and powerful, was wrinkled at the collar where he had grabbed at Luis and scuffed at the knees from the fall.
He looked like what he was. He looked small. Luis stood over him completely still, breathing normally, not a single drop of sweat on him.
