Bryce pushed himself up, spitting blood from where his lip had split against his own teeth. He was panting now, his chest heaving. His black belt—the symbol of his supposed mastery—looked ridiculous against his trembling frame.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with,” Bryce snarled. “I have lawyers. I have sponsors. I have—”
“You have a broken stance,” Garrett interrupted.
Bryce blinked. “What?”
“Your left foot is too far forward. Your weight is on your heels. You telegraph every punch with a shoulder twitch.” Garrett’s voice was calm, clinical, like a doctor reading a diagnosis. “You’ve been trained to look good on camera. You haven’t been trained to survive.”
Bryce screamed and attacked again.
This time, Garrett didn’t bother with throws. He caught Bryce’s wrist, twisted it, and drove two fingers into the pressure point just below the elbow. Bryce’s arm went numb instantly. Then Garrett’s knee came up—not into Bryce’s groin, not into his stomach, but into the nerve cluster on his outer thigh.
Bryce’s leg buckled.
He collapsed to one knee.
The gym was so quiet that the only sounds were Bryce’s ragged breathing and the hum of the fluorescent lights.
Garrett stepped back. He didn’t press the advantage. He didn’t gloat. He simply stood there, his scarred torso rising and falling with slow, even breaths.
“Yield,” Garrett said.
Bryce looked up at him. His eyes were wet—not with tears, not yet, but with the kind of rage that precedes them. He had never been beaten before. Not like this. Not in front of his students, his cameras, his empire.
“Go to hell,” Bryce whispered.
Garrett nodded. “Okay.”
He moved again.
This time, he didn’t give Bryce a chance to react. He caught the younger man by the collar and the belt, lifted him off his knees, and drove him back against the cage wall. The chain-link rattled. Bryce’s head snapped back, not hard enough to cause injury, but hard enough to stun.
Then Garrett applied the choke.
It was not a blood choke. It was not an air choke. It was something older, something more precise—a compression of the carotid artery that would put Bryce to sleep in seconds if he didn’t tap.
Bryce’s hands clawed at Garrett’s forearm. His legs kicked. His face turned purple.
“You have three seconds,” Garrett said. “Then you’re going to take a nap in front of your fans.”
Bryce tapped.
Garrett released him immediately. Bryce slumped to the mat, gasping, coughing, his eyes wide and wild. He rolled onto his side and vomited onto the vinyl.
The cameras captured everything.
Garrett stepped out of the cage. He picked up his work shirt and pulled it back on, buttoning it slowly, methodically. Then he walked over to Milo.
“Let me see your shoulder,” he said.
Milo was crying. Not from the pain—though the pain was bad—but from something else. Something he couldn’t name.
“Dad,” he said. “How did you—?”
“Let me see your shoulder,” Garrett repeated.