"She's why I'm staying," Darius replied.
"You're nobody," Trent spat, stepping closer. "Now get out of my sight."
Trent expected the man to flinch. He expected the man to break. What he couldn't read was the quiet decision already made behind Darius Bennett's eyes. It was the culmination of years of choosing right over easy, even when no one was watching. Darius was the kind of man who taught his daughter that courage wasn't the absence of fear—it was showing up anyway.
Trent had dismissed hundreds of men just like that. None of them had ever stayed. But Trent was about to learn a harsh lesson: What happens when the one man you wave off turns out to be the last person you should have ignored?
Trent lunged, aiming to strike Darius with the barrel of the gun to force him into submission.
It was a fatal miscalculation.
To Darius, physical confrontation was just physics and leverage, not unlike breaking loose a rusted bolt. As Trent closed the distance, Darius didn't step back. He stepped in.
With terrifying, mechanical precision, Darius’s left hand shot out, wrapping around Trent's wrist and twisting it upward, away from the cashier. At the exact same moment, his right forearm crashed into Trent’s elbow joint. There was a sickening pop, followed by a howl of agony. The revolver clattered harmlessly onto the linoleum floor.
Before Trent could recover, Darius swept his leg, driving the younger man to the ground. Darius planted a heavy work boot on Trent’s shoulder, pinning him flat against the dirty tiles.