Chloe’s breath hitched.
“You spoke to my father?”
“Thomas reached out to me the moment the video went viral.” Donovan smirked.
“He’s quite eager to resume his role as your manager. He mentioned you owe him quite a bit of money for your upbringing.”
The revelation hit Chloe like a physical strike.
Her father had found her.
The nightmare was reaching out its claws to drag her back into the dark.
“I’m not a commodity,” Chloe said, her voice shaking with a rage she struggled to contain.
“And I’m not going back to the underground. Get out of my diner, Donovan.”
“Oh, you don’t seem to understand the reality of your situation.” Donovan sighed, adjusting his cuffs.
“I bought the mortgage to this miserable little restaurant this morning. If you don’t sign my contract, I foreclose on Arthur today. He loses everything. And that kid, Toby, I have friends on the police force. They can make sure a teenager holding illegal narcotics goes away for a very long time.”
Chloe’s fists clenched, her knuckles turning bone white.
The twist of Donovan’s leverage was sickening.
He was trapping her, pulling the innocent people she cared about into the line of fire.
Donovan gestured to the largest of his bodyguards, a man named Ivan, a former Spetsnaz operative with a face scarred by knife wounds and eyes devoid of humanity.
Ivan stepped forward, rolling his massive shoulders, cracking his neck with a sickening pop.
“You’re going to fight for me, Chloe.” Donovan whispered maliciously.
“The only question is whether you walk into the cage voluntarily or whether Ivan here has to break every bone in this old man’s body to convince you.”
Ivan did not wait for a single signal to attack.
He lunged at Chloe with the terrifying speed of a seasoned killer, his massive hands reaching out to grab her by the hair, fully intending to smash her face into the counter top.
Chloe did not retreat or attempt to block.
She simply vanished.
Dropping her center of gravity, she slipped beneath Ivan’s grasping hands.
As the giant man’s momentum carried him forward, Chloe stepped sharply to the outside of his lead leg.
She did not strike him with the brutal, bone-breaking strikes her father ruthlessly beat down into her.
Instead, she adapted.
She utilized her environment and her profound understanding of kinetic energy.
Grabbing the collar of Ivan’s heavy suit jacket, she used his own massive forward momentum against him.
She pivoted her hips, dropping to one knee, and executed a flawless sweeping judo throw.
Ivan’s enormous frame flew over her shoulder, crashing violently into the heavy dining tables.
Wood splintered and shattered as the giant collapsed in a heap of broken furniture.
