Dean looked down at his grease-stained hands. He took a long, slow breath in through his nose. Four seconds in, he held it in the center of his chest. Box breathing. The concrete over the vault in his mind didn’t just crack this time. It shattered. The lock disengaged. The heavy iron door swung wide open and the monster Dean had spent ten years starving stepped out into the light. Dean exhaled through his mouth. When he looked back up, the tired father was gone. “Okay,” Dean whispered. He reached down and picked up the heavy steel pry bar. The bald man moved first. He whipped his arm in a brutal horizontal arc, sending the heavy iron chain slashing toward Dean’s temple. It was a street fighter’s opening. Wild, telegraphed,
relying entirely on fear and momentum. Dean didn’t feel fear. He felt geometry. He didn’t step back to avoid the chain. Retreating gives an attacker time to recalibrate. Instead, Dean violently closed the distance, stepping inside the lethal arc of the weapon. The chain whistled past the back of Dean’s head, entirely missing its target. Before the bald man could recover his balance from the missed swing, Dean thrust the heavy steel pry bar forward like a spear. He didn’t aim for the head or the chest. He aimed for the mechanical weak point. The flat, blunt edge of the pry bar slammed into the subclavicular notch just below the man’s collarbone, crushing the bundle of nerves hidden beneath the muscle. The bald man’s right arm instantly went dead. The chain clattered harmlessly to the concrete.
He opened his mouth to scream, but Dean was already pivoting. Using the torque of his hips, Dean drove his steel-toed work boot directly into the side of the man’s left knee. The joint inverted with a wet, heavy pop that echoed over the hum of the garage fans. The man collapsed, hitting the floor in a tangled, shrieking heap, frantically clutching his ruined leg. Garrett froze. The confident sneer melted off the big man’s face. The entire exchange had taken less than two seconds. This wasn’t a bar fight. This wasn’t two guys trading haymakers in a parking lot. This was a systematic dismantling. “Crazy old bastard,” Garrett grunted, trying to mask his sudden spiking panic with volume. He lowered his chin, raised his massive fists, and charged like a wounded bull. Dean dropped the pry bar. It clanged loudly on the cement. He didn’t need it. As Garrett rushed in, throwing a massive looping right hook meant to separate Dean from his consciousness, Dean dropped his center of gravity. He ducked smoothly under the swinging fist. His right hand snapped out, grabbing the greasy, heavy lug wrench he had left on his tool tray. In one fluid motion, as Garrett’s momentum carried him past, Dean drove the heavy iron wrench directly into the soft tissue of Garrett’s floating ribs, exactly where he had struck Trent the night before, but with the added density of solid steel. Garrett’s breath left him in a sickening whoosh. His momentum staggered, his massive frame folding inward. Dean didn’t pause to admire his work. He dropped the wrench, grabbed the back of Garrett’s thick neck with his left hand, and used the big man’s own downward momentum against him. Dean drove his right knee straight up into Garrett’s descending face. The collision of bone on bone sounded like a dropped bowling ball. Garrett’s eyes rolled back into his skull before he even hit the ground. His three-hundred-pound frame crashed onto the concrete floor, completely limp, a puddle of dark blood immediately pooling beneath his mangled jaw.
