AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Don Caproni to you, you Tuscan piece of shit,” Aristide snarled.
“Ah – so you were promoted,” Dario said as though this was just an ordinary conversation. “Congratulations.”
“Fuck your congratulations.”
“No need for violence, Don Caproni,” Dario said. “Whatever the issue, I’m sure we can reach an accommodation.”
“How about this: your head served to me on a platter.”
Dario smiled. “Maybe we can’t come to an accommodation, after all.”
“Kill him,” Aristide barked. “And his Swedish buttboy, too.”
The five men advanced. Several of them carried shivs in their hands.
Dario and I squared up side by side.
“You take the two on the right,” I whispered. “I’ll handle the rest.”
“Alright.”
Dario and I had spent the last three months practicing fighting as a team against imaginary opponents.
Today we were going to face real ones.
Before Aristide’s men could attack, I lunged at the nearest man holding a shiv.
I surprised all of them – Dario included –
But none more so than my target.
I feinted as though I was aiming for his face –
And then kneed him in the balls as hard as I could.
When he doubled over, I broke his arm and stole his shiv.
As he screamed, the others came after me –
But Dario punched one in the side of the neck.
There is a tiny bone at the top of the spine called the atlas. Like the Greek figure from mythology who carried the world on his shoulders, this single vertebra supports the weight of the entire skull. However, a well-placed strike to the side of the neck can separate the vertebra from the skull – instantly paralyzing the victim and effectively decapitating him. Not by removing the head from the body, but by severing its connection to the rest of the spine.
I’d made Dario practice this maneuver for months –
And he executed flawlessly.
The second man went down like a sack of potatoes.
Now it was four against two. In reality, it was more like three against two, since Aristide had just come along to watch. Our odds had increased dramatically in only a matter of seconds.
The third guy swiped at my neck with a razor blade embedded in a toothbrush handle.
I leaned back just in time. As he overcompensated and stumbled forward, I kicked against the outside of his knee, which bent in a direction Nature never intended.
As he fell to the ground, I drove my shiv into his right eye.
His scream reverberated in the tunnel like a damned soul in hell.
