Demetrio's POV
Dominic had a good left hook and he knew it, which was why he telegraphed everything else to set it up. I had been watching him do this since we were sixteen years old in a boxing gym on the west side and I still had to respect the execution every time, the way the feint to the solar plexus pulled your guard down just enough, the way he never committed to the jaw until he was certain.
He got me anyway.
The impact snapped my head sideways with a satisfying crack of pain, and I rolled with it and came back around with an elbow to his ribs that landed clean, and we stepped apart breathing hard in the particular way of two men who had been at this for forty minutes and were both too stubborn to call it.
"Good," I said.
"You're slowing down," he said, which was both untrue and the specific kind of provocation designed to make me sloppy. I had been doing this with him long enough to know it and be annoyed by it in equal measure.
"I'm pacing," I said.
