He didn’t look like an angry father. Angry fathers yell. Angry fathers throw wild punches. Arthur Vance looked like an apex predator that had just cornered a wounded rabbit. His posture was perfectly balanced. His face was a mask of cold, terrifying stillness. His eyes were completely dead, devoid of any human empathy—they were the eyes of a man who had ordered airstrikes on enemy combatants.
“You have made a tactical error,” Arthur said. His voice wasn’t a yell. It was a low, gravelly rumble that vibrated through the floorboards.
“Hey! Let go of me, you old—” Leo started to shout, trying to twist his body to swing his free hand at the intruder.
Arthur didn’t let him finish the sentence.
With a sharp, terrifying crack that sounded like a dry branch snapping in half, Arthur twisted his hips, utilizing his entire core strength, and snapped Leo’s wrist backward.
Leo shrieked, a high-pitched, feminine sound of absolute agony. He dropped to his knees instantly, his body desperately trying to follow the direction of the broken bone to relieve the pressure.
Before Leo’s knees even hit the floor, before his brain could fully register the searing pain in his arm, Arthur moved.