Dominion (Guardian Angels) - By Melody Manful Page 0,13

trained, we’d be bruised all over if it weren’t for a little bit of padding.

“Your arm needs to be lower.” He took hold of my arm and bent it into the position he meant.

I didn’t say anything in response. I learned this trick from Logan the last time I’d begged him to cancel one of our training sessions; because I wanted to hang out with my friends, he’d bargained, saying that if I could knock him down during one-on-one combat, he’d give me the day off. He’d started off by letting me beat him until the last minute, at which point he took me down, and I’d earned myself an extra session for losing.

I didn’t want to lose and disappoint my father or brand Logan as a not-good-enough teacher.

“Lower your elbow.” He didn’t wait for me to do this myself: he did it for me. “Now, try and block my arm.”

When my father swung his arm, it didn’t hit me in the stomach; instead, I blocked it.

“Good,” he said as I blocked his fist once more. I could see from the way he threw his arms that he was going easy on me.

“Twenty bucks if I take you down,” I said as I blocked his fist from hitting my jaw.

When I said this he laughed, and then he stopped fighting. “Seriously?” he asked, shocked. “Sweetheart, I don’t want to take your twenty bucks.”

“But I wanna take yours.” And with that, I ran my fist straight into his jaw, taking him by surprise.

He groaned in pain, and then his fist passed by my chin, inches away from contact. “I wasn’t ready.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know the enemy would wait for me to be ready before he beat me to death or shot me,” I said with a fake smile.

“You asked for it!” and just like that, I was groaning with my hand on my stomach. I knew my best friend Sarah’s father came to her cheerleading competitions and cheered her on; mine took me to abandoned buildings and beat the crap out of me.

“You do realize that I’m your daughter and also a girl, right?” I asked, as I stood upright and swung my hands toward my father’s face.

“You don’t hit like a girl, and the enemy is going to hit you even harder when he learns you’re my daughter.” Touché.

This time around when I blocked my father’s fist, he blocked mine too, and we continued like that for about five more minutes. Sometimes he managed to swing a blow at me, and other times I got him. None of us looked ready to give up and declare the other a winner.

“You tricked me into thinking you were bad, didn’t you?” my father asked when my next blow landed on his stomach.

“No, I would never.” I crouched down so that his fist flew over my head, and then I threw another punch at his stomach. I didn’t wait for him to pull himself back up when I struck a punch that landed on the side of his face. He pulled up and swung his fist toward my face. I assumed he’d do that, so when I blocked his blow, I didn’t let go of his hands; instead, I immediately placed my foot forward for leverage and pulled him toward me so that he tripped on my legs and then bang, he fell, and I won.

“Yes!” I rejoiced, suddenly getting a little hopeful. Maybe I could win this, maybe I could do this after all.

“Have you considered a future here?” my father asked as he stood up.

“What happened to Princeton, Yale, or Harvard?” I asked. He and my mother had already mapped out my future—the very future they were afraid I wouldn’t even have.

“Those are still part of the plan,” he said, and then he started moving toward the rope. I trailed him and gently took a pair of gloves he held out to me.

Looking at the fishnet rope stretching above us, I inhaled deeply. I could climb: I’d done it more than enough, but I was shaking because of the tiny, little known fact that I was afraid of heights. I hated anything that involved heights. The thought of sleeping with a gun didn’t even scare me as much as the rope in front of me did.

“Justin, start the countdown,” my father said, staring at one of the cameras behind us. I knew there was someone there, watching us. There had to be someone watching the building and the agents at all