Bullies Targets The Wrong A Waitress — Unaware She's A Karate Black Belt Working Part-Time
Chapter 34
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Dotty squeezed Joe's hand as the mayor spoke, her eyes drifting just briefly to the old courthouse steps where she and Gus had stood together every year for decades, watching this same ceremony unfold."He loved this night," Dotty said quietly. "Said it was the one evening a year this whole town remembered it was still a family. Even the parts that didn't get along.""Feels like tonight might test that theory," Joe said."Feels like it might prove it too," Dotty said. "Depends which way things go."Joe barely heard most of the rest of it, her eyes moving instead toward Marcus Whitfield standing near the front with his lawyer, and toward Braden pacing at the edge of the crowd, a drink in his hand that clearly wasn't his first of the evening. She noticed the way he kept glancing toward Walt, toward the folder under his arm—something cornered in his expression that hadn't been there before.The ceremony wound down, the crowd starting to shift and murmur, preparing for the council meeting that would follow at the courthouse steps.That was when it happened.Dotty stepped away from Joe for a moment, moving toward Walt, who stood near the courthouse steps holding a worn folder against his chest.Braden intercepted her path, unsteady, his voice too loud for the thinning crowd around them. "Your family's really going to stand up there and ruin us?" he said, blocking Dotty's way. "Over some old story nobody even remembers, right?""Step aside, please," Dotty said, calm, despite the alcohol clearly working against his judgment."You people act like you're better than us," Braden said, his voice rising, drawing eyes from nearby. "Acting like some old badge and some dead cop's mercy makes your family special!""That's enough," Dotty said, sharper now, trying to move past him.He grabbed her arm hard to stop her, his grip clumsy but forceful, and Dotty stumbled, catching herself against the low stone wall bordering the courthouse lawn, a small cry of pain escaping her before she could stop it.The crowd around them gasped, several people surging forward at once—too far away, too slow.Time seemed to stretch strangely for Joe in that instant, the way it sometimes does when everything that matters narrows down to a single, unavoidable choice. She was already moving, faster than thought, faster than fear—the way six years of discipline had trained her body to move when someone she loved was in danger.She reached Braden in two steps, caught his wrist in a firm, practiced grip, and turned him away from her grandmother in one clean, controlled motion, sweeping his balance out from under him without a single unnecessary ounce of force.He hit the ground hard, more shock than pain in the sound he made.