Ignoring the judge's shouting, Hollister closed the distance to the defense table in three wide strides. He stepped into Faith's space and slapped her hard across the face. The sound cracked through the courtroom like a gunshot.
"Know your place, girl," he spat. "Trash like you doesn't speak in my court."
A white man in row three smirked. Two teenagers raised their phones. The bailiffs froze, stunned by the sheer brazenness of a uniformed officer striking a civilian in open court. Nobody stood up. Nobody said a word for the Black widow standing there with a red handprint blooming on her cheek.
But none of them imagined what the next eleven seconds would cost him.
Faith didn't stagger. She didn't cry out. She simply turned her head back to center. Her eyes were completely, terrifyingly calm. Defend only when there is no other door.
Hollister reached for her collar to throw her to the ground.
Second 1: Faith’s left hand shot up, parrying his heavy arm away from her centerline. Second 3: She pivoted her hips—the exact quarter-inch rotation she taught in the dojo—using his own aggressive forward momentum against him. Second 5: Her right hand trapped his wrist. Two fingers dug precisely into the radial nerve bundle. Hollister let out a sharp gasp as his arm went entirely numb. Second 8: With a fluid, brutal economy of motion, Faith stepped behind his lead leg and shifted her weight. Second 11: Hollister hit the heavy oak defense table face-first, his right arm pinned immovably behind his shoulder blade in a textbook Krav Maga joint lock.
Faith held him there, applying just enough pressure to keep him entirely subdued, but not enough to break the bone. The two-hundred-and-twenty-pound officer grunted in pain, completely immobilized by a woman half his size.
She leaned down, her voice steady and quiet enough that only he could hear it. "You forgot to breathe, Officer."