He slugged me on the side of my head. I went sprawling onto the cheap carpet. I went with it rather than trying to resist, letting the force of the blow power me forward. “You fucking traitor,” he cursed in a guttural roar, then kicked me hard in the kidney. That one hurt. “You’re gonna fuck with me, huh? That’s what you’re gonna do? Fuck with me?” I pulled myself into a fetal position, protecting my face and stomach, my hands and arms cupped over my head.

Corbin wound up like a punter and kicked me in my leg. I didn’t feel a thing, but I screamed in pain. For effect. The old give-’em-whatever-they-want-to-hear. He kicked me again, this time in my lower back. Okay, that was a good hit. He kicked me again. Then he began punching down at me. The kicks and punches came in a frenzy, over and over and over, but he quickly tired himself out.

Here’s something important to know: Your head and face, your hands, and your balls are the most vulnerable. The rest of your body is easily repairable. I kept my head tucked safely under my arms, my body folded protectively over my groin and let him punch himself into exhaustion. Those long mornings in the gym paid off; I felt every blow and reacted convincingly enough to satisfy Dickie’s need for revenge, but few of them caused any significant pain or damage. The thing about fighting that they don’t tell you in the movies is that when you hit someone, you also hurt yourself. The human body is surprisingly solid: hit certain parts of it hard enough and you bruise your own hands and feet. If you’re not in great shape, you might pull a muscle; punch or kick someone wrong and you can break the small bones in your hands and your feet. So after taking the first few hard shots, you start holding back to protect yourself. And having taken a serious blow to his ego and his honkers, the Big Dick hadn’t entered the fray in primo condition. His anger petered out pretty quickly.

As he was whaling away, I noticed that Vice President Hunter seemed to be watching from the silent TV. In that instant I flashed on the meeting in his office. I warned you, I heard him thinking. A kick caught the back of my hand, ripping off some skin and bringing me back to reality. Blood was flowing from several cuts. But an interesting thing happened: As I was being pummeled, part of me long buried was savoring the thrill of being involved in a brutal physical confrontation—although admittedly not so much being on the receiving end. Corbin had kicked through the barriers of decency I’d erected, kicked down my walls of civility. The adrenaline bursting through my body masked most of the pain; instead I was feeling a kind of primal joy that I hadn’t experienced in years. For a second I started to push myself onto my feet to get back in the fight.