Say It Again (First Wives, #5)(5)

She had to scan her bracelet to unlock the doors and ignored the heavy click as they secured behind her. The stairway was wide enough to funnel three students across going up and down.

One level below, she went through another set of locked doors and into the sparring gym.

Here, class was in session.

The instructors—one woman, who had her back to Sasha, and one man—were dressed in white. The students were completely in black.

She slid in quietly and tucked behind the students to observe. From the ages of the students around her, she assumed it was a college level class. Their attention was on the woman speaking. Ms. Denenberg had joined Richter in Sasha’s sophomore college year. The woman could kick any man’s ass in at least three different forms of martial arts. She used all the disciplines she had studied, along with some good old-fashioned street fighting, with a splash of krav maga, and developed her own training. She was on the mat with the male instructor, demonstrating takedowns.

The students at Richter were never taught self-defense, they were instructed in offense only. If someone was after you, you met them head-on and made them regret they challenged you.

“The neck guides the head and forces the body to go with it.” Ms. Denenberg motioned for her male counterpart to approach while she demonstrated to her students how to gain control of her opponent’s neck and used her legs to take him down to the mat. She demonstrated the same takedown three times and then switched to a similar hold from a different angle. Sasha could think of at least six different neck takedowns that she’d been taught during this very class.

“You will break up in pairs. First, ones with ones, twos with twos. Then I will pair you with new partners.”

One of the male students, a good six foot three whose neck size alone suggested he spent more hours in the gym than Richter demanded, said something under his breath to his friend standing beside him.

Sasha shook her head and the other student laughed.

“Would you like to share what you find so funny, Mr. Braum?”

Mr. Braum, or Thick Neck, as Sasha saw him, lost his smile. “No, Ms. Denenberg.”

“Please, I insist.”

It was never a good thing to be singled out in Ms. Denenberg’s presence unless you were being asked to repeat a skill you’d mastered for the class.

“I-I was ah . . . wondering how some of the girls in here could even reach my neck.”

That had the defensive backs of the girls standing taller.

“That didn’t seem like a funny comment. Are you sure that’s what you said?”

Sasha laughed and the students parted to reveal her presence.

The instructor narrowed her eyes briefly, and then smiled.

Sasha stepped forward. “What he said was, most of the girls here couldn’t reach his dick, let alone his neck.”

A murmur went up.

Ms. Denenberg lifted a hand in the air, pointed a finger toward the ceiling. “Now that sounds like something you would say, Mr. Braum. Thank you so much for clarifying, Miss Budanov.”

The murmur grew.

Ms. Denenberg took two steps toward them.

Mr. Braum stiffened. He was in his early twenties, maybe even just nineteen. Sasha almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

“Miss Budanov, will you be so kind as to show Mr. Braum just how quickly a woman can get to both his dick and his neck, so he’s assured I’m not wasting his time?”

Now Sasha did feel sorry for him.

The class took a collective step back.

Mr. Braum lost his smile when Sasha found hers.

One second she was tossing her ponytail over her shoulder as she pretended to walk past the unsuspecting student, the next her heel purposely missed a direct hit to the kid’s groin, but struck close enough to send shockwaves down his legs, and her arm caught the back of his neck. Before he could figure out where she even was, let alone how to counter, Sasha had flipped him onto his shoulder and the ball of her booted foot sat on his windpipe.

Ms. Denenberg moved to stand beside her, both of them looking down at the cocky kid. “Any questions, Mr. Braum?”

He pulled in a deep breath. “No, ma’am.”

Sasha released her boot and reached down to give him assistance to his feet. He hesitated, as if he wasn’t going to accept her help, and Ms. Denenberg narrowed her eyes.

His cold hand met Sasha’s wrist. He squeezed it a little too hard.

In that moment, she hoped there was at least one female student in the class that would kick the cocky out of him before graduation.





Chapter Three



“We’re drinking beer in a pub, you have to call me Brigitte.”

Sasha sat across from Ms. Denenberg . . . Brigitte, with what the Germans considered a small portion of a local brew. Like wine in Italy, the Germans explored flavors of beer with fervor.

“It pushes against everything Richter taught me.”

Brigitte tilted her glass to her lips. “Titles, class, and rank of the person are necessary in a school and your employment. Nowhere else. One of the many problems with societies everywhere is when a CEO thinks he’s better than the waiter.”

Sasha saw the wisdom in that.

The bar they occupied was only a few miles from the school. Sasha had passed by it on occasion when leaving the school in her senior year. Most of her rebellious drinking had taken place on campus. Being spotted in the bar would have been much more likely. And having determined that many of the staff at Richter were known in the local place, Sasha was right to have stayed away.