“My grandfather,” Emma said, her voice dropping its exhausted tremor. Her bloodied lips curled into a smile that didn’t reach her cold, locked-in eyes.
Ryan blinked, his heavy chest heaving. The muscular giant glanced from the weeping old man in the blue track jacket back to the battered girl in the white gi. “So what?” Ryan sneered, trying to maintain his arrogant facade. “He’s crying because he can’t stand watching you get destroyed?”
“No,” Emma whispered flatly, pulling the frayed ends of her black hand wraps tight with her teeth. “He’s crying because he knows what happens when I stop holding back.”
The gym fell dead silent.
Emma’s secret wasn’t some tragic underdog sob story. It was a legal mandate. Three years ago, she wasn’t kicked out of the pro leagues for being weak; she was blacklisted for putting two heavyweights in intensive care. She had sworn an oath to her grandfather that she would never use his lethal, bare-knuckle striking style again.
But Ryan had pushed too far.
Emma shifted her weight. She didn’t raise her fists. Instead, she lifted both hands, fingers extended, settling into a bizarre, terrifyingly calm open-palm defensive stance.
At the back of the room, her grandfather’s sentimental tears instantly gave way to sheer terror. His eyes bulged in panic as he lunged against the crowd.
“Emma, no!” the old man shrieked, his voice cracking in absolute dread. “Don’t open your hands! You’ll kill him!”
Ryan’s cocky smirk evaporated in a split second. The color drained from his face as he stared at the woman standing before him. She wasn’t trembling from exhaustion anymore. She was vibrating with adrenaline.
The realization hit Ryan like a freight train: she hadn’t been taking a beating for five rounds. She had been letting him empty his gas tank.
Emma stepped forward. And the real fight finally began.