“My grandfather,” Emma said, her voice entirely stripped of its exhausted tremor. It was flat. Ice-cold.
She slowly raised her hands, uncurling her battered fists into a relaxed, open-palm guard.
At the back of the gym, the old man wasn’t crying tears of pity or pride. He was weeping in absolute panic. He shoved through the suffocating crowd, lunging toward the edge of the mat with wide, terrified eyes.
“Ryan! Stop the match!” the old man shrieked, his voice raw and trembling. “Step back right now!”
Ryan’s arrogant smirk faltered. He glanced between the crying old man and the bruised girl in front of him. “What’s the geezer babbling about?”
Emma didn’t blink. The frightened, sloppy underdog was gone, replaced by a chilling, dead-eyed predator.
“He paid you to beat me,” Emma whispered, her posture shifting into something terrifyingly precise. “He thought a humiliating public loss would finally convince me to stop fighting in the underground circuits.”
She took a half-step forward. The entire room went dead silent.
“I didn’t bring her here to humble her, Ryan!” her grandfather wailed, his fingers digging into the mat. “I brought her here to *protect* you! I told her to let you win! She’s the one who put the heavyweight champion in a coma last week!”
Ryan froze. His heart slammed against his ribs.
“And,” the old man choked out, “she’s been fighting you wearing twenty-pound lead inserts.”
Emma reached down to the hem of her gi pants and unclasped the hidden Velcro. Two dense, heavy metal wraps slammed onto the mat, heavy enough to shake the floorboards.
The color instantly drained from Ryan’s face. His immense muscles locked in primal, paralyzing fear as Emma looked up and smiled—a cold, ruthless grin.
“Warm-up’s over,” she said.