If you refuse, my son’s MMA team isn’t going to wait for your eight o’clock conditioning class. They train at the Ironworks Gym downtown, alongside professional fighters who don’t care about campus codes of conduct. Marcus is looking for blood, Callaway. And once he finds out that you brought Julian’s memory here just to destroy our family… I won’t be able to stop him from doing something terrible to you. In fact, I might even encourage it.
Dana stood up slowly. She was several inches shorter than Richard Vance, but the aura of lethal capability that radiated from her made the two bodyguards at the door tense instantly, their shoulders squaring, their hands shifting under their coats.
Tell your son to be in class at eight, Dana whispered, her voice colder than a winter grave. And tell him to bring better fighters than the ones who couldn’t keep him off the pavement. Because if you send them after me, Richard, you better make sure they come with body bags.
She took a step toward the exit. The bodyguard on the right stepped into her path, his broad chest blocking the doorway.
Dana didn’t break her stride. She stepped directly into his space, her eyes locking onto his throat with such unblinking, predatory intent that the man felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The sheer instinct of survival kicked in. Without a word from his boss, the bodyguard took half a step backward, clearing the exit.
Dana opened the door, paused on the threshold, and looked back over her shoulder at Richard Vance, who stood by the desk, his jaw clenched in fury.
Julian’s watch is still ticking, Richard, Dana said softly. And your time is running out.
She walked out into the corridor, leaving the billionaire standing in the cold administrative light, his fists clenched so tight that the unlit cigarette snapped cleanly in half inside his palm.
Outside, the autumn wind whipped across the campus green, carrying the scent of impending rain. Down the road, at the Ironworks Gym, the heavy bags were already swinging, and Marcus Vance was strapping on four-ounce fight gloves, his eyes bloodshot, his mind consumed by a blinding fury that was about to turn Ridgefield into a war zone.
The heavy leather bag swung in violent, shuddering arcs inside the dim, sweat-drenched confines of the Ironworks Gym. With every impact, a wet crack echoed against the corrugated metal walls, mingling with the stench of cheap linoleum, dried blood, and industrial grease. Marcus Vance struck the bag again and again, his hands wrapped in fraying tape that was rapidly soaking through with his own blood.
His right wrist throbbed with a sickening, burning ache where Dana Callaway’s fingers had dug into his radial nerve hours earlier. The pain did not slow him down; it fueled him. Every nerve ending in his body screamed with the humiliation that was currently spreading across every smartphone screen within a fifty-mile radius. Ten thousand views. Comments laughing at him. Mocking the undefeated middleweight prospect of Ridgefield. Asking if the big, bad Marcus Vance needed a female gym teacher to tuck him into bed.
Marcus threw a vicious left hook that sent the hundred-pound bag crashing into the support pillar. He leaned against it, chest heaving, his sweat dripping onto the black rubber floor.
You’re dropping your right shoulder every time you load up, a gravelly voice cut through the damp air. If that military girl had wanted to break your jaw instead of your ego, you’d be drinking your dinner through a wire right now.
Marcus whipped around, baring his teeth. Shut up, Ramos! You weren’t there!
Stepping out of the shadows beneath the mezzanine was Ray Ramos. He was thirty-five years old, built like a fire hydrant, with a scarred scalp, cauliflower ears, and cold, dead eyes that had seen the inside of two maximum-security facilities. Ramos did not fight in sanctioned rings. He was Richard Vance’s head of security at the Vance Logistics freight yards—a professional enforcer who specialized in breaking the bones of teamsters who asked too many questions about late-night cargo containers.
Behind Ramos stood two other men. They were not college students. They were heavy-set, calloused men wearing grease-stained jackets and heavy work boots, their faces hard and unreadable.
I wasn’t there, Ramos agreed smoothly, walking over to the ring apron and leaning against the ropes. But your old man called me. He’s furious, Marcus. He spent two million dollars putting your name on the athletic wing, and you let a five-foot-seven Navy reject turn you into an internet meme.
